Mobilities of the One-Product policy from Japan to Thailand: a critical policy study of OVOP and OTOP

ABSTRACT

The One Village One Product (OVOP) movement was a policy implemented in 1980 in Oita Prefecture, Japan. It was used as a basis for crafting the One Tambon One Product (OTOP) policy in Thailand. In this study, the policy mobilities approach is used, as opposed to traditional policy transfer approaches, which are rooted in neoclassical economics. The policy mobilities approach proves itself more useful for analyzing the cross-scalar pattern of the study case. After a brief explanation of the original movement in Oita Prefecture, the issue of the transfer of the programme from Japan to Thailand is discussed. This first includes an analysis of the motivations for implementing and using the programme. An examination of how the Japanese local and national authorities responded to the Thai demands is then made. Two-tier diplomacy influenced the policy movement process by conveying the different meanings and practices of OVOP. These findings are coherent with one of the main claims of the policy mobilities approach, which is that policies evolve as they move. Furthermore, this case study highlights two vectors of policy mobility which also act as poles of policy evolution: the academia–policy-maker nexus and the business–state apparatus.

KEYWORDS:

• One Village One Product (OVOP) movement
• One Tambon One Product (OTOP)
• policy transfer
• policy network
• policy mobilities

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Valentin Noble http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2258-257X

Notes

1 Defined by Evans (2009, p. 245) as ‘a process in which governments are compelled, for example, by influential donor countries, global financial institutions, supra-national institutions, international organizations or transnational corporations, to introduce a policy change in order to secure grants, loans or other forms of inward investment’.

2 As shown by para-diplomatic studies, e.g. Jain (2005) in the case of Japan.

3 The link between increasingly cross-scalar policy mobility and ‘ever more complex relational combinations’ is perceived by Peck and Theodore (2010, p. 171).

4 For further methodological considerations, see the next section.

5 For a brief history of the three rules of OVOP, see Son (2012, p. 53).

6 Mukai and Fujikura (2015) even determine OVOP-like projects’ success by their adherence to the three principles in a study covering Oita Prefecture and cases in Kyrgyzstan, Thailand, Malawi and Laos. This is one of the latest important contributions in the field of practical OVOP studies.

7 Numbers obtained from a personal communication conducted in September 2016 with Ratchanon Keawmanee, a CDD official.

8 This has been well perceived by Adachi (2015, p. 32).

9 From this point to the end of the paragraph, the main source of information is a personal interview conducted with Mrs Uraiwan Chandrayu, former official of the Ministry of Industry Department of Industrial Promotion, on 30 September 2016. Direct quotations are from Uraiwan.

10 The Furusato Sosei Fund was provided by the Takeshita administration in the period 1988–89 and consisted of a 100 million yen subsidy furnished to each local government in the country.

11 From this point to the end of the section, the main source of information is a personal interview conducted with Mr H. Ozasa, Vice President of JETRO Bangkok, in June 2017. Direct quotations are from Ozasa.

12 Which happened to be also a source of inspiration for Pansak Vinyaratn, high-profile TRT member and one of Thaksin’s closest advisers, when he advocated a more grassroots-oriented economy based on robust SME networks.