Public Administration in Thailand

Thanks to a site listing newly published academic books on Asia, I noticed the forthcoming book Public Administration in Southeast Asia: Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Macao, which will be published in October. Sadly the price tag of £44.99 or $69.95 will probably prevent me from buying it - if it were solely on Thailand I might be more tempted. So I probably wait till I can get it through a library (or wait for the unlikely event of getting a free reviewer's copy). But trying out the search term "Public Administration in Thailand" with Google returned me a few hitherto unknown resources.

The first was a 1997 document by one United Nations committee titled Administrative reform efforts in Thailand: Current experiences and successes.Though obviously a bit outdated, it's still interesting to compare the state of decentralization back then and today.

But even more interesting were two publications by the United Nations Development Programme, one of the UN agencies having branch-offices in the UN building in Bangkok. In December 2009, a report on the 10th anniversary of the Decentralization Act was published. Two PDF files are available, first the Executive Summary: Improving the Local Administrative Structure, and sadly the much longer The Progress of Decentralization Process of Thailand and its Recommendations is only available in Thai language. I still have to read those English documents, so this might only be the appetizer for a later posting...