Thailand is a highly centralized unitary state. Provincial governors are appointed by Bangkok’s Ministry of the Interior and local administrations rely heavily on central government transfers. This centralization reflects not only elite interests but also a political culture shaped by the kingdom’s transformation from a loosely integrated multi-ethnic empire into a centralized nation-state, first under European imperial pressure and later during the Cold War. As David M. Malitz shows in “A Kingdom ‘One and Indivisible'”, debates about political decentralization date back to the early twentieth century and resurfaced particularly during the period of democratization in the 1990s as well as after the 2014 military coup. Japan has repeatedly been referenced in these debates and the Japan International Cooperation Agency provided capacity-building programs for local authorities in the 2000s to support decentralization efforts. His chapter is published in From Empire to Federation in Eurasia. Ideas and Practices of Diversity Management (Routledge 2026).