2014 Thai Military Coup
After months of street confrontation between the pro-Thaksin 'Red Shirts' and the royalist-establishment 'Yellow Shirts', and the judicial removal of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the Royal Thai Army declared martial law and then, on 22 May 2014, staged a coup d'etat under General Prayut Chan-o-cha. The junta, styling itself the National Council for Peace and Order, suspended the constitution, detained politicians and activists, and ruled by decree. The coup was the latest in a long series of military interventions — Thailand has experienced roughly a dozen successful coups since the end of absolute monarchy in 1932 — that constitute the army's effective veto over electoral democracy. It exemplifies the archetypal coup: a small armed elite seizing the state, here to suppress a rural-based populist movement that repeatedly won elections but threatened the interests of the Bangkok establishment, the bureaucracy, and the monarchy. The junta entrenched its power through a 2017 constitution that created an appointed Senate and other mechanisms guaranteeing continued military influence. These arrangements later allowed the establishment to block the reformist Move Forward party from governing after it won the 2023 election and to dissolve it, demonstrating how the 2014 coup institutionalised a durable structural constraint on Thai democracy.
- Year: 2014 CE
- Category: Political
