Search Results

The history of civil–military relations in Thailand has paralleled the gradual post-1980 primacy of monarchical power over the country. Until 1932, the monarchy ruled absolute across Siam (Thailand). From 1932 until 1980, the military held more clout than the monarchy (though the palace slowly increased its influence after 1957). Since 1980, monarchy and military have dominated the country with the military as junior partner. The two form a khakistocracy: the military’s uniform color of khaki combined with the aristocracy (monarchy). Though there have been brief instances of elected civilian governments, all were overthrown by the military. In fact, Thailand likely holds the record for the highest number of military putsches in the world. Since the death of King Bhumipol Adulyadej in 2016, the clout of the armed forces has become more centralized under his successor and son King Maha Vajiralongkorn. At the same time, post-2019 Prime Minister (and post-2014 junta leader) General Prayuth Chanocha has sought to entrench military power across Thailand. As a result, in 2021, the monarchy and military continue to enhance authoritarian rule as a khakistocracy camouflaged behind the guise of a charade form of democracy. Civil–military relations represent exclusively a partnership between the monarch and the armed forces.

The evolution of Cambodia’s armed forces has been incremental yet highly disjointed, reflecting the country’s post–World War II history itself. At the same time, there has been a legacy of military authoritarianism in Cambodia. Using the framework of historical institutionalism, this chapter looks at the evolution of Cambodia’s armed forces across time. The chapter points to a 1979 critical juncture which affected the military’s organizational history. It also stresses that especially since 1997 the armed forces has become increasingly concentrated under the personalized control of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The military in 2020 appears as a mechanism of Hun Sen’s, doing his bidding and following his preferences. As such the armed forces in Cambodia should be viewed as an interventionist military that has acted as the junior partner in an asymmetrical relationship with Hun Sen. With Hun Sen’s 2018 appointment of his son Hun Manet to command the army, concurrent with being deputy supreme commander of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, it appears as though the military is becoming even further centralized under the Hun family. As a result, although civilian control over the military technically exists in Cambodia today, it is not an institutionalized, accountable form of control, but rather an unofficial, tool of violent power for the Prime Minister.

Liberal Intergovernmentalism (LI) is the contemporary “baseline” social scientific and historiographic theory of regional integration—especially as regards the European Union. It rests on three basic assumptions, which in turn support a three-stage theoretical model of integration and the elaboration of numerous distinctive causal mechanisms. Considerable historical and social scientific evidence supports the LI view, but room also remains for scholars to extend and elaborate its framework in promising ways. Three prominent criticisms of LI exist. Some scholars of “administrative politics” charge that it applies only to treaty-amending decisions and other rare circumstances. “Historical institutionalists” charge that it overlooks endogenous feedback from previous decisions. “Post-functionalists” and “constructivists” revive discredited claims from the 1960s that functional theories neglect the central role of identity claims and ideology in explaining national interests. While each criticism contains some truth, LI possesses rich theoretical resources with which to address them fruitfully and musters compelling evidence to support its empirical claims. This confirms LI’s preeminent role in scholarly debates and suggests a soberly optimistic future for European and regional integration.

Path dependence has been employed more frequently in the field of foreign policy analysis, though it is still an emerging framework. The roots of path dependence are traced from the physical sciences and economics to the social sciences, and finally, foreign policy. The basic assumptions of path dependence are summarized, including the role of critical junctures, increased returns, and policy legacies that are produced and reproduced by a variety of causal mechanisms. The preferred methods employed by path dependence scholars are briefly outlined; framework’s applicability to the study of politics is addressed, and the major critiques of path dependence are reviewed. This leads to the general conclusion that despite conceptual and methodological challenges in the area of foreign policy, there is definite “value added” in path-dependent approaches.

Since the 1990s, historical institutionalism has established itself as a frequently used approach in the study of European integration. One basic tenet of those who use this approach is to take history seriously in the study of European integration—in particular how historical choices on institutionalizing particular procedures and policies explain subsequent patterns of agency. Looking at the manner in which time and institutional structures affect outcomes is central in this approach. In the context of the European Union (EU), the works that have adopted this approach have typically examined developments in policies and institutions over time. While sharing with other institutionalist approaches (such as rational choice and sociological institutionalism) the recognition that “institutions matter,” historical institutionalism introduced particular concepts such as “path dependence” and “critical juncture” into the study of the EU. The distinct contribution here is the capacity of historical institutionalism to explain the persistence of institutional structures and the continuity of policies as well as the reasons for change. In the study of European integration, this approach has been adopted in many areas of research, ranging from studies about the legal foundations of the EU, the workings within institutions of the EU, the process of enlargement, to analyses of various sectors of EU policy-making, and the study of the multiple crises confronting the integration project in the 2010s.