Institutional Analysis of Decentralization and Options of Stakeholders for Participation in Agro-rural Policy Design
Final Report Abstract
Decentralization and participation ought to gain momentum when promoted simultaneously. Both are connected through an institutional environment. While there is a considerable body of literature on (1) decentralization, (2) participation and (3) institutions, studies that embrace these three fields simultaneously are scarce. We chose Thailand as a case country because decentralization has been on the political agenda for over two decades. Our research units are the Tambon Administration Organizations (TAOs) created during the decentralization process of the 1990s and the respective village communities. We choose four TAOs as a case study.The process of creating the community and Tambon development plans depicts the respective research settings. Our research area lies in Northeast Thailand. The research design entails literature analysis, qualitative studies and two surveys. We use the up- and downward accountability framework based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions for investigation of the decentralization process at the local administration and its effect on participation. Since the early 1990s, Thailand has been in a phase of alternate decentralization and recentralization. However, the last decade has seen more centralization and the lowering of downward accountability. On the one hand, one can interpret the centralization within the last decade as efforts of the elite-led bureaucracy to shield and entrench their vested interests. On the other hand, these centralization measures could be seen as creating more upward accountability in the local governance system, which was too strongly accountable downwards and, thus, too vulnerable to local elite capture. The upward accountability created here may not promote the appropriate checks and balances but collusion between the centre and local level. Obviously, the Thai decentralization process has flaws. But the process has tremendously increased spaces for participation. We can confirm that people feel more involved in local development and feel that authority can be influenced. Our main assumption driving the project has been that even if the decentralization process had been laid out perfectly in its design, there might still be endogenous cultural factors rooted in the Thai society that hinder people to participate. Thus, we followed a comprehensive approach studying endogenous and exogenous factors of participation in parallel. The rules introduced through decentralization and prevailing in the local development planning procedures are classified according to the rules-typology of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework by Ostrom. From a theoretical perspective it turned out that the IAD framework, which has been applied widely regarding natural resource management, can likewise be applied fruitfully to public administration. Based on our empirical material, we can confirm that formal and informal rules of the public administrative process do have an impact on the actually achieved level of participation. We defined two action situations: the first phase of “Surveying villagers’ needs” with the community development plan as an output. The second action situation “Compiling villagers’ needs” into the Tambon development plan is done within the respective TAO, and finally builds together with the budget the guideline for implementing those projects. The detailed studying of rules in the first and second action situation has shown that there are significant differences between more and less participatory TAOs. For instance, in the more participatory TAOs, the aggregation rules are perceived as more transparent. The actual boundary and authority rules enable a larger range of opinions and a higher number of participants in the TAO committee meetings, thus restraining personalized decision making. In contrast to the prevailing endogenous institutions (collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and power distance) that make it difficult to create an environment of transparent and open discussions, the setup of the community development meetings is still strongly based on idealized concepts of participation. In sum, aiming at enhancing participation, compared to other factors such as socio-cultural setting, or communication habits of the Thais, the rules are the ones offering scope for intervention.
Publications
- 2011. The political economy of decentralization in Thailand - Does decentralization allow for rural peasant participation? EAAE 2011 Congress "Change and Uncertainty Challenges for Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources", Zurich, Switzerland, August 30 - September 1st, 2011
Dufhues, T., Theesfeld, I., and Buchenrieder, G.
(See online at https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2977928) - 2014. Bridging frameworks to new contexts. 3rd IASC European Conference on “From Generation to Generation – The use of commons in a changing society”, Ume, Sweden, September 16-18, 2014
Theesfeld, I.
- 2014. The importance of rules in local development planning in Thailand: How can they facilitate participation? Workshop on the Ostrom Workshop 5, Indiana University, USA, June 18-21, 2014
Theesfeld, I.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-017-9284-2) - 2014. The political economy of decentralization in Thailand: how past and present decentralization affects rural actors’ participation. European Journal of Development Research
Dufhues, T., Theesfeld I., and Buchenrieder G.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2014.68) - 2014. The role of culture in integrating minority groups in political decision making – Empirical evidence from rural Thailand. 3rd IASC European Conference on “From Generation to Generation – The use of commons in a changing society”, Ume, Sweden, September 16-18, 2014
Theesfeld, I., Dufhues, T., and Buchenrieder, G.
