Pavin Chachavalpongpun has emerged as a major Thai intellectual voice, both through his academic output and through his social media efforts. Among Thai student activists who took to the streets in 2020 (and who are still there now), he has been recognised as one of three exiled authors who are especially respected by the students for their tireless efforts to highlight the problems generated by an increasingly absolutist monarchy and an unyielding military government. (The other two exiles similarly hailed by Thai students are Somsak Jeamteerasakul and Andrew MacGregor Marshall.)
The edited collection Coup, king, crisis, displays Pavin's academic talents as an organiser and editor of scholarly volumes—though the political purpose that he brings to his other activities is clearly on display here as well. While the individual chapters were written before the eruption of student demonstrations in 2020, the 2019 election and its immediate aftermath get some attention; and more generally the book reposes on a detailed examination of Thailand's fraught passage from the ninth to the tenth reign—from the kingship of Rama IX, King Bhumibol, to that of Rama X, King Vajiralongkorn—and from one form of military dictatorship to another. The result is a collection that covers essential intellectual territory in efforts to locate contemporary Thai politics vis-à-vis these three long-standing features of Thai society.
The book begins with a foreword by Charles Keyes, followed by an introduction by Pavin, one in which he cites the frequently rehearsed (yet still appropriate) Gramscian mantra that ‘the old is dying, and the new cannot be born’—a condition that Gramsci saw as generating a host of ‘morbid’ symptoms. Pavin shows Thailand to be rife with morbid symptoms, particularly in the context of the 2019 elections that were essentially stolen by the military regime.
The next section of the book conceptualises political change in Thailand and features chapters by Federico Ferrara, on Thailand's domestic political conflict and the importance of the ‘struggle for recognition’, and by Claudio Sopranzetti, on Thai ideas of power and issues of legitimacy. These chapters set the table for a series of pieces in the next section, which addresses one of the three corners of the book's triangle, the monarchy. Paul M. Handley, author of the famous biography of King Bhumibol, The King never smiles, revisits that work, 14 years later. Well-known Thai historian, Charnvit Kasetsiri, also addresses King Bhumibol's reign, while Kevin Hewison looks at the complexities introduced by the very long period over which King Vajiralongkorn's succession was negotiated. Edoardo Siani concludes the section with an analysis of the role of Buddhist kingship in navigating issues of legitimacy in Thailand.
The ensuing section examines the second corner of the triangle, the Thai military and its impact on institutions. Paul Chambers analyses what he calls the monarchised military in post-succession Thailand. Sarah Bishop presents an argument that notions of a judicial coup neglect some constructive actions of the Constitutional Court of Thailand. Khemtong Tonsakulrungruang assesses how Thai Buddhism has struggled to revive its authority under military rule. Krislert Samphantharak examines the problems of the Thai economy generated by military rule. And Pavin concludes the section by examining the military regime's foreign policy.
The final section brings aspects of crisis into focus by examining opposition to the military regime. Tyrell Haberkorn analyses what it might mean to put the National Council for Peace and Order on trial for its human rights abuses; David Streckfuss addresses digital censorship and self-censorship under the dictatorship; and Somchai Phatharathananunth discusses the fraught politics of NGOs in the context of military rule.
As with all edited collections, there are issues of conceptual consistency with this one; but at the same time, the overarching themes provide considerable coherence and a kind of ‘timeless’ timeliness. For example, I write this review on 6 October 2021, the forty-fifth anniversary of the horrendous massacre of students at Thammasat University. That event, in 1976, was yet another in Thai history where the fateful triangulation of monarchical power, military aggression, and social crisis generated a dire outcome—one that threw Thailand's struggles for democratisation into reverse for several decades. The fact that the last decade has brought to the fore once again this same fateful triangle suggests that coup, king, and crisis are not fleeting spectres but enduring features of the Thai political landscape. Perhaps only if they are dealt with in some of the ways suggested by the authors of this collection will Thai kings and coups cease generating the crises and bloodshed that they generated in October 1976, May 1992, April–May 2010, and so many other times in Thai history.
