The role of political and economic factors in Thailand's last two coups d' etat

Abstract

Thailand has experienced numerous coups. The last two Thai coups (1991 and 2006) were against popularly elected prime ministers. This thesis proposes and tests six hypotheses as the basis for each coup. The six hypotheses are split evenly between three political and three economic hypotheses. After the case study of each coup, the last chapter examines similarities and differences between the two coups. In the case of this thesis, the trend of the political factors to cause political instability was supported. Although economic factors fluctuated, or in the case of income inequality remained relatively constant, the three economic factors were not found as contributing to Thailand's political instability. Therefore, no combination of any of the six hypotheses tested was substantial enough to be labeled as the cause of either coup.