The Studying Thai Constitutional Cultural Politics Analysis Approach

Abstract

The main question in this article is: how many approaches to studying the Thai Constitution can be classified? And what new approaches have appeared? This article reviews political science literature with the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand as its principal analytical unit. Result were found that, about a decade ago, cultural politics analysis (CPA), another subsequently overlooked approach, was devised. CPA combines previous approaches to constitutional analysis of both the text and customs. It is original in at least two aspects: i) through political activism, these works created knowledge to deny inaugural power; ii) academically, these works sought to at understand the crux of Thai modernizations in arranging the relationships among traditional institutions pre dominant before the constitution existed, as well as, the ruling elite and the institutions holding power according to liberal democratic philosophy and legitimacy.