As a result of their historical experience, westerners think that power can be subdivided. For example, for many centuries in Europe, power was divided between rulers of the world and rulers of religion. There was always dispute over the boundary between worldly power and spiritual power, sometimes to the point of open enmity between king and pope. Thus in modern times, when westerners think about opposing power, they arrange for several independent powers to oppose one another.
But the Thai think that power is indivisible. Even worldly power and spiritual power are the same, because whoever is king holds the supreme power according to the strength of his own past deeds (kamma). When his merit is exhausted, spiritual power makes him quit the post of his own accord by some means or other. In the thinking of the Thai, worldly power and spiritual power are not two kinds of power but only one.
Moreover, although spiritual power is the greatest power, spiritual power cannot take concrete form as either an organization or individual because, if an individual or organization has supreme spiritual power (or in other words, the highest barami), then worldly power will also fall to that individual or organization automatically. Hence however much proficiency a monk has, he will always have less power than the king, because a monk has accumulated less barami than a king. If any monk were to have more, he could not remain a monk. In some way or another, he would become king eventually. The fact that a king is a king is proof that he has the supreme spiritual power, and hence has the supreme worldly power as well.
Even though the Thai think power is indivisible, yet this supreme indivisible power still has two constraints which are obstacles to the use of power for government. The Thai have always used these two constraints as shelter to escape from the supreme power of the rulers.
The first constraint is local leaders. There are many reasons why Thai rulers cannot completely repress local leaders. In olden times, the lack of a standing army, lack of communications, lack of a bureaucracy with a unified command, lack of public education controlled by the state, and so on, impeded the royal power in practice where local leaders were strong. However, the lack of the things mentioned above is only a secondary reason.
The real main reason is this. While in theory power is supreme and indivisible, in practice the king maintains power by dividing up the machinery of the state into little pieces which are fairly independent of one another, so that they cannot easily challenge the royal power. Thus although Thailand has had a bureaucracy for many centuries, the Thai bureaucracy is divided into little pieces which cannot coordinate for any purpose at all. Each piece seeks benefit from the duties entrusted to it by the king. In the past these pieces competed to control manpower. At present they compete to make laws which give themselves power to authorize this and that in order to demand a bribe.
The Thai bureaucracy from past to present has no ability to work in concert to truly increase the well-being of the people. But at the same time, it has no power to oppress the people systematically. Hence if Hitler or Stalin are taken as the standard for dictators, Thai dictators of every era are only clowns.