In 1985, the historian Nidhi Eoseewong introduced the concept of a cultural constitution in Thailand. Thailand’s written constitutions, he observed, are frequently torn up: charters so easily replaced cannot possibly be worth very much. 

But the cultural constitution, which Nidhi describes as the “political culture which is the true supreme arrangement of power relations,” cannot be discarded so readily. “Laws, ministerial orders, and regulations cannot contravene the provisions in the political culture or in this true constitution.”

Thailand’s cultural constitution experienced one great disruption in 2001, when Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai Party swept to power. That election had injected Thai politics with its first real taste of an economic populism that reminded the rural masses to use their sovereign power to elect a government they felt would speak for them. The conflict between an ascendant majority and a ruling minority, still empowered by Thailand’s unwritten charter, became the story of two decades of Thai politics.

Click here to read the full piece at Thai Enquirer.