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Welcome! It’s exciting to be starting my writing on a new platform. If you’ve followed me from X or Bluesky — thank you. If you’re new: my name is Mathis Lohatepanont (Ken) and I am a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Michigan, along with an analyst of Thai politics.

I’ve resisted moving to Substack for a long time, but given the increasing instability in the WordPress-sphere and a desire for a digital home, I’ve decided that it’s better late than never.

What this Substack is about

A venerable tradition of societies everywhere is to gather around in a café and talk about the politics of the day — for keeping up to date, for debate, and for intellectual fulfillment. So beloved is this activity in Thailand that Thais have coined a special word for it: the sapha kafae — “coffee parliaments.”

And so it is in this spirit that The Coffee Parliament is written. Thailand lies at the heart of mainland Southeast Asia: a kingdom constantly plunged into political turmoil as power alternates between the ballot and the barracks, an upper middle-income country seemingly eternally on the verge of making the leap to developed country status, a bamboo shifting in the wind navigating the great powers. This newsletter is intended to help you make sense of this puzzling country.

I also plan to write about my other interests in the Asia-Pacific as well — coffee parliaments, after all, have no reason to be limited to just one country!

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Thank you so much for being here. See you around!