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