ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on decisions reached by Thailand’s Constitutional Court between 2013 and 2020 and analyses their effects on space for civic activism under the prevailing authoritarian regime. Although academic literature suggests the Constitutional Court’s role is to protect democracy against authoritarianism, the Thai Constitutional Court’s rulings are found to preserve the space for conservative activism and restrict the space for pro-democracy activism, as the latter is thought to challenge the three pillars of Thai identity – nation–religion–monarchy. This chapter interprets the court’s rulings through Carl Schmitt’s concept of the state of exception, applied to explain how the court creates a two-tier space for civic activism in the Thai constitutional landscape. Such efforts to imprint the state of exception within Thailand’s constitutional topography through constitutional review have however generated a double standard, thus protracting struggles between conservative and pro-democracy civil society groups.
