Where Agency Meets Structure: Understanding Civil-Military Relations in Contemporary Thailand

Abstract

Since 1992, Thailand's young democracy has sought to ensure civilian control over its military. Yet since the 2006 coup, the military has become a powerful political actor and Thai democracy has eroded. As such, institutionalizing civilian control has become particularly challenging. This article examines civil-military relations in Thailand and argues that while civilian agents have initiated moves towards political outcomes of civil-military relations, agents’ choices and strategies have only been realized through the conditioning of structure—macro-structural, institutional and ideational factors. The study seeks to answer four questions. First, how have structure and agency played roles in explaining civil-military relations in Thailand's emerging democracy? Second, what strategies have civilian agents sought to use in attempting to achieve civilian control and what structural factors have conditioned strategy choices? Third, how successful have Thai civilian governments been in achieving control? Finally, what might be the future for Thai civil-military relations?