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Abstract
How do cultural practices influence the process of participatory governance within local administrative structures? We address this question by reflecting cultural dimensions, such as collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance within a contextual sensitive “cultural sensemaking” model. The modelled context refers to community development meetings held in Thai communities. Here people gather to discuss development plans, which are later finalized at the Tambon Administrative Organization (TAO). We hypothesize that cultural practices influence action by giving the people the rules for action. The analysis of culture in the context of these meetings is an interpretive one and involves qualitative observation of and structured interviews. Our results show that the prevailing cultural practices do not promote truly transparent and open discussions as ascribed to participatory governance tools. Consequently, local leaders employ a subtle paternalistic leadership style. Yet, cultural practices change towards a more open and participatory rural society.
Public Interest Statement
The majority of poor people worldwide, around 70%, live in rural regions and are employed in small-scale farming. Many scholars and policy makers assume that the poor know best, which public policy measures improve their livelihoods. This calls for giving them a voice when it comes to selecting public policy measures at the local level; this is known as participatory governance. We assume, however, that cultural practices influence the interaction between the people and the public leaders. To find out more about this interaction, we analyze community development meetings in rural Thailand. Here ordinary villagers and public leaders gather to discuss development plans. We find that the prevailing cultural practices still hinder transparent and open public decision making. Because ordinary participants appreciate a conflict-free and harmonious communication practice, local leaders still display a paternalistic leadership style, although in a subtle way.
Acknowledgements
We thank the German Science Foundation (DFG) for their financial support (BU 1319/12-1 & TH 849/3-1). Furthermore, our field research benefited substantially from the fruitful cooperation with the Uplands Program (SFB564) of the University of Hohenheim. We would also like to thank Michael McGinnis from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis in Bloomington, Indiana University USA, for sharing his insights into the relationship between decentralization efforts and political participation. We are particularly thankful to Jörg Hager for his fruitful comments on Thai cultural practices and his help in setting up our field research operations.
Notes
1. Institutions are defined following North (Citation1990, p. 3) as the formal and informal rules that facilitate co-ordination among people by helping them form expectations. They function as constraints that shape human interaction and the enforcement characteristics of these constraints. Swidler (Citation1995, p. 36) points out that individuals create culture around their rules. They then can come to act in culturally uniform ways, i.e. cultural practices, not because individuals share the same cultural ideas or values (see Weber (Citation1946, p. 280) and Parsons (Citation1951, p. 7), respectively), but because they act by the same rules. It is in this sense that the more general term “endogenous cultural institution” is used here. Nevertheless, for the sake of readability, we will use the term cultural practices in the following.
2. While Thailand has a relatively high level of linguistic and religious homogeneity it is not culturally homogenous, not the least due to the many ethnic groups (Streckfuss, Citation2012). Thus, Thai culture is diverse and has its regional specifics (Jory, Citation1999, p. 339).
3. Political participation can be exercised, for instance, directly by way of elections, which have been discussed in detail by Callahan (Citation2005) and Bowie (Citation2008b), or indirectly by way of civil society groups or social movements. The latter pathways of participation have been discussed in detail elsewhere, e.g. by Walker (Citation2008, p. 86).
4. Other forms of institutionalized participation exist in Thailand, e.g. public hearings on environmentally sensitive projects (Unger & Siroros, Citation2011, pp. 211–212) and participatory irrigation management (Sinclair, Kumnerdpet, & Moyer, Citation2013, p. 58).
5. The Thai government goes to great efforts to embed this understanding of civic national culture in all religious and ethnic Thai groups.
6. Thailand is also sometimes described as a loosely structured society; first mentioned by Embree (Citation1950). In loose cultures deviation from norms are often tolerated (Triandis & Suh, Citation2002, p. 139). However, the description of Thailand as a loosely structured society has been controversially debated throughout the decades (see e.g. Potter (Citation1976, p. 1ff, 147ff), Komin (Citation1990b, p. 5, 8, 11, 71, 190), Mulder (Citation1996, p. 61, 76, 178), or Johnson (Citation2001, pp. 117–118)).
7. This is in line with Swidler’s (Citation1995, p. 35) statement that cultural practices have a powerful influence because the individual knows beforehand how others will interpret his/her action.
8. The patron-client framework has been frequently used for the analysis of Thai society (Bechstedt, Citation2002, p. 242). However, the patron-client relationship can be seen as a special form of power distance, thus this dyadic concept has limits when investigating community meetings. Kirsch (Citation2004, p. 55 ff) says that social pressure is present when an individual is forced to act in a way he/she would not normally choose or when the general action is in line with the individual’s choice but certain features collide with the individual’s preferences.
9. In the individualistic tradition of the New Institutionalism in sociology, individual action following cultural practices is considered rational, but this rationality can take various forms as a function of the context.
10. Swidler (Citation1986, p. 283, Citation1995, p. 34ff) points out that culture influences action differently at some moments than at others, which is again linked to the specific contexts in which culture is brought to bear. This is why it is difficult to try to pin down just where and why culture makes a difference in collective action.
11. The “community culture school” of thought (see e.g. Chatthip Nartsupha, Citation1991) points out that all change should and must evolve from the village as villages have the local knowledge. In that sense, any intervention, e.g. through regulations that are framing community village meetings, would be detrimental and unsustainable. However, this school of thought assumes that the village is a homogeneous egalitarian entity, thus negating any power differences. This is quite unrealistic. Negating such differences would imply the acceptance of cemented power structures.
12. Two-sample t-test with equal variances significant at the (p) = 0.01 level.
13. χ2-test significant at (p) = 0.05. However, the number of village meetings without TAO staff participation was rather small (16% of villages in the sample).
14. In contrast, a survey of the Asia Foundation showed that only about 17% (total Thai sample) and 25% (for the North-East region) of respondents stated that they would follow village leaders’ recommendations on whom to elect (Meisburger, Citation2009, p. 89). Obviously, elections and community development projects are different contexts, which might explain such differing data.
15. TAOs are known for their notorious connections to local construction bigwigs and can be easily corrupted if transparency and participation of the people is lacking (see e.g. McCargo (Citation2008, p. 83) or Nelson (Citation2002, pp. 258–259)) Newspaper reports have pointed out that the decentralization of decision-making has become the source of more corruption and abuse of power The number of corruption-related complaints against local governance organizations is significantly higher than against other public agencies However, this is not surprising given the sheer number of local administrative bodies Furthermore, it could also simply mean that corruption higher up in the bureaucracies is better concealed or that local administrations are now more transparent than before, meaning that any wrongdoing would be revealed more easily Finally, there is no proof that local corruption is more prevalent than at the national level Hence, despite the dangers of elite capture and the corruption of TAO officials, TAOs seem to have become a better mediator between the central government and villagers than the monopolized bureaucracy of the past (Arghiros, Citation2001, p. 273, 277).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gertrud Buchenrieder
The research group authoring this paper has a long standing working tradition with regard to social science issues relating to socio-economic development in rural regions of developing and transition countries. Other cutting-edge topics are rural financial market development and social capital as substitute for classical productive factors, such as human and financial capital. The research reported in this paper relates to the project “Institutions in transition—Challenges for new modes of rural governance in Thailand”, which was financially supported by the German Science Foundation (DFG).