Beyond political patronage institutional persistence of military business networks in an emerging market

Information from the abstract

Inroduction This study examines the presence and persistence of security-affiliated directors individuals with prior service in the Royal Thai Armed Forces or Royal Thai Police on corporate boards of firms listed on Thailand’s capital market. Grounded in institutional theory and path dependence, the study tests whether such appointments reflect political patronage or institutionally embedded network structures, offering the first population-level empirical test of this question in an emerging-market democracy. Methods A cross-sectional analysis of all 924 listed firms on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) and the Market for Alternative Investment (mai) in 2026 was conducted, together with a panel analysis of 255 firms observed in 2021 and 2026. Results Security-affiliated directors are systematically present across the market, with 19.5% of listed firms maintaining at least one such director. Their presence is significantly concentrated in resource-intensive and state-regulated sectors, is distributed evenly across large and small firms, and, most importantly, shows no statistically significant net change following Thailand’s transition from a military-influenced to a civilian government. Discussion This pattern is consistent with an institutional rather than a patronage-based account of military business relations: security-affiliated board networks in Thailand appear structurally embedded and stable across political cycles rather than contingent on political protection. The study’s novelty lies in combining a full-market census with a repeated-measures test of institutional persistence across a major political transition, a design not previously applied to military business networks in Southeast Asia. These findings carry implications for corporate governance reform in emerging-market democracies.

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Related topics: Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Elite Sociology and Global Capitalism · State Capitalism and Financial Governance