Reference
Political Reform and Civil Society at the Local Level :
the Potential and Limits of Thailand's Local Government Reform, presented
at the 7th International Conference on Thai Studies, Amsterdam 4-8 July,
1999
Authors :
Daniel Arghiros
Summary :
This paper examines recent attempts to deepen and
invigorate democracy throught the empowerment of elected councils at the
subdistrict and provincial levels. Subdistrict Administration
Organisations (SAOs) were established in the second half of the decade to
promote greater participation in local development efforts and to
facilitate more efficient service delivery. However, the record of this
experiment with democratic decentralisation to date is somewhat patchy.
There are indications that an overweening bureaucracy is using SAOs to
increase rather than reduce state control over the development activities
of local communities. There are also signs that SAO membership is turning
into the preserve of local economic elites who stand to gain access to
development grants from membership.
At the provincial level new laws have given Provincial
Administrative Organisations (PAOs) a modest increase in autonomy. But
these bodies remain largely ineffective due to structural weaknesses vis-เ-vis
line departments. Additionally, they are overwhelmingly dominated the
provincial economic elites. The devolution of control to SAO and PAO
council members has certainly deepened and invigorated 'democracy' in the
Thai context, but not in the way governance specialists might wish. In
effect elections at these levels have provided opportunities for the
replication of the illegal and 'corrupt' practices that have characterised
participation in national elections, and which the new Constitution is
designed to eradicate.
This paper puts these findings in the broader context of
similar reforms carried out elsewhere in Asia. This comparative
perspective reveals that the imperfect outcomes mentioned above are not by
any means unique. They tend to characterise 'new democracies' that have a
heritage of autocratic bureaucratic rule and a rather vibrant but poorly
regulated private sector.
Keywords :
Political reform, decentralization.
Contacts :
Daniel Arghiros
Centre for South-East Asian Studies
University of Hull
Hull, UK, HU6 7 RX
Email : D.arghiros@pol-as.hull.ac.uk
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