The Color of Thailand’s (Un)Constitutional Reforms: Red, Yellow, or Orange?

Constitution building has become a major industry in these times of good governance, emergent democracy, sustainable rule-of-law-based economic growth, and reconstruction of failed states.1 The experience of Thailand over the last 12 years since the major constitutional reforms of 1997 is a cautionary tale in this context (Harding 2001; Harding and Leyland 2011; McCargo 2002a). Thailand is one of Asia’s rapidly industrializing tiger economies, has a buoyant civil society, plus a political system based on what Thais and Thai constitutions refer to as “the democratic regime with the King as head of state,” or in other words constitutional monarchy, which has been Thailand’s constitutional system since the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932.