Democratic Consolidation : Thailand’s attempt at democracy

Abstract: The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the process of democratic consolidation in Thailand between 1997-2006.  The country’s consolidation of democracy has been hampered by continuous cycle of coup d’états which throughout history have halted the overall process of democratization. The coup of 2006 is one example of those instances where the democratic consolidation process was interrupted.   The method used to examine the years of 1997-2006 was theory consuming by qualitative text analysis where the data used to assess the situation was qualitative. The theory of democratic consolidation was offered by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan. The theory’s prerequisites were applied to examine the case study of Thailand. The theory chosen were hoped to give a plausible explanation for the failure of democratic consolidation in the case of Thailand. It was also hoped that it could assess the overall quality of Thai democracy and possibly give a better insight in why military coups seem to be a reoccurring phenomenon in the case of Thailand.