Fifteen Years of Thai Decentralization : Past Performance and Future Prospects

Abstract

     Thailand has decentralized its administration since the promulgation of the constitutions of 1997 and 2007. Major foundations for local administration were institutionalized in those constitutions and the  Decentralization Plan and Process Act of 1999. This paper asks how much progress in devolution has been made in accordance with the laws by analyzing data from several sources including citizen surveys. Overall,
it can be concluded Thai-style decentralization is moderately successful. Several champions for decentralization have evidently emerged. Nonetheless, what was not so successful concerns the continued devolution of service responsibilities and human and fiscal resources to local authorities. There were also some flaws in the design of decentralization action plan that was geared toward the subsidiarity principle and the symmetric devolution. Policy guidelines for future decentralization should incorporate the state’s will for decentralization, the adoption of asymmetric devolution, the hard policy implementation, and the reform of administrative mechanisms for effective decentralization.