Who sets the agenda in Thailand? Identifying key actors in Thai corruption policy, 2012–2016

ABSTRACT

In the face of the growing importance of corruption in much of the developing world, Thailand included, the present paper tackles the following question: what are the major actors that actually set the agenda for corruption issues in Thailand? The agenda-setting stage is the most critical one in the policy-cycle process which influences the remaining stages of the cycle. Given the importance of both the issue in Thai context and the agenda-setting stage generally, it is surprising to observe a scarcity of existing literature not only on agenda-setting in Thailand but across the policy process generally.

KEYWORDS:

• Agenda-setting
• corruption
• developing nations
• Southeast Asia and Pacific
• internet research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Again, referring to the above-mentioned research limitations, among the three think tanks, TEI also makes publications in the Thai language, some of which may be relevant to research and are thus excluded.

2. Since the number of corruption-related public comments and articles is relatively small, any nodes produced based on content analyses would not be representative of the entire Thai public. A brief analysis of public comments is included in a separate subsection below.

3. The notion of accountability is reflected twice.

4. These eliminate repeated notions of political will, decentralization, transparency and secrecy, enforcement etc.

5. These eliminate repeated notions of transparency, police-dominated state as a sub-type of power monopoly, punishment and law enforcement.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mergen Dyussenov

Originally from Kazakhstan, Mergen Dyussenov is a continuing PhD student at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. His current research interests include the analysis of issue attention cycles and dynamics in corruption, focusing events, and internet and online research methods in agenda setting. Mergen’s first publication came out in July 2016, with Lithuania-based Public Policy and Administration journal (Vol. 15, No. 2, 2016), while three of his current papers are being reviewed for publication. Mergen’s previous education background includes two master degrees: MPA from Columbia University (SIPA, 2011) and MBA from Johnson & Wales University (2007), and BSc in Social Economics from the Institute of Management and Marketing (Atyrau, Kazakhstan, 2002). Mergen’s Researchgate.com profile (for the list of published papers) can be accessed from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mergen_Dyussenov. He can be contacted at: [email protected].