In 1999, the Tambon Administrative Organization (TAO) in a mountainous and forested area of the north approved a concession to a quarry company. Local community leaders objected. The quarry was in a watershed forest. Drinking water would be polluted, and irrigation water reduced. Tourist spots and religious places would be disrupted by blasting. The TAO had not consulted people, not allowed participation in the decision, and not acted transparently.

The people staged a protest outside the provincial headquarters. The TAO members were forced to resign. At new elections, the protest group won a majority. These new TAO members were “less remote and less bureaucratic in style.” They held a public meeting, inviting the quarry company and relevant officials. The meeting found that the Department of Natural Resources had approved the concession using false data; and the Forest Industry Organization had mysteriously dropped the concession fee from 38 million to 12 million baht. After these revelations, local people took a close interest in the operation of the TAO. Meetings had to be moved to the school hall to accommodate observers. Officials were subject to scrutiny. Democracy began to work.

Decentralisation to the TAOs is the most dramatic change in Thailand’s provincial administration since the colonial system of provincial governors was established a century ago. In the early 1990s, decentralization was still a forbidden word inside the Interior Ministry. Then in 1994 the Chuan government passed an act to establish TAOs. The 1997 Constitution set out the principles and timetable to make them democratic and powerful. These principles were converted into legislation in 1999. An implementation committee in 2001 set the mechanism to transfer 245 responsibilities from fifty departments in eleven ministries to the local authorities. The proportion of the national budget channelled through local government will rise to 35 percent by 2006.

After such centralisation of power, and such opposition to change, the shift has come very quickly.

A lot of hopes and fears are riding on the TAOs. Optimists believe they will make government more responsive to local needs, shift petty local politics out of the national arena (remember Banharn’s attention to local budget spending?), and subject corrupt practices to closer local scrutiny.

But pessimists fear the TAO decentralisation has been “designed to fail” because the Interior Ministry has no intention of letting go its power. They fear the TAOs will go the same way as the provincial administrative organisations (PAOs) set up in 1955. The PAOs were theoretically empowered to scrutinise the work of the provincial bureaucracy. But local officials got the PAO politicians to concentrate on sharing out infrastructure contracts. The PAOs became known as “contractors’ councils” and the bureaucrats were left alone to govern as before.

In the early 1990s there was pressure to make the PAOs more powerful and more democratic. But General Chavalit, as Interior Minister, managed to kill the scheme. That’s why decentralisation is taking place at the tambon level. But these are very small units. The average population is around 8,000. Will they have the management resources to be effective? Won’t they be easy prey for local “dark influences”? Will they know what to do with the extra budget? Will the central government, already strapped for cash, really allow this localisation of the budget to go ahead?

Local officials are very reluctant to concede power to the TAOs. A couple of years ago, Daniel Arghiros observed how the district officer in Ayutthaya made wooden name-plaques for the newly elected TAO. The members did not need plaques to know the names of their lifelong neighbours. But such plaques are part of official regalia. The district officer was inducting the new TAO members into the ruling caste, separating them from ordinary people. Just before the TAO Act came into force, the Interior Ministry appointed a district official to oversee each TAO to undertake such important training.

The quarry story above comes from some of the first research on how the TAOs are doing. These studies show district officials continue to coach the TAOs on bureaucratic practice and style. After someone is elected, local people say, he becomes remote, like an official. The TAOs take orders from bureaucrats, not from their electors. They like to operate secretly. In some places, the TAOs try to become more independent of local officialdom. Then the district officers work together with their old local contacts to deride the TAO and encourage people to get things done through old bureaucratic channels.

One person told the researchers “it’s like a buffalo tied to a post. The rope may be lengthened, but the buffalo is still tied to the post.”

The research shows that old forms of corruption continue—sharing out contracts, padding budgets, and so on. More strikingly, the research shows local resignation about this trend. “If he’s on the TAO, he must be on the take.” Kickbacks are not corruption, some say, just sin nam jai, gifts of good will. Contractors give them out of gratitude. Local people expect TAO members to behave like this, because that is simply the nature of politics. For the people? Well, “if you raise an elephant, you must live with the droppings.”

But then amongst the research, there are also stories like the quarry case above. When the TAO threatened a part of the local environment which people valued, then suddenly democracy began to work. You can’t teach participation. But you can learn it.

There are two schools of thought on the TAOs. According to the first, the “bureaucratic polity” and “local influence” are as strong as ever in provincial Thailand. Against these two forces, the TAOs don’t have a chance. According to the second, this is just the beginning. Democracy will eventually work its magic of allowing more people to participate, claim their rights, and share in the benefits. But it will take some time.