BANGKOK — Thai politics was consumed by hard political bargaining Wednesday, a day after Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej was convicted in court and removed from office after receiving money for televised cooking demonstrations.

His party immediately said it would nominate him to succeed himself in office when a new prime minister is chosen Friday. But that support has been weakening and other contenders have emerged from both within and outside the ruling six-party coalition.

Whatever the outcome, there was no sign that a damaging anti-government protest that has spread to students and labor unions was ending.

More than an attack on the sitting government, the protests grow out of deep political and social divides that have hardened over the past three years and threaten the stability of Thailand.

The protesters who are now camped in the mud at Government House represent the latest turn in a long-running struggle between democratic ideals and a traditional, hierarchical society that feels disenfranchised by democratic change.

This time, whatever the outcome of the confrontation, analysts say democracy is likely to suffer.

Mr. Samak’s government was elected last December and asserts that democracy is on its side. But it is an extension of the authoritarian model of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who worked to weaken democratic checks and balances during his five-year tenure.

Mr. Thaksin was ousted in a coup in September 2006 and is now in London, where he is seeking political asylum to evade corruption cases here that he says are politically motivated. His personality and his money still dominate Thai politics, even from exile, and much of the anger of the protesters is directed at him.

The protesters call themselves the People’s Alliance for Democracy, or P.A.D. But in fact they are raising a cry that goes back more than a century that Thailand is not “ready for democracy.” They want to replace the country’s elected Parliament with a mostly appointed body in which power would run top-down, as it does in traditional Thai society.

“The P.A.D. is a variation of the deep-rooted hierarchical society,” said Thongchai Winichakul, a professor of Southeast Asian history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “In a nutshell it’s a kind of distrust of the people.”

He added: “You can find this idea beginning in the late 19th century, when King Chulalongkorn said Thai people do not want democracy, that Thai people trust the king.

“Throughout all the years that kind of idea remained,” Mr. Thongchai said. “‘People are not ready.’”

The protests began in late 2005 as anti-Thaksin demonstrations that paved the way for the coup that ousted him two years ago. They resumed in May after the current pro-Thaksin government took office, and escalated on Aug. 26 with a takeover of the grounds of the prime minister’s office.

They have been largely non-violent and the military has pledged not to use force to disperse them, even after Mr. Samak declared a state of emergency early last week.

In an editorial Wednesday, Matichon, one of Thailand’s leading dailies, warned that returning Mr. Samak to office could touch off a new wave of anger. “Reappointing Samak will only widen the rift in society and risk leading the country into chaos and a bloodbath,” it said.

The protesters are a mix of royalist elites, generals and businessmen with some liberal democrats, students and trade unionists, some of whom are united only by their opposition to the pro-Thaksin government.

At its core, the People’s Alliance would move Thailand away from the basic democratic principle of one man, one vote, said Prajak Kongkeerati, a leading political scientist at Thammasat University.

“Many Thai elite don’t believe in that,” he said. “We are really a hierarchical society.”

The People’s Alliance would return the country to a 20-year-old model of “semi-democracy” in which the bureaucracy and the military have a role in politics and businessmen share a voice with elected representatives, Mr. Prajak said.

This political structure has deepened the divide in Thailand between those who have and those who do not, he said.

“We can say that every government has a policy platform that has an urban bias,” Mr. Prajak said. “So when elections come, they court the support of the rural vote. But when they are in power they formulate policy that favors the urban and industrial sector.”

As Thailand has surged forward economically over the past two decades, many of the fruits of growth and globalization have not reached beyond Bangkok, perpetuating the disparity.

Mr. Thaksin placed the poor at the center of his electoral strategy with populist policies like low-cost health care and debt forgiveness. The under-represented poor found their voice in voting for him, creating an overwhelming electoral majority that threatened the primacy of the Bangkok-based establishment.

This is one reason the anti-government forces are finding that democracy no longer works for them and are seeking other routes to power.

Their movement amounts to “a retreat from the trajectory of change of the past 15 years,” said Chris Baker, a British historian and author of books on Thailand.

Almost absent from today’s debate, he said, is a strong liberal tradition that has been the driving force for democratic change for the past century. The difference now is that this protest movement does not seek to improve the democratic system but to replace it.

“We used to chant the mantra of elections all the time,” said Sondhi Limthongkul, a publisher who is one of the leaders of the protests.

“Now elections in Thailand lead to a very shabby democracy.”

Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932 but democracy has ridden a roller coaster of 18 coups and 18 constitutions.

Elected governments were mostly unstable coalitions of feuding parties, and until Mr. Thaksin’s five-year tenure, none had been elected to a second term.

As the current confrontation continues, a central question is whether the military will stage another coup with a claim that it is restoring order, despite a promise by the army chief, Gen. Anupong Paochinda, that this would not happen.

If the situation becomes critical, many Thais hope King Bhumibol Adulyadej will intervene as he has several times over the years to defuse confrontations. The king stands above the fray of politics, but he is deeply revered and his word is the authority of last resort in a country that has still not found its political footing.

His personality is the unifying force of Thai society and the core of Thai identity. No successor will be able to command the devotion and moral influence that he has built up over 62 years on the throne.

The king is 80 years old and in poor health, and one issue that hovers over Thai politics is what will happen once he is gone.