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Legality, Legitimacy, and Authoritarian Survival: The Case Study of Thai Politics from the 2014 Military Coup
Author(s): Apipol SAE-TUNG*
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 .. View More»
DOI:
10.14303/2276-6502.2025.31