Kingdom of fear: royal governance under Thailand's king Vajiralongkorn

Abstract

This article examines royal governance under King Maha Vajiralongkorn (Rama X) for the light it sheds on Thailand's recent political development. It is argued that the existence of "fear" defines Vajiralongkorn's relationship with the people. For members of the ruling class, fear keeps them in check. Within the palace, promotion and demotion are vital for control. The Royal Gazette (Rachakitjanubeksa) has become a platform for public humiliation that operates to inculcate fear. For the public, fear proliferates through a variety of means, including employing laws to punish critics of the monarchy, particularly the exploitation of lèse-majesté law, with the state's keen cooperation. But the 2020 protests, which demanded immediate monarchical reform, seriously challenged Vajiralongkorn's fear-based royal governance. The Thai case demonstrates that fear, a centuries-old form of governance used by many rulers to control their subjects, is no longer an effective tool of governance in modern, middle-class-driven, capitalist societies, like Thailand. Fear has a tendency to backfire on a sovereign if overused.