One Year (Plus!) of The Coffee Parliament

Some reflections on a busy year

Last week, Fulcrum published an article I wrote on the survival of the Democrat Party. Check it out here.

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Dear readers of The Coffee Parliament,

We have some down time between the end of the election season and before the political calendar ramps up again with the opening of parliament. Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul appears to be in no hurry to finalize the makeup of his coalition government, which I think all Thai politics observers can be grateful for because we all need a breather.

I launched The Coffee Parliament on January 30th, 2025. Its first anniversary was right in the climax of election season, and so the date completely slipped my mind. It wasn’t until later in February that I realized this Substack is now over a year old! There wasn’t really a break in how busy Thai politics was until the end of the month, however, so here I am to reflect on this milestone a month late. But in a way, perhaps it’s only appropriate after the recent election campaign to reflect on one year plus of this Substack. (All regular readers surely understand the reference).

Firstly, a big thank you to all readers of The Coffee Parliament. When I launched this newsletter, I had no idea if it would gain a meaningful level of readership. Thailand is a country of 70 million people, but Thai political analysis written in English remains a bit of a niche industry. One friend asked who the audience is for an English newsletter on Thai politics! Yet between January 30, 2025 and January 30, 2026, The Coffee Parliament had almost 60,000 views and over 70,000 email views.

This was certainly in large part driven by the frenetic pace of Thai politics in 2025, something I did not anticipate at all when I started the Substack. (Indeed, I thought we were going to be looking at the stable third year of a Pheu Thai government — which just goes to show that we political analysts really don’t have crystal balls). Over the past year, I’ve covered local elections, a general election, two rounds of border conflicts, the fall of one prime minister and the emergence of another, multiple cabinet changes, and a lot of miscellaneous news on top of that. To put it mildly: what a year.¹

Some of the articles I enjoyed writing the most from this first year were:

• Party in the Provinces (a look at how party brands have taken on greater prominence in local politics)

• Looking Beyond ‘Why Nations Fail’ (written after Thais obsessed over the book at the start of the year)

• On the “Domestic Rivalry Theory” and the “International Family Feud Theory” (a piece on the origins of the first round of Thai-Cambodian conflict, which became the most popular piece from the past year)

• Bhumjaithai’s New Coalition Emerges (the political scientist in me was surprised to see Thailand’s first confidence and supply agreement)

• The Death of an Old Party (I primarily study political party institutionalization, so you’ll understand that this was of particular interest)

• Bhumjaithai’s Big House Edge (where I covered the most important driver of what became Bhumjaithai’s election victory)

Recently, I’ve found myself thinking more about the role of a political newsletter as AI models get better. I’m sure that all political analysts are keenly aware that acquiring and summarizing the news is one thing that LLMs are easily capable of. The question that must lurk perilously in the deepest recesses of all our minds, then, is whether writers of political analysis will become obsolete. I think, however, that there is still room for a newsletter that brings you ideas propagated by a human, and with prose that is human-written — in a way that goes beyond just an artistic appreciation for the handmade. At the very least, I hope that over the past year this newsletter has been able to take you on contextualized deep dives of Thai politics that go significantly beyond what AI summaries can provide.

With some luck, this year will be a reversion to the mean in terms of the level of political activity in Thailand, which while potentially less exciting does give us space to analyze issues more deeply. The Coffee Parliament remains completely free to read for now, and if you’ve enjoyed my writing over the past year, I do hope that you’ll recommend this newsletter to the Thai politics enthusiasts in your circle.

Thank you once again, and please let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions for this newsletter as it enters its second year.

Best wishes,

Ken

March 2nd, 2026

1. And so I hope you’ll understand if The Coffee Parliament takes things s a little slowly for the next few weeks to recover from half a year of non-stop political pandemonium.