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Thailand has provisionally scheduled a general election for 7 May 2023. The last election in March 2019 was widely seen as a referendum on the May 2014 coup d’état, and showed that Thai voters remained deeply polarized along pro- and anti-military lines. While those divisions have not gone away, Thailand has recently seen troublesome tensions within both the conservative and opposition camps, and the emergence of some new political parties. The country has also been rocked by youth-led protests that began in 2020, marking the emergence of explicit inter-generational conflict. What does this all mean for the upcoming election, and the future of Thailand’s fragile democracy?

Duncan McCargo, Director of the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen, is best-known for his work on the politics of Thailand. His most recent books are Fighting for Virtue: Justice and Politics in Thailand (Cornell 2019) and Future Forward: The Rise and Fall of a Thai Political Party (with Anyarat Chattharakul, NIAS Press 2020).