The prime minister has announced the war on corruption. He has a team of generals drawing up the battle plan. But there has been a subtle shift since Thaksin declared three wars (on drugs, poverty, corruption) in his election campaign. Three words have been added. It's now a war on corruption "in the bureaucracy".

This should not be a surprise. We are watching a momentous shift of power from the bureaucracy to the executive. This shift began over a decade ago under the Chatichai government, but was blocked by a coup and other forms of determined resistance. Through the 1990s, the politicians worked out how to share both power and corruption revenue with the bureaucrats, rather than fighting over it. But this government has more authority as a result of the 1997 Constitution and its electoral majority. It also has a clear vision that Thailand's old bureaucratic culture is a barrier against using government to promote economic growth.

Like Chatichai, this government has used appointments and promotions to bring the senior levels of officialdom under firmer political control. But it has also gone much farther with a full-scale reorganisation of ministries and departments. Beyond that, Thaksin showed his impatience with proposals for bureaucratic reform, developed under the previous government, which worked within the bureaucratic culture of rules and procedures. He believes in the superiority of the market principle. He has brought more business managers into the state enterprises, and wants to extend this practice to the senior levels of the mainstream bureaucracy, in the style of US government. He takes every opportunity to lecture senior bureaucrats about corporate management theory. He would like to be CEO of Government Inc.

Some weeks ago, the battle plan against corruption in the bureaucracy was outlined to a select group of senior bureaucrats, academics, and other interested parties. The officials were rather quiet in response. But the academics and independent observers raised queries about two aspects. First, the government is proposing to set up a new body, independent of the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC), to fight bureaucratic corruption. It wants to place this under the executive branch. Second, it hopes to do this through a Cabinet resolution rather than legislation.

The government claims a new body is needed because the NCCC is already overloaded and wants to be free of this responsibility so it can concentrate on corruption among politicians. At first sight, this seems to make sense. But in reality more is at stake than workload. Thaksin's personal antipathy to the NCCC as a result of his assets case is well-known. More broadly, he and other members of his government have wondered aloud why a few appointed people should have the power to sit in judgement over those elected by the masses.

Thaksin and other politicians are opposed to the key idea of the 1997 Constitution that politicians need to be monitored by "independent bodies". Famously he said that these bodies did not deserve their budgets if they did not work in concert with the executive. This government is gradually undermining the independence of these bodies in practice by influencing the appointment of their members. But it would probably like to undermine the principle as well. Diminishing the role of the NCCC is part of that process. The NCCC's workload could be eased by increasing its resources. But strategically this government would prefer to begin replacing the NCCC with a body under executive control.

Dividing the war on corruption between separate bodies monitoring politicians and bureaucrats respectively has another problem. Is the reality so neatly divided?

Several researches on corruption in Thailand in recent years have reached the same conclusions. Most corruption is confined to a handful of departments (police, land, customs, tax) and the allocation of government contracts (especially construction). Businessmen are the main payees. Officials pay money to occupy the posts with the best opportunities for graft. Politicians are intimately involved, especially with the systems for contract allocation and position buying.

Several big corruption scandals of recent years have demonstrated collusion between bureaucrats and politicians. Focusing the corruption war on the bureaucrats could be a way to absolve the politicians. This fear might be unfounded were it not for the fact that this trend has already become well established under this government. Somehow all the bubbling scandals about politicians have gone flat. The accusations about overseas labour migration disappeared. The host of scandals in the Ministry of Agriculture faded away. A direct accusation of graft against a former minister was revoked after a backstairs compromise. The impeachment charges raised by the opposition have been rejected by a series of split decisions in NCCC. A major case against the Shin group may fail now that the key witness was murdered.

The exception to this is Rakkiat Sukthana, the former deputy health minister now on trial. But Rakkiat's case is special in two ways. The case only came to trial because the NGO lobby would not give up. More importantly, Rakkiat has no political bargaining power. His patron (Montri Pongpanit) died, and his party (Social Action) blew up. The scandal over the Khlong Dan waste disposal project is an illuminating comparison. The fact that politicians profited from the construction contracts and land deals of this bad project is just as flagrant as the health ministry scandals. But the politicians involved still have bargaining power. The government is deploying the usual tactic of multiplying the agencies and committees involved in the investigation. This seems to show activity but in fact complicates the possibility of a clear result.

The war on corruption is a good thing. But there is concern that it represents more a shift of power than a change in the ethics of government. The real point may be to increase the power of the executive, and its ability to protect its political friends. The outcome of the Khlong Dan investigations will be the first test case.