Sufficiency Economy as an Economic Governance Theory: A Theoretical Examination and Conceptualization

Abstract

          Sufficiency Economy had been firstly thought of as a royal caveat when the Thai economy hurtled into the storm of market capitalism a few decades ago. It has just recently been more realized as an economic development philosophy with potential to serve as the means and goal for individuals, organizations, communities and countries in their pursuits of optimal real benefits. Its sufficiency ingredient may draw eyebrows from mainstream economists. The scrutiny into its core concept actually reveals an existence of restraining principle to prevent an economic actor from succumbing to short-termism, and to ensure their optimal and sustaining economic activities. In this regard, the Sufficiency Economy owns the critical property resembling the economic governance concept, and thus deserves a serious investigation from this point of view and the curiosity becomes the objective of this article. Trimiti governance theory, which has been successfully used for assessing governance systems, is employed in conjunction with transaction cost economics and transaction cost economics and agency theory to assess the relevance of the Sufficiency Economy as an economic governance theory. In this paper I attempt to show that Sufficiency Economy is more compatible with Trimiti governance theory than it is with mainstream economics, transaction cost economics or the agency theory, and deserves further study in the economic governance aspect.