Google made me discover an interesting source again - the Thailand office of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (named after the first chancellor or Germany after World War II) is funding projects on democratization, especially at the local level. There are several interesting seminars - though likely in Thai, and of course a bit far away for me to attend - as well as publications on political topics sponsored by them. Again most of these publication seem to be in Thai only.But there is one which caught my attention, the 2006 book Thailand: a late decentralizing country by Tanet Charoenmuang (ธเนศวร์ เจริญเมือง) (ISBN 9789747811483). Professor Tanet is working at the Faculty of polical science and public administration of Chiang Mai University. Googeling for his name I can find he has published several interesting articles and books on local administration, however again most in Thai. Among other things, this search also made me find the Informal Northern Thai Group, where he just today gave a talk on "The Administrative Structure of Chiang Mai Province". I am looking forward to see the transcript of that meeting on the website of the INTG.
Back to the book. As there is so few in English on the local government structures, this book would be a great resource. But there are only very few hits on the web for it, and none of the online book sellers has it in its catalog. And if I had seen it in any of the bookstores in Bangkok I probably would have bought it directly. I already tried to contact the KAS, but they only only have one copy for documenting their funding of the project. So, if anyone can help me to obtain a copy I would be grateful.
2 comments:
The useful website bookfinder.com turns up two copies for sale, one in Singapore and one in India. Pricey, though, at 978 baht and 1126 baht, respectively (and that doesn't include shipping).
When I get a sec, I'll try a search on the Thai Union Catalog to see which local libraries have copies.
Normally I check abebooks for out of print books, but for this I did not try that one. So to my shame abebooks is one of the two sources found by bookfinder, actually both sources are the same bookseller, just two different country branches. And the Mary Martin looks quite interesting, they have quite a lot of books, also another one I haven't yet found anywhere else. Just so sad the shipping increases the price by nearly 50%. Thanks a lot for finding it.
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