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This study explores the use of law and legal mechanisms to secure weak authoritarian power and argues that the lack of political legitimacy leads to the use of such legal mechanisms. The increased use of laws to solve political issues and control political elements occurs when a regime with low political legitimacy seeks to secure and increase its political control legitimately. This study explores Thai politics after the military coup in 2014 as the case study. It uses content analysis on the Thai constitutions and other laws together with descriptive statistics to test the hypothesis. The result shows that the lack of political legitimacy in terms of power accession of the military government leads to lower popularity and government stability, which leads the weakened regime to use law and legal mechanisms to tighten political control rather than other forms of repression that will negatively affect the regime’s already lowering legitimacy. This study evaluates and concludes that the military successfully controls Thai politics by establishing the national strategy under the auspice of the 2017 constitution, which was promulgated under the military government in a bid to control political elements to safeguard the monarchy military alliance in Thai politics.
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