Constitutional Bricolage: Thailand's Sacred Monarchy vs. The Rule of Law.

• Date: 01 August 2022
• Author: Leelapatana, Rawin
• Published date: 01 August 2022
• Author: Leelapatana, Rawin

Constitutional Bricolage: Thailand's Sacred Monarchy vs. The Rule of Law. By Eugenie Merieau. Oxford, UK: Hart Publishing, 2022. Hardcover: 326pp.

Thailand has long witnessed a succession of political struggles between the dominant royalist-military alliance and a progressive, pro-democracy movement. Despite the overthrow of royal absolutism in 1932, the royalist-conservative elites successfully managed to restore the political pre-eminence of the monarchy by launching a military coup in 1958. Since then, military takeovers have become a convenient means for the country's traditional elites to repress threats to the monarchy, including popular demands for the rule of law and political liberalization. However, it is misleading to conclude that the standing of the monarchy is exclusively maintained through brute force. Various legal techniques have also been exploited for this purpose--a phenomenon which is the central theme of Eugenie Merieau's new book, Constitutional Bricolage: Thailand's Sacred Monarchy vs. The Rule of Law.

Merieau positions the Thai monarchy in-between a "British-style" constitutional monarchy and a "Gulf-style" absolutist monarchy (p. 8). In her view, the Thai king's power to sanction, tacitly or otherwise, a succession of coups...