Democracy Falters: Thailand and the U.S. in 2025

Anti-government protesters gathered outside Thailand’s Government House on Thursday, demanding Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra resign.

For much of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the United States has stood as the popular  role model of liberal democracy: a system buttressed by constitutional checks, an independent judiciary, and regular, peaceful transfers of power. Its political culture, rooted in rights discourse and proceduralism, was exported, studied, and adopted abroad. Nowhere was this influence more visible than in Southeast Asia, where American ideals helped shape how young people framed questions of justice, dissent, and governance.

Thailand, in particular, absorbed much of this language – of rights, representation, and constitutionalism – even as its own institutions remained fragile. However, this year has shown to be an especially difficult one for both nations. Thailand and the United States, though vastly different in history and structure, are now confronting an eerily similar reality: the slow, procedural hollowing-out of democratic norms from within.

With Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025—despite a criminal record, an attempted coup, and a campaign centered on retribution—the institutions designed to check authoritarian impulses have largely acquiesced. Trump exhibits a blatant disregard for the U.S. Constitution and the democratic principles it enshrines. Authoritarian measures have become hallmarks of his presidency: launching military strikes against Iran without congressional authorization (violating Article I, Section 8), separating families without due process (contravening the Fifth Amendment), and, nearly five years later, continuing to refuse to concede the 2020 election (in defiance of the Twelfth Amendment). 

What’s most disquieting is how familiar this has become to observers in places like Thailand, where democratic erosion has followed a parallel, if not more accelerated, path.

As the U.S. slides into a “flawed democracy,” Thailand’s trajectory has been even starker. The 2025 Democracy Index downgraded it to “Not Free,” citing the dissolution of the opposition Move Forward Party, the criminalization of dissent, and the courts’ growing entanglement with military interests.

After five years of overt military rule, Thailand returned to being a country with a ‘civilian government.’ The military-backed Palang Pracharath Party retained control, and when massive protests erupted in 2020 and 2021 – demanding constitutional reform and monarchy accountability – the response was swift: mass arrests, censorship, and charges of lèse-majesté (“laws criminalizing criticism of the monarchy”). Still, optimism surged in 2023 when Move Forward, under Pita Limjaroenrat, won the largest share of seats in national elections.

Pita Limjaroenrat speaking at a Move Forward Party Rally

But electoral victory, as Thailand demonstrates, is no guarantee of governance. The unelected Senate – appointed under military rule – blocked Move Forward’s rise to power. In 2024, the Constitutional Court dissolved the party for attempting to amend lèse-majesté laws. Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, who emerged in Move Forward’s wake, was himself removed by the court in 2025 and replaced by Paetongtarn Shinawatra, further entrenching Thailand’s network of military, monarchical, and elite interests.

Thai PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra, earlier this month.

Thailand’s shaky government is now on the brink after a leaked call with Cambodia’s Hun Sen sparked outrage and broke apart the ruling coalition. With military-backed parties pulling away and protests growing, memories of past coups haunt the scene. The military claims it won’t intervene, but the threat of another coup hangs heavy. Now, Thailand’s fragile democracy faces a make-or-break moment: political collapse or military takeover. If a coup does come—whether judicial, legislative, or military—it won’t be surprising. 

What the U.S. and Thailand now share is not a common ideology, but a common drift: a slow, legalistic erosion of democratic norms, where public mandate can be undone by courts, where power is protected by procedure, and where youth energy is folded back into silence.

If there’s a takeaway for students and young people in Bangkok and beyond, it may not be one of optimism or outrage, but awareness. Institutions don’t collapse all at once. Often, they adapt—until they no longer serve those they were built to protect. 

Neither Thailand nor the United States offers a roadmap out. But both demand that we re-interrogate what we mean by “democracy”—and what we are prepared to accept in its name.