THAILAND LOCAL GOVERNMENT STRUCTURAL REFORM: A BUMPY ROAD AHEAD

by Peerasit Kamnuansilpa

Introduction

Many Thai historians of local government regarded the establishment and designation of the first Sanitary Area in the capital city of Bangkok, by King Rama V in 1897, as a local governing body; and that was also considered being the onset of local government in Thailand. However, since the head and the committee members of the Sanitary Area were appointed without any participation from people in the area, many scholars did not recognize the Sanitary Area as a bona fide form of local government. In 1933, King Rama VII expressed the view that people in local areas required local administration in order to learn more about and develop the principle of democracy. That initiated local administration in Thailand. This royal vision was the starting point for the local administrative movements in the country (Chayabutr, 1996).

 

Introduction

Many Thai historians of local government regarded the establishment and designation of the first Sanitary Area in the capital city of Bangkok, by King Rama V in 1897, as a local governing body; and that was also considered being the onset of local government in Thailand. However, since the head and the committee members of the Sanitary Area were appointed without any participation from people in the area, many scholars did not recognize the Sanitary Area as a bona fide form of local government. In 1933, King Rama VII expressed the view that people in local areas required local administration in order to learn more about and develop the principle of democracy. That initiated local administration in Thailand. This royal vision was the starting point for the local administrative movements in the country (Chayabutr, 1996).

            Because of that royal vision, Thailand began its first local government structural adjustment. The juristic entity of local government in the form of Municipality was enacted in 1933. At first, in 1935, it began by changing the status of all 35 Sanitary Areas throughout the country, which was formed before since the reign of King Rama 5, into Municipality. Already, even as early as that time, the municipalities were classified into three types as Tambon Municipality, Town Municipality and City Municipality, depending on the size of population and revenues. The Municipality, regardless of size, at that time came into existence because of the royal wish of King Rama VII, who granted the governing and sovereign power to the people of Thailand. He stated unequivocally that he wanted to wield his power to the people of Siam (the name of the country at that time), not to a group or person. The wishes of King Rama VII became a reality, but it was only short lived. What we saw at that time was that while the centralized power of the Monarchy gradually shifted down to the people, a distinctive administrative power structure (which also formed a ruling class) was built around the Monarchy and usurped or snatched that power bestowed to people. In the process, the strong modern Thai Bureaucracy was born (Wyatt 2003, Riggs 1996).

The Ministry of Interior (MOI) has been one of the most powerful bureaucracies in Thailand. In fact, it is second only to the military, which overtly or covertly ruled the country for the most of time after the revolution of 1932. The result of the revolution changed the country’s political power and administrative structure from absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy.  In 1952, the MOI was able to exercise its strong power through the ministerial announcement that enabled it to classify some geographical areas that were of interest to the bureaucrats in the ministry as the Sanitary Areas. This was the reincarnation of the previously defunct Sanitary Areas. The only difference was that this time it was born with a much stronger ruling power from the legal legitimacy of being a juristic person. The district office chief was delegated full power to head the Sanitary Area. This appointment facilitated the management arm of the provincial governor. Both officers were appointed by the central government in Bangkok. The MOI used this form of Sanitation Area as a public relations gimmick, if not official propaganda device, to miss-lead the people to believe that this was truly self-governing. This was a Machiavellian gesture that caused people believe that local administration power was in the hands of the people. The gesture succeeded in part because people could see that their village headmen and Kamnan (chief of village headmen) were from their own neighborhood. These officers were appointed to serve as committee members for the Sanitation Area.

The governing power of the MOI that penetrated and pervaded through the Sanitary Areas, and, to a lesser extent, through municipalities throughout the country was not unified and was difficult to consolidate. As such, there was a need on the part of the MOI to create an administrative arm, the likes of which would allow the MOI indirect control over all so-called local governing units in the country. Legally speaking, it was not expedient to devise a direct control mechanism since it would appear to be contravening the royal wish of King Rama VII, who wanted to see that the power granted by him went down to the people.

Ingeniously, the MOI was able to disguise itself not only as an advocate but also a creator of a new impressive structure of so-called local government. In 1955, the MOI’s proposal was submitted to the cabinet to facilitate enactment of the Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO). The PAO Act won the strong support of the Parliament. The PAO was placed under the supervision of the provincial governor, who served as the representative of the MOI. The PAO was authorized to oversee all provincial affairs, an act which simulated the same responsibility which was assigned to the provincial governor. As power and responsibility are two sides of the same coin in public administration terms, this allowed the PAO to supersede the power of both Sanitary Areas and Municipalities in the province. Up until 1997, the provincial governor was by law the chief executive of the PAO. The amendment of the PAO Act in 1997 allowed the provincial councilors to elect one of the provincial councilors to be the chief executive. This means that, in theory, the provincial governor could no longer wear two hats, not both as a representative of central government and as the chief executive of a local government. In practice, however, the administrative power of the provincial governor today still supersedes that of the head of any type of local government.

In 1994, the Thai Parliament approved legislation to create the Tambon Administrative Organization (TAO), as another type and at the lowest tier of local government. The TAO was vested with the responsibility to address hardship issues and promote the well-being of the local population. By creating the TAO, the PAO was left with fewer responsibilities and less authority. To allow the PAO to manifest its same functional power, a new law was passed in 1997, which specified the revised role and jurisdiction of the PAO (Nakhonsithammraja PAO, 2013).

With this historical backdrop, two special types of local government were also added to the total picture of local administration: Bangkok Metropolitan Area (BMA), which was enacted under the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration Act of 1972, and the City of Pattaya, which was established in 1978. Table 1 shows that currently there are 7,853 Local Administrative Organizations (LAO) in Thailand. Of this number, 76 are PAO; 2,266 are municipalities of different sizes, and the TAO comprise the largest number with 5,509.  With 5 types of local government of different sizes, all of which were born from the womb of a bureaucracy characterized by highly centralized power, a conundrum was created. It became difficult for us to see how these units functioned for the benefit of local people. It is even of greater interest to observe how people view either the municipality or the TAO in the area in which they live as they compare these arrangements and their outcomes with the PAO in the same province of either a municipality or a TAO.

Table 1: Total Number of Local Administrative Organizations Classified by Type

Type	Number
PAO	76
City Municipalities	29
Town Municipalities	167
Tambon Municipalities	2,070
Tambon Administrative Organization	5,509
Special Type (BMA and Pattaya)	2
Total of all types	7,853

Unraveling the Structural Functional Relationship of LAOs

One of ways for evaluating the structural functional relationships of LAOs in Thailand is to look at the relationships among the LAOs vis-à-vis the central government. The theoretical relationships between the structure and function of an organization are recursive and reciprocal. This means that for an organization to perform effectively its structure must be effectively designed and governed by a set of normative codes of conduct. An effective organization, in turn, dictates a pattern of behaviors that reify it to become a well-knitted and performance-driven structure, which provides responsive and accountable services to the public.

            In an attempt to understand the perception of people about the structural functional relationships of local government, we carried out a field survey in four provinces; each represents a major province from each of the four major regions of Thailand. The four provinces are: Chonburi from the Central, Chiangmai from the North, Khon Kaen from the Northeast and Songkla from the South. We did not go to Bangkok Metropolitan Area and Pattaya City. Therefore, this report will not be able to present the opinions and views of people about these two distinct types of local government.

            When we were out in the field, we conducted five focus group interview sessions in each province. Eight of the sessions were conducted at the TAO, and eight at the municipalities (City, Town, and Tambon). We did not conduct any focus group sessions at the PAO. This was because we reasoned that each and every member of the focus group sessions could represent and could evaluate the responsiveness and accountability of the PAO services vis-à-vis that of the LAO in the area in which they lived. In the selection of participants for the focus group, we selected local people who were not only knowledgeable about local administration but also were actively involved in local affairs. The sessions had between 9 and 14 participants, averaging about 10 per session. The session were held in the local government office and lasted 2-5 hours. Although two hours were the scheduled duration of the discussion, some participants came early and entered into the discussion before the formal beginning and, yet, some stayed after the formal closing to continue the discussion. Local administrative officers were in attendance, but only when needed for providing information and clarification upon request from the research team. Their views were neither solicited nor recorded. The fieldwork was done in the months of July and August of 2012.

            Each session began with an introduction, explaining the objective of the study and the rules of focus group interview discussion. There were discussions about effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness of local government. In the discussions, we also solicited the views of local people about the relationships between local and central government and the benefits of local government in the area of their residence. On the latter point, we asked the participants to compare a specific type of local government with those of the PAO in the same province. It was this information that we used to analyze the responsiveness and accountability of different types of local government.            

When we analyzed data from the transcription of the discussions from the focus group sessions, we could summarize them into two main findings: the structural functional relationships between local government and central government, and the relationships among different types of local government.

            For the first finding, people emphatically said that the central government, including the provincial governor, should have been more responsive and accountable to them. How could it be when they did not find it easy or realistic to have a chance to meet the central government officials or the provincial governor to express their needs and sometimes the plight they had faced? Although the relationship between the central government and local government in the eyes of ordinary people at the peripheral level is quite obscure, participants in the sessions were able to express their opinions that some kinds of structural adjustment must be made in order for the local government to be of maximum benefit for people at the local level.

Participants credited the progressive contributions of local government. For example, one participant said it clearly. “We remembered that in the past, the roads to and in our village were inaccessible during the rainy season. Only after we had the Tambon Administrative Organization, was the Chief Executive Officer, whom we elected, able to make them permanently passable; and he was able to look after us. We are now no longer cut off from the outside world like before.” The opinions of the participants from the sessions conducted in the City Municipalities and Town Municipalities were not as strong as those of their rural counterparts. Nevertheless, the urban citizens made themselves equally clear. They evaluated the contributions of local government on more abstract and qualitative matters than the participants from the rural areas. For example, they praised the municipalities for the roles of education development and contributions for improvement of learning facilities in schools under the jurisdiction of the municipalities.

            Overall, the participants in the discussion sessions voiced satisfaction with the health system. They generally reported good cooperation between the local government and the Ministry of Public Health. They also noted that all local governments recognized the importance of health for their communities. It is intriguing to see that all local governments provide support out of their local budgets to the centralized health system. All LAOs gave local funds from local revenues because they saw the importance of health and wished to have more and better services for the people for whom they were accountable. Most LAOs - at all levels - also augmented the centralized health service by creating their own relatively simple Basic Health Care Centers. They provided therapeutic massage, traditional herbal medicines and treatment for minor ailments. They wanted to bring services closer to the people, to help them avoid long trips to the larger hospitals. This seems to be the progressive evolution of local government. As the elected council arose and gained financial resources, they sought ways to provide better services to their communities. Helping with health always seems a high priority activity of local government.

            Turning to economic development, we found LAOs were quite inactive. They saw this as the task of the central government and not their concern. We believe this derives, however, from two deep cultural aspects of the administration, which strongly undermines the initiative of local government. One is the central government’s tendency to define quite specifically the tasks that are the responsibility of the LAOs. If the rulebook does not say you can do it, you cannot do it. The second is the common central government view that local governments are not capable of governing without strict oversight of the central government. Closely tied to this is the control of budget. Governors must approve the budget proposals of the Municipalities; and the district chief must approve the budgets of TAOs. This amounts to full control over spending by the central government. Without the ability to control the budget spending for whatever the leaders of local government feel they should spend, there is effectively, no local government. The central government delegates responsibilities to local government, but the responsibilities do not come with sufficient authority or resources to meet those responsibilities. The single most powerful expression of the problem we heard from the participants is: “The central government must be more serious about promoting decentralized management.”  By this, our participants were saying that the central government has devolved responsibility and placed it in the hands of locally elected councils, but has been reluctant to devolve authority and resources necessary for local governments to discharge their responsibility. In relation to these findings, the author notes that the Department of Local Administration determines what the locally elected councils can do. If an activity is not authorized, it cannot be performed. This arrangement hampers the functions of local government, and it clearly illustrates the unhealthy relationship between central and local governments.

            As for the second main finding, the analyses were based mainly on the participants’ perception of the relationships among different types of local government. All the discussions, on which our analyses are based, were lively and contained a host of opinions. After reading the field notes carefully, we found that the participants shared a similar view that not all types of local government were equally functional; and almost all the participants rated the local government in the area of their residence higher than the PAO of their province. One participant expressed it unequivocally: “When we encountered any problem that needs the attention or action from the government, we naturally went to TAO in our area. We never ever thought about going to visit the PAO. For us, we don’t really know what the chief executive officer of the PAO is for.” There was no mention of the district chief officer or the provincial governor. Both are appointed as representatives of the central government under the rubric of the Department of Provincial Administration and the Permanent Secretary of the MOI.

            Turning our attention to the comparative responsiveness and accountability of the local government in the same area as the residence of the participants against that of the PAO, we had a consistent finding. It was equally clear that the participants rated the PAO low on responsiveness and accountability. One person said: “The PAO has a lot money that they don’t know what to do with, because they do not have an area to administer. In order for them to be able to spend the money they have to work with other types of local government. The way it operates is that they think of some plans or projects so that they can spend the money that are normally requested by the provincial councilors.” Another person from a different session expressed his opinion about the same topic. He said: “Normally, it is the provincial councilors from different constituencies that work like a salesman. They came into contact with people, mostly they are vote canvassers, to determine what the needs of people are. The way it works is more like an exchange of vote counts with a reward, which does not necessarily suit the needs of the majority of people in the area.” Still, another person who used to be an elected council member, stated: “You almost always have to be in the same team or join with a provincial councilor to gain budget support from the PAO. There are instances when we need the budget support from the PAO to launch a large-scale project.” This clearly indicates that the PAOs are neither designed to be accountable to the public, nor to service the local populace. Judging from the views expressed by the people, the organization itself seems to be only accountable to those who voted for the provincial councilors and the chief executive officer of the PAO. With these findings, it is suggestive that Thailand can do away with the PAO. When we revisit this issue again in the next section, we can see that, at the most, this can only be academic and wishful thinking. 

When we directly address what the structure of the local government in Thailand should look like, abolishing the PAO was the most mentioned suggestion in the discussions. This reflects that the participants paid close attention to PAO. The reason why the PAO receives highest attention is, in part, because of its lofty status at the highest tier of local government. It has the largest amount of budget, both from the central government and its own revenues. The budgets of some PAOs are considerably larger than the budgets of a ministry in the central government. Therefore, we now see more of the national politicians have become local politicians. Quite a few Members of Parliament quit their position in order to run for the position of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of PAO; some were successful and some were not. In a few cases, the persons, who once were minister of a ministry decided to vie for the position of CEO of a PAO.

            Of equal interest were the discussions about upgrading TAO to Municipality. In many sessions, participants wanted to see all the TAOs in the country upgraded to the status of Tambon Municipality. The rationale behind their suggestion is that there are disparities in terms of budget allocation from the central government to local governments. TAOs receive less per capita support from the central government than the Municipalities. This put the larger proportion of the population who live in the rural areas at a disadvantage. Up to now many TAOs have submitted a request to the Department of Local Administration to upgrade their status to Tambon Municipality. The reviews so far have been on a case-by-case basis; and a number of TAOs have been upgraded.

Restructuring of Local Government Movements

The thematic analyses of the data from the focus group discussions indicate that we need to reform, if not overhaul, the current structure of local government. In summary, the previous section suggested that: 1) we abolish the PAOs, and 2) we upgrade all TAOs in the country to the status of Tambon Municipality. Taking from there, this section will analyze how realistic these two recommendations are.

            Abolishing the PAO. In early 2001, a number of academicians, including Police Captain Purachai Piumsomboon, then Minister of Interior, began to doubt the functional value of the PAO. Because of his political position, his critical evaluation of the function and efficiency of PAOs was interpreted and construed to be the public policy intent to abolish the PAO. The political air at that time was heating up. Some Members of Parliament, led by Mr. Premsak Piayura submitted an interpellation in Parliament to request the government to explain or clarify its stance on the issue. Police Captain Purachai Piumsomboon, in his capacity as the Minister of Interior, sensed the opposition mood and the rising political temperature in the Parliament; and he announced that the government did not have a policy to abolish the PAO. His reply to the interpellation was published in the Royal Gazette on May 10, 2001. From this development, we can clearly see that the idea of abolishing the PAO was floated as early as more than a decade ago.

            This same question of the functionality of PAOs emerged again. On June 2, 2013, Mr. Preecha Rengsombunsuk, who was then the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, met a group of media representatives for a press release. He announced that his political party was contemplating amending a law to abolish the PAO. He reasoned that Thailand already had other types of local administrative organizations to look after people at the local level. In his own view, all Municipalities are in charge of and responsible for people in the urban areas; whereas the TAOs are for people in the rural areas. His words, as reported in the (Thai Post, June 2, 2013) newspapers, were: “All PAOs do not have a real area of jurisdiction of their own. At the best interpretation, the areas that the PAOs have served are overlapping with other types of local government, at the lower tiers.” He even went to visit the issue of the effective use of national budgets for PAOs. In this opinion, the budgets that would have to be appropriated to the PAOs could have been used more effectively and more widely to reach more local people; if they were to be allocated directly to the Municipalities and the TAOs. He, therefore, felt that Thailand’s local government could function more cost-effectively without the PAOs.

            Immediately, only one or two days after the release of his interview statements, Mr. Preeha Rengsombunsuk received a lot of criticisms from his colleagues within his own political party. There were also many unkind words from the opposition parties in the Parliament and the CEOs of PAOs around the country. We will give an example of some harsh words, to provide a flavor of the logic of those who are against the idea of abolishing the PAOs.

            On June 3, 2013, a deputy CEO of the Samutprakarn PAO blasted and dubbed Mr. Preecha Rengsombunsuk as a person who rowed a boat backward (meaning that the idea of abolishing the PAO was either regressive or backward). The person who criticized him even accused him of trying to seize the power from the local administrative organizations, and put it altogether in the hands of the Ministry of Interior. That same person also believed that, by abolishing PAOs in the country, the provincial governor would regain absolute governing power in the province.  He also presented a scenario that ultimately the governing (or administrative) power of PAOs in the country could all go to the Minister of Interior.

Mr. Preecha Rengsombunsuk was also accused of being a political dictator. His critics imagined that after all the PAOs were abolished the massive budgets that otherwise would be allocated to all PAOs in the country would go to the central government; the government then would be in an advantageous position of being able to disburse the budgets to buy (influence among) the vote canvassers to help the candidates from the same political party with the government at the next general election. (Samutpakarn PAO, 2013).

On the same day (June 3, 2013) that the heavy criticisms of Mr. Preecha Rengsombunsuk came out, Mr. Jarupong Ruangsuwn, Minister of Interior and leader of Pheu Thai Party, responded swiftly. He said that his political party never discussed this issue. Those statements about abolishing the PAOs were the opinion of Mr. Preecha Rengsombunsuk. As far as he is concerned, the Ministry of Interior never had such a policy. Because of his high profile position as the second most powerful figure in his party, after Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, he was able to extinguish the fire of political criticisms from all directions, which of course, included those from the largest opposition party.

What we have learned so far is that all the past movements and attempts to abolish the PAOs are abortive. Why is that? The answer, as we have already seen, is that sharing or having a common interest can unite people of different political stances. We have seen the Members of Parliament from the government and opposition parties, the bureaucrats within the Ministry of Interior including the minister himself, the chief executive officer of PAOs throughout the country, and the provincial councilors from just about every province unite to strongly oppose the floating of the idea of abolishing the PAOs. It seems like the interests of the lower and powerless people cannot be aligned with the people at the upper political echelons of the country. Abolishing the PAOs is only an idea, floated by the politicians in a more progressive wing, and perhaps wishful thinking of the powerless in the country. It can never materialize, at least in the foreseeable future.

Another question that deserves attention is what are the hidden motives of those who want to see the PAOs remain permanently intact? The answer to this question is not easily determined. The individual who can answer this question has to be the one who is not only familiar with, but also enmeshed in the system of pork barrel politics which involves both the national and local power structures. Needless to say, the author of this article is not part of the system. The information, which generates the answer to the question at hand, comes from two sources: First, ownership of social capital, e.g., the existence of long-term personal relationships with both national and local politicians (the likes of which allow a lifetime of indirect conversation on various topics) and; second from various sources such as news media and televised parliamentarian debates which vets the budget bills.

Usually, the term pork barrel politics refers to an appropriation or approval of the national budget for or spending of the government to benefit constituents of a politician (or political party) in return for their political support, either in the form of campaign contributions or votes (“Pork Barrel,” 2013). In this paper, I extend the concept a little broader. I include the opportunity for personal monetary gain for the politicians and bureaucrats, where both parties have to support and rely on each other in order to make the system work.

In order to understand how the system works, we first must know that each PAO in the country has a large amount of budget. A number of PAOs have annual budgets of larger than one billion baht. A few have annual budgets of close to two billion baht. Operating under the pork barrel political milieu, PAOs function as a conduit of money where the government budget can be directly and indirectly funneled to different interest groups.

It is almost well known among those who have to do business with PAOs that one way to get a business contract with the PAOs is to “shake the money trees.” Where are the money trees? To answer this question we must first know the budget sources for and of all LAOs. In all types of local government in Thailand, the budgets come from four sources: revenues collected by the local government itself, centrally-collected local revenue, national budgets appropriation, and the two types of grants in aids from the central government. Of all four sources of the budget for PAOs (and for any type of local government), there are two grant categories namely, general grants and specific grants. It is these two types of grants that are almost always allocated by the recommendations of the group of powerful figures who can justifiably associated with powerful cogs of the pork barrel political system. To understand this complicated system, we must realize that the Ministry of Interior (or any minister in Thailand) needs a sizeable number of the Members of Parliament from the same party on which to depend. Simultaneously, both the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Interior and the Director-General of the Department of Local Administration have to be accountable to the Minister of Interior, who can issue both policy mandates and sometimes undocumented words of advice to them. It is these two persons that formally make the budget requests, on behalf of all the local governments in the country, to the National Bureau of the Budget, which will forward the requests to the House Committee on Budget for scrutinizing before submitting the budget request to the Parliament for debate and before passing them into the Budget Bill.

            For more understanding of the pork barrel budget, one must understand that there is a normative covert practice of requesting and setting aside pork barrel budgets by the powerful figures in the political circles. It is documented in Isaan Bizweek Newspaper (2013) that each Member of Parliament from the Party List receives a pork barrel budget of 10 million baht, whereas each and every Member of Parliament from a Constituency receives double the amount at 20 million baht. Each Minister will have an estimated budget allocated under his/her personal pet project at the amount of approximately 100 million baht or more.

            The practice of pork barrel budget allocation has been pervasive at all government levels in the country. It was reported also in Isaan Bizweek Newspapers (2013) that in the Khon Kaen PAO, the same covert practice of allocating pork barrel budget has been the norm. There are 42 provincial councilors in the province, and each receives a set aside annual budget of 7 million baht. Each deputy chief executive officer of the Khon Kaen PAO receives 10 million baht each. The advisors of the chief executive officer and the secretary of the chief executive officer each receive 5 million baht. The discretionary power of the chief executive officer is unlimited as long as that officer controls the majority of seats in the council. Such control allows him to have the budget ordinance passed by the provincial council. Thus, it is (or should be) intuitively clear that the PAOs in the country are here to stay. Those who oppose them are the ultimate casualties.

Upgrading TAOs to the Status of Municipality.

The initiative of upgrading all TAOs throughout the country to the status of municipality stems largely from academic as well as humanitarian considerations. Led by the House Committee on Local Administration, in which the membership consists of “plebeians” are more aware of and sensitive to the issues associated with structures or types of local government. First, we see that the process of decentralization, which according to Kamnuansilpa et al (2013) has been moving at a snail’s pace, focuses more on the horizontal aspect, referring to the spatial disaggregation of local government units, with all local government types performing or delivering the same types of services to citizens. This is a stark difference from vertical decentralization, where a hierarchy of local government serves different functions. There are, therefore, two valid questions to ask: First, why do we have to differentiate our local governments into so many types, when they are providing the same kind of services? Second, why do we have to create budget inequality among the people who live in different jurisdictions of local governments? The TAO receives a much smaller per capita budget (150 baht) appropriation than the Municipalities (600 baht). It is overt discrimination against the populace of the rural areas if we do not create a system of just and fair budget appropriation for all local governments in the country.

Legally speaking, there is room to resolve this problem. Section 42 of the TAO Act passed in 1994, and later amended in 2003, allows a TAO to submit a request to upgrade its status to a Municipality. Upon the evaluation and approval of the Ministry of Interior, the TAO can be upgraded to a status of Municipality, as stipulated by Section 7 in the Municipality Act of 1953, and later amended also in 2003. This looks simple in writing, but too complicated in practice because it involves some jogging and heavy lobbying from the part of the applicants (TAOs). Therefore, not terribly many TAOs were upgraded to a status of Tambon Municipality during the last ten years.

Embedded by the overarching rationale of improving efficiency, economy of scale and equitable of services delivered to the people, on June 7, 2012, Mr. Chuchat Hansawat, former Deputy Minister of Interior, who was in charge of overseeing local administration, sent a memo to the Director-General of the Department of Local Administration, and asked the Department to draft a law to upgrade all 5,667 TAOs (the number at that time) to the status of Tambon Municipality. He also requested that a public hearing about this issue be held in all four main regions of the country. The results from the public hearing were that there was an overwhelming support from the chief executive officer of the TAOs, but only a lukewarm support from the clerks of all TAOs who were worrying about whether they would still be or automatically appointed as the clerk of the Municipality.

            The upgrading of TAOs produces a zero-sum equation, meaning that there will be winners and losers in this game. The next question to ask is whom the winner is and who stands at the losing end. Just like in the case of the PAO structure, presumably the beneficiaries are people at the low level. The persons who stand to lose the benefits, if there is a reform of local government structure, are those power players. In this case, there is a tug of war between the provincial administration system and the local administration system. According to the provincial administration system, the provincial governor is authorized to oversee practically all public affairs issues within the province. His power flows downward through the district chief officers, Kamnan and village headmen. The Kamnan who is the head of all village headmen in the Tambon and all the village headmen from all villages in the Tambon are concerned about the prospects for their longevity. Their position and salary are targets of demise. When the TAOs are upgraded to the status of Municipality, their position(s) could be abolished. All of them, therefore, lend their support for the letter sent to the Ministry of Interior expressing sentiments against the movement to upgrade all TAOs to the status of Tambon Municipalities. (Khawsod, 2013). From this movement in structural reform of local government, we can see again that the power of bureaucracy will always win over the so-called sovereign power of people. Observing the potential for this event, I saw another unique example of a politician who worked for the interest of the populace, but lost the game of power play. Mr. Chuchat Hansawat was removed from his position in the cabinet reshuffle. Just like Mr. Preecha Rengsumbunsuk, he may have the political will to reform the local government structure; but he does not possess enough political leadership to reform the structure of local governments in Thailand.

Discussion and Implication for Local Economic Development

When we talk about the structure of local government, we also have in our mind a pattern of central and local government relations in the context of decentralized management. Here, we see in this study a case of the two-pronged problem. One side of the problem is that the provincial administration system and the local administration system that came later only after the 1932 revolution do not seem to share the common functional goal of attending to the needs of common, powerless people. In functionalist terms, neither system was created to protect the benefits of the society as a whole. We have learned in this study that because of political power the national politicians can co-opt the bureaucrats to request the pork barrel budgets for them to scrutinize or practically to approve with minor cosmetic change after the house debates. Another problem we reveal in this study is that because of the same power, the national politician can provide a reward to the bureaucrats, through promotion that always comes in part and parcel with an increasing ability to earn more cash at some later point in time, the latter are obligated to protect the interest of the former. In this context, we see a case where the Department of Local Administration finalizes the budget requests of all local governments before submitting to the national politicians. Once the Budget Bill has been passed by the Parliament, the ball is in the turf of the provincial administration system. Here, now the provincial governor can directly or indirectly exercise power over or insert influence on local governments, which are willingly or unwillingly to relinquish their autonomy of budgeting and spending, for an exchange of some interest in the pork barrel budgeting system. In the final analysis, the responsiveness to and accountability to people of the local governments are to be compromised.

            With this backdrop, restructuring of local government remains to be purely academic; the idea does not fit well with the current socio-cultural and political system of Thailand. This also implies that promoting decentralized management and granting more autonomy to local governments seem to be more normative conceptual scheme than anything but reality. The implication here is that when we think about structural reform we should also be thinking of cultural and political reform if not revolution, which is almost impossible to carry out under the self-serving political system like the situation we are describing.

            I have mentioned earlier that local governments in Thailand pay virtually no attention to promoting economic development. Local government administrators consider this as not their responsibility. They do not see the connection between the poverty reduction and economic development. They tend to see the relationship between a welfare scheme and poverty reduction. I have argued that we look at structural reform as changing the pattern of interaction and relations between the central government and local government. We also know that a normative pattern of interaction reifies itself into a culture. I propose that, for any organization to achieve its goal, it must be endowed with a culture of practice. Here in this case, we see an organizational culture that is harmoniously protecting the interest of the elite members, not the interests of the plebeians. Moreover, current practices can hardly rationalize that local government is performing for all the people. A casualty of the current operating style is economic development activity. At the local level economic development has escaped the attention of local administrators because the pattern of interaction of and the central and local relations are not conducive to promoting economic gains of the populace. It is the gains of the elite organization members that are of more importance than the gains of the poor and the powerless. The latter group has no champion. They have no one to raise their issues when pork barrel deliberations are underway.

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