Library requests

In preparation for my forthcoming annual visit to Thailand, I have checked with some of the online library catalogues whether there are any of the reference works I could use available in one of the libraries I could easily reach while I am in Bangkok. The Pridi Banomyong library of Thammasat University, located right next to Wat Phra Kaeo, has the full reports of the census 1947 and 1937, as well as a few issues of the Local Directory (ทำเนียบท้องที่ พุทธศักราช), most interestingly the 1940 issue. However all these are in the rare book section, so hope I can get access to them.

A bit less interesting are the older issues of the Statistical Yearbook, which are more wide common in university libraries in Thailand. Though not the complete series, the Mahidol Central Library in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom, has several of the older issues, so I hopefully can further complete the data series with the number of subdivisions.

But even if I can get access to all the works I looked up, and have enough time to scan all the relevant pages to process when back home, there are still more issues of the yearbook or the even older census reports which would be great to have - and there are also some books or thesis which are impossible to get when having access to the academic sources. Thus I have compiled a list of the library requests and made it a static page, so hopefully someone who has the chance to provide me scan of any of these I would be very grateful. I will update that page whenever I stumble onto something new which I could need, or of course once I can get one of the requested data.

The Constitutional System of Thailand: A Contextual Analysis

The book "The Constitutional System of Thailand: A Contextual Analysis" by Andrew Harding and Peter Leyland is on the list of books I intend to buy for some time already, yet both its relatively high price and my backlog of unread books kept me from buying it yet - somehow hoping for an updated second edition, as obviously the just recently promulgated constitution isn't covered in it yet.

Luckily, Google Books over to preview many pages of the book, not just the snippet view it has for most, so it is possible to have a look into it. As I stumbled into it when looking for the term "Thesaban" in Google Books, the section on the local governments had caught my attention - but sadly I quickly found several mistakes or inaccuracies in that part. If there'd be second edition, I hope these can be fixed.Though the local government isn't the prime focus of the book, discovering these inaccuracies make me now hesitate to invest into this book.

Starting on page 125, it lists the numbers of the municipalities. Oddly, it says are 25 cities - a number valid in 2010 - and a total number of 1456 Thesaban, which was correct in 2008. The book was published in 2011, but apparently the numbers from various years have been mixed up together. It also states that cities have 50,000 citizens, towns 10,000 (or being a provincial capital) and subdistrict municipalities at least 5,000. Though these numbers are defined in the municipality act, it doesn't mean all the municipalities today have these numbers. Especially the sanitary districts upgraded in 1999, but also several of the TAO upgraded more recently have a smaller population but were still granted that municipal status.

The coverage of the rural-based local governments is much more misleading, especially the Provincial Administrative Organizations (PAO)

Other than in Bangkok and Pattaya, the Provincial Administrative Organization (PAO) administers local government at the provincial level. This comprises two bodies:
i) an administrative body headed by the provincial governor; and
ii) an assembly of 24-48 members elected for a four-year term.
The Provincial Governor, renamed Chief Executive Officer (CEO), is elected from the council and is no longer appointed directly by the MOI. Provinces are divided administratively into a number of districts, headed by district officers who report to the CEO.

This completely mixes up the province as the central government unit, and the PAO. The province governor is still appointed by the MOI, and always has been, and it wasn't renamed to be CEO, but was only supposed to act in the more business style when Thaksin was prime minister. The PAO mayor however is directly elected since 2004, only before was elected by the council. Also the mention of Pattaya is a bit misleading, as it suggests that Pattaya is a special province like Bangkok - but in fact the citizen of Pattaya also elect the Chonburi PAO mayor and council.

A similar mixup happens at the subdistrict level.

[...] bit in rural areas 7,255 Tambon Administrative Organizations (TAOs) provide local government at the sub-district level. These TAOs govern an area with a relatively small population. Each one is headed by a sub-district chief (Kamnan). [...]

There was never a TAO for every Tambon, and only at the very beginning the Kamnan served as TAO chairman ex officio, then the chairman was elected by the council, and since 2004 the position was renamed to mayor and since then elected directly. But the Kamnan as the central administrative position remains as well in parallel, but also there never was a Kamnan in every Tambon.

As the final rural government structure the "Sukhapiban" or sanitary committee are mentioned - though the law governing them is still in effect, all of them were upgraded in 1999, but this isn't mentioned in the book.

Thailand - a late decentralizing country

Since I first noticed about the book "Thailand - a late decentralizing country" by Tanet Charoenmuang I wanted to add that to my library as it sounded to be exactly about the topics I am researching, especially the more rarely covered local governments. However I never found that book in any of the book stores in Bangkok, nor any online bookstore, so I already had lost any hope to ever get my hand on it. But then a random Google search returned a Facebook posting by the Urban Development Institute Foundation, the educational organization which published the book - they mentioned they still have copies of that book in stock.

As Chiang Mai isn't on my itinerary for the forthcoming visit in Thailand, a friend was able to order that book by mail for just 250 Baht. As another twist, that friend was supposed to visit us in Germany, but then due to a medical problem we had to meet in Amsterdam instead. But finally I have the book in hand now, and was able to read some pages already.

The book is in fact a compilation of various publications mostly from the 1990s, ending with a paper on the 2006 coup ousting the Thaksin administration. Most to the topic is chapter 3, the 1992 paper "Decentralization - Task of the decade" which gives lots of details on the situation before the inception of the TAO in the mid-1990s and the upgrade of the sanitary districts. One of the decentralization tasks mentioned is however still pending, the province governors are still appointed by the central government and not elected.

I will probably write more about things learned from this book later. Little fun point: right now it is one of the few books I own which have their own Wikidata entry because I used it as the reference for Tanet's birth date.

Elections in the 1950s

The book Village life in modern Thailand by John E. DeYoung is a very interesting description of the rural life in Thailand in the 1950s - which at the time of writing the book was the "modern time". A few sections also mention the relationship of the villages to the authorities, like the following on the national election.

A few weeks before an election each district officer instructs the headmen of his village and communes to encourage their villagers to vote; the headmen assemble the villagers, urge them to vote, instruct those who have never voted in how to cast a ballot, and assign a registration number to each person eligible to vote. A registration list is sent by the headman to the local polling place (which is often the nearest primary school), and watchers and checkers are appointed for the polls. On the day before the elections the headman sends his assistant to all households to remind them that the election will take place on the morrow. Thus, even though the villager sees, hears, or reads nothing of the candidates, he is constantly reminded of the election during the several weeks preceding it.

In 1949, in a by-election for assemblyman, 49 per cent of those eligible voted in the village of San Pong — 72 per cent of the eligible males and 25 per cent of the eligible females. None of the candidates visited the village, no campaign literature was distributed, and since they do not read newspapers, few of the villagers had any clear idea of the campaign issues. The villagers made their choice partly on the basis of what the headman and the schoolteacher said about the candidates, partly on the basis of the nearness of the candidate's home town. A man from the closest town, even though he was personally unknown to the villagers, was regarded as a "local" man, a consideration which made him a better choice in the eyes of the villagers than his rivals from more distant parts of the province.

Eligibility to vote consists simply in being older than twenty-one. Since so many adult villagers are illiterate, a technique has been devised to allow those who cannot read and write to vote. Each candidate is assigned a number. These numbers are printed in Thai numerals and also in large dots on perforated paper. When the voter comes to the polls he is told which number corresponds to which candidate; he enters the voting booth, tears off the piece of the ballot which contains the number of dots for his choice, seals this inside an official envelope which is given to him when his name is checked on the registration list by the polling inspectors, and drops it in the ballot box. For his vote to be valid the envelope must be sealed, for Thailand voters enjoy the privilege of secret ballot. [...]

I'll post some more quotes from this book later with other sections on the local administration. The whole book is also available at archive.org, apparently already out of copyright. Despite being available online, I have got myself an antiquarian copy - reading it in paper is more comfortable...

Book excerpt "The Thai Bureaucracy"

I have received my copy of the 1966 book "The Thai Bureaucracy" by William J. Siffin, and at first look it already seems like an interesting read on the history of the Thai administration. As a first teaser I am quoting the section on the local government from chapter 8 "The essential character of the contemporary bureaucracy".

A small local government service also exists outside the national bureaucracy. It has perhaps 10,000 officials and employees. Terms and conditions of employment follow those of the national bureaucracy, but the local officials work for particular municipalities, have no opportunities for mobility beyond their particular jurisdiction, and posses little prestige. Autonomous local government is not significant in Thailand. Urban municipal government (apart from the capital area) did not even exist until passage of the Municipality Act of 1933, and today more than half the nation's local officials are employed in the metropolitan cities of Bangkok and Thonburi. Outside the capital there is one city - Chiengmai - with a population approaching 100,000; about eighty towns have average population of 15,000. These data are not necessarily adequate indices of urbanization, for city boundaries do not necessarily coincide with areas of high population density. But to this point, local government in Thailand has been more nominal than real, and this is reflected in the insignificance of the local bureaucracies.

Again, there are two interesting references to older publications, but it seems these are impossible to get in print - and while Google Books has entries for them, they don't even offer snippit view of the contents, neither for Winyoo Angkanaraksa "Local Government in Thailand" nor Frederick James Horrigan "Local government and administration in Thailand".

But since the decentralization of the 1990s the last sentence of the quote is now no longer valid - now there are not just around one hundred municipalities and sanitary districts as there were in 1966, but almost 10,000 covering the whole country. And also the prestige of the positions in local administrative must have grown (or at least have become very lucrative), as otherwise there would be need for a pledge for better protection of local election candidates.

The Election Commission has asked the Royal Thai Police to ensure adequate security for local government elections being held throughout the country.
[..]
There have been reports of violence and intimidation of election candidates. Some of them have been killed, he said.
Bangkok Post, "EC asks for protection for candidates", 2012-07-09

Book excerpt "Origins of Military Rule"

I am currently reading "Thailand: Origins of Military Rule", an economic history of Thailand written from a strong socialist viewpoint. Though I don't subscribe to that ideology, it is an interesting read, and it has one small paragraph fitting into the topic of this blog, which deals with the thesaphiban reforms 1892-1915.

The organization of the new Interior Ministry consisted in theory of several monthons, each headed by a commissioner; several provinces or chamgwads within each monthon and headed by governors; districts within each province; and so forth down to the smallest administrative areas. The entire system took a number of decades to emerge. The most important aspect to note is that it involved the deliberate reduction of the powers of the pre-capitalist governors in favor of the regional commissioners above and the district officers below. Thus the provincial governors, who formerly were chao muang (lord of the place) were reduced to pu warajakarn changwad (man in charge of the province for the king). With the reorganisation of government, they also ceased to be appointed by the king and became instead part of a civil service structure built on Western lines. These developments represented changes in the power structure towards a more centralized control.
Elliott, David. Thailand : origins of military rule. London: Zed Press, 1978. Chapter 2 "Early underdevelopment", page 77.

And the reference within this section made me notice yet another old book, much more on-topic with this blog. And thanks to BetterWorldBooks now a former library book of William J. Siffin "The Thai Bureaucracy" is on the way to me.

Siam in Transition - Part I

Thanks to Better World Books I got yet another antiquarian book on Thai topics at a very competitive price - Kenneth P. Landon's Siam in Transition first published in 1939 and reprinted in 1968. The book was his dissertation to get a Ph.D. in comparative religion. He was staying in Siam since 1927, working as a Presbyterian priest. But though the book focuses on religious topics, it also contains a lot of general items of Siam in the times of the transition between absolute monarchy to democracy. Most interesting for me is obviously the chapter on political trends, especially the "trend towards decentralization". The first part I am quoting from the book is the description of the central government structure, which except the Monthon is still almost identical today. In a second posting I will quote the description of the local government, i.e. the municipal administration.

The general trend has been to allow the administration to become more and more a local matter. Formerly the country was divided into Circles or Montons, over each of which was a Lord Lieutenant or Tetsa. The Monton is comparable to the Province in China, or to the State in the United States. Each Circle or Monton was divided into Cangwats, comparable to the American county. Each Cangwat had a Governor. The Cangwat again was divided into Amphoes which were in turn divided into Tambols. These last two divisions were lesser divisions of the area into districts. Finally each Tambol was divided into villages. For example, Monton Bhuket had five Cangwat. One of these Cangwat was Cangwat Trang which had five Amphoes. One of these Amphoes was Amphoe Tap Tiang which had about ten Tambols. The average Tambol had about ten villages. The only officials elected by the people were the village chief and the Nai Kamnan who was in charge of the Tambol. All Amphoe, Cangwat, and Monton officials were appointed from Bangkok. The officials sent out from Bangkok were frequently moved so that their administration migh be impartial. The people had little to say in matters of government. [...] The country was at one time divided into eighteen Montons. In 1926 this number was reduced to fourteen. In 1932 a further reduction was made to ten. A radical change was made in 1933 when the Monton system was abandoned and the kingdom was divided into seventy Cangwats. At the head of each Cangwat was a provincial commissioner. The high commissioners were stationed in Bangkok. Inspecting commissioners were attached to the Central Administration.

Local Government and Rural Development in Thailand

Already quite some time ago I spotted the book "Local Government and Rural Development in Thailand" by Marcus Ingle on Google Books as one of the few books mentioning the term "Tambon administrative organization". Sadly, on Google Books all one can see of the book are a few sniplets, but from the keyword cloud the book looked very much on topic with my interests, and the fact that it was from 1974 made it even more interesting to get more of the historical perspective. I usually prefer to add books into my own library, this one seems so rare I never saw it at any antiquarian book sellers, so finally I order it through interlibrary loan.

It's one of the absurdities of the copyright laws that a book which was sold in maybe a few hundred copies for US$3.50 almost 40 years ago cannot be available for free online, even though there is zero commercial value in it by now. And since the author is still alive, it will take at least another 70 years until it finally gets into the Public Domain. As I had to pay a bit for the interlibrary loan, and now did my own scans, OCR and cleanup to a readable digital document, I would have paid some bucks to get an already compiled eBook and save me that manual work. I only hope that Google Books will grow into something which makes such abandoned works much easier accessible - they already have them scanned and OCRed.

Anyway, even though it has just 96 pages, and the focus is on the rural development, this book does contain a lot of interesting facts on the local administration in the 1960s and early 1970s, so once I have studied the text in more detail I'll certainly write up several postings with quotes or redraws of the diagrams from the book. For now, I only post the table of contents, to give you a rough idea of what might show up here in the next months mixed in with the regular coverage.

1. Development Trends
   1. Thailand's Non-Colonial Bureaucratic Heritage
   2. Contemporary Socio-Economic Setting
   3. Rural Sector Development Status
      1. Agriculture Production/Productivity
      2. Income Level/Distribution
      3. General Welfare/Well-being
2. Organizational Arrangements for Rural Development
   1. Thailand's Development Strategy
   2. Rural Development Organization
      1. Central Government Organization
         1. Field Operating Units
         2. Functional Offices
      2. Local Administrative Organization
         1. Formal Local Governing Units
            1. Changwat Administrative Organiza­tion (CAO)
               1. Direct CAO Rural Development Services
               2. CAO Supervision and Financial Support for Local Government Activities
                  1. Tambon Council Committee
                  2. Muban Organization
            2. Sukhapiban (Sanitary District)
         2. Traditional Local-Level Units
            1. Religious Institutions
            2. Rural Associations
      3. Private Sector
   3. Regional Analysis of Local Government Operations
      1. The Central Region
      2. The North and Northeast
         1. Rural Setting
         2. Local Government Functions
         3. Governmental Interrelations
         4. Provision of Rural Development Services
      3. The South
3. Local Government-Rural Development Relationships: The Formulation of Hypotheses and Research Conclusions
   1. Hypotheses
   2. Data Summary and Analysis
   3. Conclusion

1914 Directory for Bangkok and Siam

While I knew about the 1894 Directory for Bangkok and Siam published by White Lotus - but never saw it in a bookstore so didn't had a chance to look inside it yet - now the webmaster of Bangkok Library discovered a later issue of the same publication to be available as a free download at archive.org. It contains a wide variety of data - from a short history and geography of Siam, the reproduction of major international treaties as well as laws up to a list of government officials in each of the Ministries. The most interesting part for me is the section on the Local Administration starting on page 177. As the whole text is in the public domain already - the reason why it can be made available for free - I reproduce it here, especially as the OCR within the PDF hasn't seen any proofreading. In this first posting comes the general description. Later I will post the list of government official posts within the Monthon and Mueang, and finally the list of Monthon and their subdivision.

Le gouvernement local en Thaïlande

The National Library of Australia has quite a good collection of books on the administration of Thailand, quite often I found that a book I thought interesting is available in there - too bad that means on the other side of the globe for me. What is quite nice is that their catalog allows to subscribe to RSS feeds, so I now easily find whenever they acquire a new book in that section.

The latest new entry was a French language book "Le gouvernement local en Thaïlande" by Malai Huvanandana and John W. Ryan from 1958, published by UNESCO. Just for fun I fed that title and author into Google, and voilà, I not only found its entry at UNESCOs library, but there it even has a PDF with the full 28 page publication.

Only problem - I don't speak French. I can only grasp the general content by guessing those words which look similar to those I learned in Latin in school, and since it is a scanned PDF I cannot copy-and-paste it into Google Translate neither. On the first page it says "Traduit de l'anglais" (translated from English), but apparently and sadly the English original was never published. So I am quite limited in what I can extract out of this document.

By the way, the author Malai Huvanandana (มาลัย หุวะนันท์) is also an interesting person. In 1958 he was director of the Institute of Public Administration at the Thammasat University (now part of the National Institute of Development Administration), 1972-73 he was Deputy Minister of Interior.

New books

Thanks to the quite special selection of antiquarian books at Tamarind Books and a business trip to the US which helped me save a lot of shipping cost, I have added a few new books to my library about or closely related to the topic of this blog.

The first one - Provincial administration and local government in Thailand by William A. Sommers - I had already discovered some time ago, but except the fact that one copy was available I wasn't able to find any details about it. It turns out to be just a pamphlet of 13 pages (plus one chart), published in 1969 by the Department of Local Administration. Sommers worked as USOM advisor to the Thai Ministry of Interior in the late 1960s.

Similar, but with 30 pages about the double size, is the pamphlet Local Government in Thailand by Daniel Wit. It was published by the Ministry of Interior in 1958, and according to the preface is an extract of the book "Comparative Local Government and Administration" published by the Thammasat University.

Also only a pamphlet is the Thailand Population Census 1960 Changwad Series: Changwad Chiengmai, which I bought just out of curiosity. I would have preferred to catch the Surat Thani issue, but since it is basically nothing but the census numbers, which for the 2000 census were available for free as Excel sheets. I hope the National Statistical Office will publish the full data from the older census when this year's census is complete, but I am sure it's just in vain.

Wilfred D. Reeve's Public administration in Siam, originally published in 1951, also just has 93 pages and gives an overview over the whole public administration, thus the territorial and local administration is only a small part of this book. But what is striking is that the two most pressing problems of the administration in 1951 were the corruption and nepotism in nomination of government officials. While the corruption is not as open as it was back then, the last 60 years hasn't changed that much in Thailand it seems.

Politics in Thailand by David A. Wilson is more about the government politics, parliament, political parties. Published in 1962 it is also covering the same time-period as the other books, but as it focuses on the higher political levels it seems to be the one least related to this blog.

And finally from a different antiquarian, the book Thailand: The Modernization Of A Bureaucratic Polity by Fred W. Riggs, published in 1967, is also a very interesting read. Especially chapter seven which covers the territorial administration gives quite a lot of details of these entities in the past, it is the first place where I found anything about the regions which were created as a supplement of the Monthon.

Thus a lot of new material to work through, and I am sure I can make several postings with interesting quotes from these books. It is just sad that the copyright laws won't allow me to digitize all the pamphlets and make them available for the public, even though I doubt anybody could use the rights commercially. These works are probably only of interest for a few academics and one crazy amateur researcher...

Wikipedia in Print

From time to time I search for the words like "tambon" not only in Google, but also in Amazon, especially in case their search inside books might return something Google Books does not have yet. That way I stumbled upon a book titled "Subdivisions of Thailand: Monthon, Provinces of Thailand, Amphoe, Administrative Divisions of Thailand, Thesaban, Tambon, Boriwen, Sukhaphiban", which looked like it have exactly the content I am interested about. But when reading the description in more detail I noticed that this book is nothing else but the Wikipedia articles from the category Subdivisions of Thailand printed. Looking around more, there are thousands of similar books from the same publisher with different sets of Wikipedia articles placed together, each printed individually as a Print on Demand book, but each having a unique ISBN number already.

Now this is all perfectly legal, provided that they follow the license of Wikipedia and cite the source correctly. And even though I have written the articles within that specific book myself to a great deal, I don't recommend anyone to buy this book - first I know that the Wikipedia articles are way from complete, there are still lots of points I would love to add if only I could get them researched well enough. When you order the book, you also have no control on which version of the article will be used, most probably the current one, but how to be sure that that version is clear from any vandalism? Also, the price of about 15 US$ for just 52 pages is IMHO way overpriced, especially as not a single cent goes to the author unlike it would in any normal authored or edited book, the only cost they have is the pure printing and shipping.

The best way to use Wikipedia is to read online, as that's the only way to get the latest version of the text, have the ability to check older versions if some part seems dubious and smells of vandalism, be able to interact using the discussion pages or even change the text yourself if necessary. But for those book lovers who prefer to read in actual paper versions, or to be able to read where no internet is available or to create for a technophobe friend there's a great way to get your custom-made book. For quite some time already, Wikipedia has added ways to export article collections as a PDF file as well as get a Print on Demand book. Within few minutes I have reproduced the same contents as the above cited book, which would cost you just 8.90 US$ - and can also alternatively be downloaded as a PDF to print yourself or put in your eBook reader. Too bad that this book won't become a bestseller for sure - even if I would get the six dollar price difference I won't become rich.

Myth and Realities: The Democratization of Thai Politics

I am currently reading the book Myths and Realities: The Democratization of Thai Politics by Yoshifumi Tamada, which is on the development from Black May 1992 to the 1997 constitution until Thaksins win in the 2001 general election. Though not directly on the topics of this blog, a very interesting read due to the similarities with the current political situation as well as the differences, and also as the massive changes in this time are one reason for the return to the old style of Thai politics in 2006.

The 1990s have been the start of the decentralization, most notably by the upgrade of the Tambon Councils to Tambon Administrative Organizations, the upgrade of the sanitary districts to municipalities and also changes in the Provincial Administrative Organizations, all now elected local government bodies. Therefore these changes are also a minor topic of the point, though the most detailed on it is only found in footnote one of chapter three. I am quoting it completely:

In the early 1990s, both the budget and the number of local government employees accounted for less than 10% of those of the national government. Interior Ministry officials, including the provincial governors, played the key roles in this centralized system of local administration. One of the main aims of the decentralization campaign was to replace provincial governors appointed by the Interior Ministry with popularly elected local government heads. However, the provincial governor's offices were very important within the Interior Ministry bureaucracy, being equal in rank and prestige to the ministry director's post. Thus for many Interior Ministry officials, such an appointment is the highlight of their career. It was only natural, therefore, that the ministry should stubbornly resist. Furthermore, decentralization was not only a problem for the Interior Ministry, but would affect almost all of the ministries and departments of the central government. Although some ministries actually welcomes the prospect of less supervision by the Interior Ministry officials, they attempted to protect themselves from the waves of decentralization by delegating authority to local agencies (deconcentration). Many party politicians were not very enthusiastic about decentralization, either. One reason was that they had long relied upon the cooperation of bureaucrats in elections. More importantly, though, decentralization would reduce the powers of ministers, and thus the vested interests of party politicians. As a result, a compromised form of decentralization was agreed upon in 1994 that was to upgrade about 7000 small administrative wards (tambon) throughout the country to municipal government status. The Tambon Council and Tambon Administrative Authority Law came into force on 1 March 1995. Further decentralization occurred thereafter. Prior to these changes, rural areas other than cities and sanitary districts had been governed by the province as local administrative units. Since rural areas came under the governance of tambon administrative authorities, the provincial governments were reorganized (on 1 November 1997) to preserve themselves. Also, based on the provisions concerning decentralization in the 1997 Constitution, there was a wholesale revision of related laws and regulations on local government.

Sadly, the two references which are quoted then are in Japanese only, so even less accessible than Thai source. The provincial governments mentioned are the PAO, which had overlapping responsibilities with the TAO and therefore needed a thorough revision.

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...

Twentieth century impressions of Siam

The 1908 book "Twentieth century impressions of Siam", edited by Arnold Wright and published in 1908 was recently scanned and made online by archive.org. The section about the administrative system, which by that year had the thesaphiban reforms implemented all over the country, reads as following

In 1894 the internal administration was reorganised, and the whole of the country placed under the administration of the Ministry of the Interior with the exception of the capital and the surrounding provinces. An Act similar to the British Act applying to Burma has been adopted for the government of the great mass of the people in the provinces of the interior. Each hamlet, consisting of about ten houses, has its elected elder. The elders in their turn elect a headman for the village, a village consisting of ten hamlets. The Government appoints an "amphur" with petty magisterial powers who has jurisdiction over a group of villages. "Muangs," or provinces, are each in the charge of a governor, and the governors are in their turn directly responsible to the High Commissioners, who are at the head of the thirteen monthons, or circles, into which the country is divided.

The Commissioners meet once a year at the Ministry of Justice, and, under the presidency of the Minister of the Interior, report upon the work that has been accomplished and discuss the future programme. Gradually this assembly of the High Commissioners is becoming quite an important feature in the government of the country.

Local Directory 2546

Last year I discovered an EBook from the Department of Provincial Administration which includes a list of all the Muban as of 2003. I didn't work with that one much until now, so when I did look into it again I noticed that not only the second PDF is broken, but also the first one lacks several pages. Luckily all the pages are also available as JPG files, but since having them in a single PDF is much more handy these are not that much an alternative.

So after some searching I found the nice small software JPEG to PDF, which allows to convert one or several JPG files into a PDF. So it was easy to create the correct and complete EBook-PDFs.

1. ทำเนียบท้องที่ พุทธศักราช ๒๕๔๖ เล่ม ๑ (Local Directory 2546 Volume 1), Krabi till Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya
   
2. ทำเนียบท้องที่ พุทธศักราช ๒๕๔๖ เล่ม ๒ (Local Directory 2546 Volume 2), Phang Nga till Amnat Charoen
   

One thing I did not notice when looking at this EBook the first time is the fact that the book also lists the dates when each of the district was created as a minor district and upgraded to a full district. Especially for the very old districts this might be interesting to compare with the data I could compile from the Royal Gazette, and even more so those I could not find in the Royal Gazette.

New books

I have recently bought two new books, further ridiculing my old claim that there almost no books on the administrative system. Both are anthologies of scientific papers by various scholar of Thai studies, and it's hardly surprising that each contains one by late David K. Wyatt, maybe the most prolific in this field. As a side note, Rikker had a review of Professor Wyatts Southeast Asian library on his blog.

The first book is Regions and national integration in Thailand, 1892-1992 compiled by Volker Grabowsky. It is the compilation of papers presented at a conference at the University of Passau. As one can see from the title, this conference already took place in 1992, and the book was published in 1995, but it is still on sale by the publisher. The conference did take place at the centennial of Prince Damrongs appointment as first Interior Minister and the begin of thesaphiban reforms.

Much older is the second book, Modern Thai politics : from village to nation published in 1976 and compiled by Clark D. Neher. I found this one at a bookseller in the US selling it for 1$ (however shipping over the atlantic was another 8$), and it is a somewhat torn former library book. It was outlisted by the Loyola library in Chicago and now gets its place in my personal library.

Actually reading them have to wait till I return from Thailand, and hopefully I will find more interesting book there to further enlarge my library. But with just 90 books on Thai topics I doubt I'd ever get close to the 15,000 books Professor Wyatt collected.

Publications of the King Prajadhipok’s Institute

I was just looking in Google for any news on the pending repeat of the PAO chairman election in Surat Thani, and directly related I only found that the chairman of Phuket PAO received a yellow card as well and there needs to be a by-election in Phuket now as well. But much more interesting was another document returned by the search - Volume 4 Issue 1 of the King Prajadhipok's Institute Newsletter dealing with the PAO elections in 2004. It not only shows the full results of these elections (except for Buriram where the election was in 2003 already), but also an analysis of the outcome written by Michael H. Nelson.

While that was already a very interesting find, checking the website of King Prajadhipok's Institute (KPI) I quickly found there are also some publications downloadable as PDF files, all on the local government structures. These have to wait till after my vacation to be read however, but I thought I should share them directly.

The Etymology of Phetchaburi

The text below was written by King Mongkut (Rama IV, reigned 1851-1868) himself and was first published in the Bangkok Calendar, an annual almanac founded in 1859 until the death of its printer Dan Beach Bradley. It was later republished in the 1885 compendium Siam, The Land of the White Elephant, edited by George S. Bacon. I found it in the book Early Accounts of Phetchaburi, published by the Siam Society in 1987. The photo shows the temple Wat Phra Kaeo, part of the Phra Nakhon Khiri palace complex right next to the town. It was also King Mongkut who built this palace.

Though titled etymology, the text is not about the origin of the name of the city, but in fact King Mongkut complains about the inconsistent and varying spellings of the name in western source.

But as the city P'etch'ără-booree the masses of the people in all parts call it P'ripp'ree or P'et-pree. The name P'etch'ără-booree is Sanskrit, a royal name given to the place the same as T'on-booree, Non-booree, Năk'awn K'u'n k'ăn, Sămŏŏtă-pra-kan, and Ch'ă-chong-sow. Now if Mahá nak'awn be called Bangkok, and the other names respectively called Tălát-k'wan, Paklat, Paknam, and Păătrew, it is proper that P'etch'ără-booree should follow suit, and be called by her vulgar name P'rip-p'ree, or P'et-p'ree.

Now that the company of teachers and print­ers should coin a name purporting to be after the royal style and yet do not take the true Sanskrit, seems not at all proper. In trying to Romanize the name P'etch'ără-booree, they place the mark over the a thus P'etchă-booree, making foreigners read it P'etcha-booree, following the utterances of old dances in the temples, who boast that they know Balăm Bali, and not satisfied with that, they even call the place City P'et, setting fortn both the Bali and the meaning of the word; and thus boast­ing greatly of their knowledge and of being a standard of orthography for the name of that city.

Now what is the necessity of coining another name like this? There is no occasion for it. When the name is thus incorrectly printed, persons truly acquainted with Sanskrit and Bali (for such there are many other places) will say that those who write or print the name in the way, must be pupils of ignorant teachers - blind teachers not fol­lowing the real Sanskrit in full, taking only the utterances of woodsmen, and holding them forth [as the correct way.] In following such sounds they cannot be in accord with the Sanskrit, and they conclude that the name is Siamese. Where­as, in truth, it is not Siamese. The true Siamese name is P'rip-p'ree or P'et-p'ree. It matters not what letters are used to express it - follow your own mind; but let the sound come out clear and accu­rate either P'rip-p'ree or P'et-p'ree, and it will be true Siamese. But the mode of writing and print­ing the name P'etchă-booree with the letter a and mark over it and other marks in two places, resists the eye and the mouth greatly. What­ever be done in this matter let there be uniformi­ty. If it be determined to follow the vulgar mode of calling the name, let that be followed out fully and accurately; but if the royal mode be preferred, let the king be sought unto for the pro­per way of writing it, which shall be in full accord­ance with the Sanskrit. And should this happen not to be like the utterance of the people in the temples the difference cannot be great. And persons unacquainted with Sanskrit will be con­strained to acknowledge that you do really know Sanskrit; and comparing the corrected with the improper mode of Romanizing, will praise you for the improvement which you have made. Such per­sons there are a few, not ignorant and blind lead­ers and dunces like the inmates of the temples and of the jungles and forests, but learned in the San­skrit and residents in Siam.

Book with list of all muban

I have been looking through the online book list of the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA), which seem to mostly contain legal texts or handbooks for the officers in the provines. But I also found a two-volume book named ทำเนียบท้องที่ (local directory), which in fact is nothing but a complete list of the central administrative entities down to village level published in 2003. It can be both viewed online (volume 1, volume 2) or downloaded (volume 1, volume 2). However actually the download links are quite broken - the link for volume 2 returns volume 1, but some pages are in strange ordering; the link for volume 1 returns a part of volume 1, so volume 2 is only readable page by page from the first links.

Quite usable would be the map of subdistricts for each province, but sadly either the print or the subsequent scan make it hard to recognize much. More handy are the tables of entities for each of the province - including the area of each district with an accuracy of 0.01 km², and of course the list of the villages. But the problem is that the online book is the scan of a printed book, so I would have to type in all the names again, an impossible task for more than 60,000 villages. That's why I want a digital village list. If they had put online the source of the printed book - a PDF with copy-and-pasteable text - it would be much better. Not only the size of the file would be much smaller - the file is 75 MB - and it would be allow the contents to be reused. So I can only hope they'll make a new edition of this book already 5 years old, or even better than a PDF, they put the actual data online as Excel sheets or simple plain text files. Excel sheets would also help to spot mistakes as they can calculate the sums automatically - copying the data from a few province I have already spotted two mistakes in the tables.