Browsing by Author "Mutebi, Alex M."

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    Recentralizing while Decentralizing: Centre-Local Relations and “CEO” Governors in Thailand
    (Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 2004) Mutebi, Alex M.
    All modern states have historically been divided on a territorial basis between the centre (central government) and the periphery (regional and local governments), the nature of whose relationship varies considerably depending on, among other things, the country's constitutional framework, the distribution of functions and responsibilities between levels of government, the means by which their personnel are appointed and recruited, the political, economic, administrative and other powers that the centre exercises to regulate the periphery, and the level of independence that local bodies enjoy. Yet such a static explanation is inadequate in defining the dramatic changes in centre-periphery arrangements that have taken place in some countries in the last two decades. More rounded explanations of those centre-periphery (or centre-local) changes, particularly the decentralisation of authority and resources to subnational governments, involve asking why and under what circumstances the bargaining for the final centre-local arrangements takes place. This article explores this issue, using the case of Thailand's efforts at decentralisation which started in the 1990s and are still ongoing.1 Thailand's decentralisation programme aimed to transfer functional responsibilities to subnational governments, to enhance their autonomy and discretion, and to allow local communities greater say in the management of public resources as well as in planning their own socio-economic development. The article aims to go further than the usual for-or-against debates about decentralisation by examining one unanticipated outcome of Thailand's decentralisation experiment: a reconfiguration of centre-local arrangements to create new institutions of governance that ironically suggest recentralisation amidst the decentralisation.