5 ideas
Thai democracy runs as two separate systems within one country. The rural majority determines who forms the government through its sheer electoral weight. The Bangkok middle class, though outnumbered at the polls, controls the press, the universities, and public opinion, and uses them to delegitimize and bring down those same governments.
Rural voters treat a vote as part of a reciprocal relationship with a patron who delivers roads, jobs, and help in hard times. Urban voters treat a vote as a verdict on policy and personal integrity. Each side reads the other's behavior through its own frame, so what one sees as loyalty the other sees as corruption.
Rural voters who accept money or favors are not simply uneducated or duped. The state does little for them between elections, and a local patron is the only reliable channel for resources. Taking the tangible benefit on offer is therefore the sensible choice, because national policy promises rarely reach the village.
Once the urban middle class concludes that elected politicians are corrupt products of bought rural votes, it stops defending electoral outcomes. That withdrawal of support makes coups, street protests, and extra-parliamentary removal of governments acceptable to the most influential constituency. Electoral legitimacy and urban legitimacy come apart, and the gap keeps the cycle of instability going.
Reconciling the two democracies requires changes on both sides. On the rural side, decentralization, stronger local government, and development would free rural voters from dependence on patrons, so their votes could turn toward policy. On the urban side, the middle class would have to accept rural electoral choices as legitimate and address rural needs, instead of simply condemning rural voters.