DEVELOPMENT \N THNLAND AS A SYSTEM RURAL ‘NTERACHON PROCESS Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D. M|CH\GAN STATE UN-NERSH’Y PNRAT DECHARm 1977 mm mm Ml 29 Michigan Sta :e University This is to certify that the thesis entitled RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THAILAND AS A SYSTEM INTERACTICN PROCESS presented by Pairat Decharin has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for 777791 of essor ’Date June 20, 1977 O«7 639 (an, .' 7/L’03.,:\<-d ABSTRACT RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THAILAND AS A SYSTEM INTERACTION PROCESS BY Pairat Decharin This dissertation is concerned with the complexity of the interactional process between relevant systems in the Thai Community Development Program from the late 19505 to the 19705. The basic issue is an examination of‘a rural development program in terms of system interaction processes between the foreign agencies as donor system, the bureaucracy as a recipient system, and the rural sector as a system re- flecting the impact on rural development. Three interrelated operational models are proposed to explain the interaction patterns and its consequences among the relevant systems. The study uses published research and evaluation reports and numerous unpublished government documents as sources for his- torical and descriptive analysis. The analysis showed that the interactional process be- tween donor systems and the Community Development Department as a recipient system had no unique overall pattern. Depend— ing on the dimensions, however, the Community Development Program had been influenced by the donor system in terms of the transmission of concepts but experienced minimal influ— ence in terms of activities. Pairat Decharin In analyzing the interaction within the bureaucratic subsystems and its consequences, three kinds of decision— making processes were found-—the participative, the arbitrary, and the autocratic. The boundary maintenance process of the bureaucratic subsystems was found to be limited by the roles and functions designed by government regulations. The rank- ing status among officials in each subsystem had in part con- tributed to the difference in status between bureaucratic subsystems. The constraints and operational problems in the development projects were in part derived from the vertical interaction pattern within the bureaucratic system. The causal factors of constraints and problems were identified in the light of project approval procedure, central control of decisions concerning resources and operational approaches, and the introduction of new and unrelated development projects. The interaction pattern of the bureaucratic and rural sector systems was based on a vertical relationship. The vertical interaction pattern subsequently produced minimum results in technological and organizational changes in the rural sector when compared to changes in the physical environ— ment. Consequently, several unexpected residuals were found, such as situations of out—migration, high expectations and frustration, inequality, and dissatisfaction among the rural populace. In sum, this study provided an explanation of the na« ture and determinants of system interaction patterns in three major interrelated systems in Thai rural development. It is Pairat Decharin suggested that the system interaction model be used to ex- amine the present foreign-assisted development programs, and to reconsider the suitability of rural development strate- gies and approaches that are employed by various departments of the Ministry of Interior. The alteration of roles and functions of the existing departmentalized regional centers could lead to future regional development and change of decisional structure in the bureaucratic system without major disruption to the present structure. RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN THAILAND AS A SYSTEM INTERACTION PROCESS BY Pairat Decharin A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Sociology 1977 ACKV , ~, 'Ji‘ 1““: to c-z-tp’u. 7 -,~ 7- ., ".1 ‘fl ”19 Wm:- H: j a. g m. are 7.7;..37‘ L” Dr. 3. A1,” y... | ‘Pl’Oducxr; (Hr. , -. ,7 ‘ to have Cir,“ hr,” ;§uid:nce 7': y.‘ "Y “E Cbpyright' by 7.. 11.: ar‘dpgéglat ”(31181111 . f ":‘.‘. Lima“ .uad 8n. 0‘_7;«'.:3c>:*s:.7'. war; \‘I I an Certainly app“: "..-f" :a concern and “$521.08" AFFAJ 13:16; in .7 country, whu‘h is ::-.-. ,~, ; ' , ‘ ' u GXCB'Kin 1.0 the A’H'E'SJE'JH‘E W generously .u. fiance: '0 ar- “h pursue my dccrnrai Stu-'11“.- :1 937’!!!" Dunlap, Santa Welt“. Peru“ 3” gratitude to {atrn sachanmact ”echelon “Quote-co: MG. “We! mm. cable m . -aJi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere appreciation to a number of people who helped make this dissertation possible. Special thanks are given to Dr. James Zuiches my major ad- visor, and Dr. J. Allan Beegle whom I have worked with most closely in producing this thesis. More importantly, these two professors have conscientiously provided intellectual views and guidance as well as encouragement and support throughout my days as a graduate student. Professors Milton H. Steinmueller and Harry Schwarzweller have contributed by their insights and encouragement as members of my guidance committee. I am certainly appreciative of their sympathies and genuine concern and interest about rural development conditions in my country, which is the basis of my study. Gratitude is extended to the Agricultural Development Council, Inc. who generously extended to me the fellowship that enabled me to pursue my doctoral studies. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Patra Rochanaluck, Natchaleo Youngnuntwatana, Tipawan Punlap, Kanta Upathum, Parida Sastraroochi, and Ocha Chanswan of the Community Development Department for providing assistance in obtaining relevant information in the conduct of this study. I am most grateful to Professor Edmond W. Alchin of the Institute for Community Development, for his father—son ii relationship which has inspired me, and for his unwavering interest and continued encouragement during my graduate training. I am also thankful for Dr. Alfred Kramer of the Agency for International Development, for his efforts in providing information regarding this study, and for his con- stant informal encouragement and intellectual stimulation that motivated me to pursue my graduate studies. The greatest debt that I owe is to my wife, Supap, who has given me moral support, and my son, Pasu, both of them have shared my frustrations throughout my graduate work and during the thesis research. Lastly, the people who have shaped my life most are my late grandparents,and my mother and father. Whatever I achieve is due largely to the silent love I have received from them. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter I. INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . The Research Problem . . . . Objectives of the Study . . Review of Literature and Theoretical II. Orientation . . . . . . Internal and External Impetus in Development Strategies . . . Bureaucracy and Its Effect in the Development Program . . . . . . . Syndromes of Bureaucratic Organization System Approach as a Theoretical Framework . . . . . Methodology and Hypothetical Model . . . The Model of Systems Interaction Process Unit and Scope of Analysis . . . . Data Source and Method of Analysis . . HISTORICAL CONDITIONS IN THAILAND . . . . The Development of Thai Bureaucracy . . The Monarchy Period . . . . . The Reformation and Constitutional Period . . . . . . . . The Contemporary Administrative Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . Observations . . . . . The Community Development Program in Thailand . . . . . . . . . . . Historical Background . . . . . . Philosophy and Objectives . . . . Organizational Structure . . . . . . . Development Projects and Implementation. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv Page viii Ali _ . _—.'._ .1 __.,...___1___.. Chapter III. INTERACTION BETWEEN THE DONOR AND THE ' RECIPIENT SYSTEMS, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THAI COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM . . . Foreign Aid in Different Perspectives Historical Background . . . . . . . . UNESCO Involvement . . . . . . . The United States Involvement . . . USOM and Rural Development . . . . . Influences and Assistances . . . . . . Adoption of Development Projects . . . Process of Program Development . . . . Interactional Patterns . . . . . . . . Superiority Syndrome . . . . . . Vertical and Horizontal Interaction Limitation of Interaction Patterns . Conclusion and Observation . . . . . . IV. INTERACTION WITHIN THE BUREAUCRATIC SUBSYSTEMS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . Functional Structure and Interactional Patterns . . . . . . . . . Functional Structure . . . . . . . . Interactional Patterns . . . . . . . Decision-Making Process . . . . Participative Decision-Making Process Arbitrary and Autocratic Decision- Making Process . . . . . . . . . Variables and Constraints . . . . . Communication Linkage and Process . . Communication Linkages . . . . . . . Downward Communication Process . . . Upward Communication Process . . . . Organizational Boundary Maintenance Process . . . . . . . Identity of Power and Status . . . . The Maintenance Process . . . . Constraints and Operational Problems in General . . Constraints and Problems in Development Project . . . . . The Causal Factors and Resolutions . . Page 123 123 125 125 136 142 142 148 150 152 153 157 162 165 165 171 179 184 189 Chapter V. INTERACTION PATTERN OF THE BUREAUCRATIC AND RURAL SECTOR SYSTEMS, AND ITS IMPACT ON RURAL PEOPLE . . . . Interaction Patterns Summary of the Impact of Development Projects . . . . Summary of Development Impact Anticipated Impact . Unexpected Residuals . Observation and Conclusion . VI. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . Summary of the Findings Implications and Recommendations Future Research . BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . vi by Amphoe. Page 198 199 203 220 228 233 235 239 239 248 257 260 Table 10. LIST OF TABLES Page USOM Community Development Advisors 1957—1972 . 96 USOM Annual obligated Support Costs to the CD Program 1957-1971 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Commodities Provided by USOM to the Community Development Department (1960-1971) . . . . . . 101 Amount of Time the Village Workers have Worked on the Development Projects Annually . . . . . 133 Number of Discussions on the Major Development Projects in the Staff Meeting 1971-1976 . . . . 144 Written—Form Linkage used for Transmitting Information within Bureaucratic Subsystems . . 154 Number of Participants in Pre-Service and In-Service Training, and Seminars held by the CD Department 1963-1970 . . . . . . . . . . 160 Decisions Derived from Quarterly Meeting Being used for Resolving the Confronted Problems . . 161 Constraints and Operation Problems found in the Development Projects, Amphoe Ra-eah . . . . 187 A Comparison of Increase in Budget, Personnel, and Number of CD Village (1963-1976) . . . . . 191 vii Figure 1. 2. LIST OF FIGURES Page An Overview Hypothesized Model of Systems Inter- action Path in Thai Rural Development . . . . . 32 The Interaction Paths between the Donor System and the Recipient System, and its Influence on Thai Community Development Program . . . . . . 33 The Interaction Paths within the Bureaucratic Subsystems and its Consequences . . . . . . . . 34 The Interaction Paths between the Bureaucratic System and the Rural Sector, and its Impact on the Community Development Program . . . . . . . 35 Process of Village Five-Year Development Plan and Annual Development Project . . . . . . . . 69 USOM Annual Obligated Support Cost . . . . . . 102 The Flow of Development Projects in Downward and Upward Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Thai Community Development Process and its Consequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Research Problem Rural development has been a major issue both in the developing and developed countries since World War II. The developing world has been constantly searching for different developmental models for the betterment of the rural sector. The developed world has been busy helping the developing world to adopt and try all possible strategies. Development theories and models have been tested and transmitted to one country after another by foreign experts, consultants of various agencies, and officials of the developing countries who are trained abroad.‘ Most of the theories and developmental models have concentrated either on technical change such as agricultural development, or on institutional change such as local organi- zational development, or on both in the rural sector. There has been too little attention given to structural change in the government bureaucratic system, although the bureaucracy is both a major actor and manipulator in rural development programs. Evaluation and assessment of rural development in many countries has continued to be focused on the acceptance and resistance of changes in the rural sector, without much 1 ‘2‘. :— 2 attention given to the intervening performance of the bureauc- racy. It is quite common to find that failure of and obsta- cles to rural development are widely blamed on the rural sec- tor when they may well be the result of external systems. Some studies implicitly point to the intrinsic constraints of a bureaucracy in operating rural development programs as the cause of dysfunctional performance. What causes this dysfunctional performance, and what are these constraints of the bureaucracy? These causal factors have not been thor- oughly investigated. One reason the bureaucracy has not been widely studied, in contrast to the study of the rural sector, is because most of the studies are done by government offi- cials, university scholars, and foreign experts. They are either part of the bureaucratic system or closely related to that system. Still another influential system, that plays a domi- nant role both in technical assistance and financial sup- port in rural development, is represented by foreign na- tions and international agencies. The foreign agencies as donor systems, are also bound by their objectives, norms, and scope. In fact the bureaucracy of the recipient country is not the sole decision-maker in adopting new developmental models. Very often it is influenced and persuaded by a do— nor system. For example, the rapid spread of community de- velopment programs after World War II in many developing countries was undoubtedly influenced by the export of such ‘programs from the developed countries. The rural sector of many countries has been the vehicle for experimenting and testing of new models and strategies introduced by outside systems. The outside systems come and go with their own time schedules, bound by their own bureauc— ratic systems, and influenced by their own political uncer- tainties. As time passes, it is the rural sector that still remains in an underdeveloped condition. The slow progress, and in some cases failure, in rural development needs an analytical framework and evaluation that takes into account more than the rural sector itself, but also the internal and external forces affecting the sector. Thailand shares a lot of the problems in rural devel- opment common to most developing countries. Numerous rural development programs have been adopted from different donor systems during the past decades. The Community Development Program in Thailand was one of the early programs adopted in 1956 on an experimental basis in limited areas. By 1962 the Community Development Program was extended to cover the entire country. Since then the Program has been the respon- sibility of a newly established department which is under the Ministry of Interior. During a 15 year period, the Com- munity Development Department has launched a number of de- velopmental projects in the rural sector. Many of the pro- jects were introduced by foreign agencies, and some were initiated by Thai policy-makers. Constraints and operational problems of development projects have constantly been found in various official documents and publications. None of the publications explicitly explained the causal factors of such constraints and operational problems. In addition to that, many new development projects continue to be introduced to the rural sector while the existing projects have not yet accomplished their objectives. Who makes the decisions about introducing new projects? What are the major deter- minants causing constraints and operational problems; is it the donor system, the recipient system, the rural sector, or are all three interdependent and influencing each other? What are some major consequences of development in the rural sector? These are some of the questions that this study seeks to answer. Objectives of the Study The purpose of this study is to formulate a hypotheti- cal model which illustrates the interaction process between the donor system, the recipient system, and the rural sector. The model will be used as a structural framework to examine the causal effects and course of actions that derive from the system interaction process. Special attention will be given in this study to the interactional process within the bureauc- ratic system. The specific objectives of the study can be summarized as follows: 1. to analyze the influence and assistance of the donor systems, and the involvement of project adoption process of the recipient system; 2. to analyze the course of actions in terms of the decision-making process, the com- munication process, and the organizational boundary maintenance process within the bureaucratic system, and to identify con- straints and operational problems that derive from these processes; 3. to analyze the influence of the bureaucratic system on the rural sector and to evaluate the impact of the Community Development Pro- gram in terms of institutional, technologi- cal and physical changes in the rural com- munities. Review of Literature and Theoretical Orientation Internal and External Impetus in Development Strategies In general, rural development can be viewed as strate- gies designed by governments to improve the economic and social life of the rural sector. In a micro view, rural de- velopment is a revised version of rural progress--not auto- matic progress, but guided change with a comprehensive plan in a designed direction. Thus, rural development requires policies and strategies that deal with all sectors of the total system and its subsystems. Development policies and strategies in rural develop- ment may be generated by the external agencies through the stimulation of foreign aid, or by the indigenous agencies. After World War II, foreign aid played a major role in so- cial development in most of the developing countries. It was quite common to find development programs being imple- mented in many developing countries under financial support or technical assistance either from a particular advanced country or from an international agency. At the same time, government officials have been sent to Western countries for education and special training. Consciously or uncon- sciously the trained officials brought back development concepts and styles of thought uniquely relevant to condi— tions in the Western world. New development programs were eventually introduced by the trained officials without care- ful consideration as to the suitability of local socio— economic conditions. The good intention of foreign agencies in introducing new approaches and strategies to the developing countries is obvious, but whether the new strategies are practical and consequences of such strategies are really beneficial to the rural sector, is doubtful. Nairn (1966) analyzed and evaluated two UNESCO educational projects in Thailand designed to stimulate the operation of Thai education in rural areas. By the 19603 the two projects had failed to achieve very much. Nairn concluded that such technical as- sistance programs had been designed to speed Western-style technological development in Asian societies without con- sidering if this was altogether a desirable or feasible - . A‘A-~-' goal of rural development. The worldwide community development movement during the late 19505 was a good example to illustrate the impor- tant role of foreign aid agencies. It was believed that the rapid growth of community development was due primarily to its promotion and financial support by the United States and several United Nations agencies. By 1960 the United Nations estimated that over sixty developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America had launched community devel- opment programs as a national strategy to promote the bet- terment of the rural sector. In the late 19508, when community development was in a decade of prominence, it was recognized as an institutional approach to rural development, local initiative was stressed in the full utilization of external as well as internal re- sources. The idea of an institutional approach received less attention during the 19605. By 1970 the issue of com- munity development is found in two major recurring themes: the first emphasizes the improvement of material conditions of life and measures success in terms of technical gains and economic growth. This type of development is sometimes expressed as the achievement of "physical targets." The second theme focuses on the development of local groups which have skills in problem solving, strong identification with the locality, and a spirit of self-reliance (Zimmerman, 1970:78). -——..—-—'——-—— Er ( According to Bernard, community development is one of the Western paradigms that is imposed on the Third World. By quoting Gunnar Myrdal's critical view, Bernard (1973:170) agrees that Western paradigms were seriously distorting; they conformed to the historical experience of the West but they did not apply to the Third World. After almost twenty years, Irwin Sanders (in Sills, 1968:178) concluded that the greatest gain from the years of experience with community development was simply the better understanding of village problems it afforded to higher government officials. Failure in development programs should not be consider— ed as the sole responsibility of the foreign agencies. Any program certainly has involved and has been affected by a number of other factors. A newly adopted program is normally considered and agreed upon by both the donor agencies and the recipient agencies. It is not totally an externally im- posed program. As Caldwell (1974) points out, the develop- ing nations have shown again and again their interest and desire to modernize. The responsibility of which values a nation attempts to preserve, and which methods will be em- ployed, is up to the developing nations themselves to decide. Bureaucrac and its Effect in the DeveIopmgn¥ Program , '" Once a development program gets started, implementa- 7tion is usually left to the bureaucratic organization of the recipient country. The foreign agency may still play a major role in technical assistance and continue financial -_.--___. support. The adopted program on one hand involves a new set of changed strategies, and on the other hand, the new strategy is administered under the old administrative structure. The achievement of the new strategy is subject to the administra- tive mechanism and the management skills of the recipient country. A bureaucracy unfortunately has its own limitations. To affect a structural change in government bureaucracy is not an overnight issue. When development strategy is transmitted into action, conflict in operation may arise within the bureaucratic hier— archy. From Nairn's (1966:125) study, he views foreign aid as an interference of alien personnel with alien methods in the internal operations of a recipient nation. At the high- est policy levels there may be agreement between donor and recipient about general lines of approach. At the working level, however, the situation changes. Some authority is needed to buttress even the most benign methods of persua- sion. The UNESCO projects provide convincing evidence that significant change in rural community depends not upon iso- lated local efforts but upon the influence at the central administration level. The central administration has its limitation in exer- cising certain authority on development programs too. The central administration is compartmentalized into different agencies. Each agency has its own assigned task and objec- tives in carrying out development programs. Although rural development has its general objectives set by the incumbent g“..— "‘vm _—.«" *1 10 government, the strategy and approach to carry out the pro- grams by different agencies may conflict with each other. Cooperation and coordination in program implementation is almost impossible when such efforts must deal with various autonomous agencies. Besides that, different regimes which come into power may formulate policies and set a priority of programs according to their political interests. A change of political power, which occurs quite often in many developing countries, undoubtedly will affect the relation- ship of the donor agencies and the recipient agencies, as well as the policies in rural development. A bureaucracy has its own history. In most of the developing nations, bureaucratic structure is either a her- itage from colonial times or a product of the monarchical pattern, or a combination of both. Siffin (1966) traced the historical development of Thai bureaucracy and found that the current structure was shaped by a monarchical struc- ture with a moderate influence of European style. No matter what the roots of the present structure, bureaucratic be- havior is certainly infused with social and cultural fac- tors. Officials who are actors in the bureaucratic system are expected to interact within the context of social values. Rubin (1974) concluded in his study that many of the opera- tional problems existing in government bureaucracy are mag- nified by the Thai's expectations of proper superior- inferior relations. In his findings, the rural official is faced with the same ambivalence about his superior and 11 subordinate roles. The official is frustrated by the need to please the bureaucratic superior, while at the same time aiding the villagers despite severe resource limitations. Tangible and intangible results in development are often am- biguous at the project implementation stage. The official is aware of the need to bring about long-term attitudinal change. Yet to survive in the bureaucracy he must produce visible results for his superior (Rubin, 1974:94). Political weakness often leads to administrative inef- fectiveness. As Riggs wrote (in Finkle and Gable, 1968:415), without firm political guidance, bureaucrats have weak in— centive to provide good service, whatever their formal, pre- entry training and professional qualifications. They tend to use their effective control to safeguard their expedient bureaucratic interests--tenure, seniority rights, fringe bene- fits, toleration of poor performance, the right to violate official norms--rather than to advance the achievement of program goals. It is hopeless to expect a strong political system especially where a country has no distinction between political party and bureaucracy. In some countries they be- long to the same group. As Myrdal (1968:392) described it, Thai ruling oligarchy consists primarily of the top echelon Of the officer corps and civilian bureaucracy: since the former have their roots in the latter, the two groups over- lap. When Riggs (1966) analyzed the problems involved in POlitical development with special reference to the role of i"? 12 bureaucracy, he concluded that Thailand is a "Bureaucratic Polity." With the exception of a few short periods, Thailand since 1932 has been a country where there have been no poli- tical parties at all. The center of authority lays with the senior officials which number fewer than 250 men. The poli- tical process has operated within this group by means of cliques and coups. The findings of Riggs in the 19605 is not much different from that of Jacobs in the 19705. When Jacobs (1971) examined Thai society in terms of institutions, he used "Patrimonialism" as a term to explain why the econanic potential of the rural sector has not been fully developed. He concluded that if it had been developed, it would have undermined the paternal service role of the bureaucracy. The bureaucratic system is not simply an intermediary to bring in new technology and financial aid from foreign countries. The foreign aid is only one part of developmen- tal input in which the recipient system has a choice to de- cide what kind of foreign input is more productive in pro- moting rural development. The question arises as to whether the recipient system is able to select the foreign input properly, then absorb and fruitfully digest the ingredients through the existing mechanism. With the nature of bureau- cratic dynamics and political weakness as discussed previ- ously, it is hard to insure a fair result of productive de- velopment programs. Study of government bureaucracy suggests that a bureau- cratic organization is an organization that cannot correct 13 its behavior by learning from its errors. Bureaucratic pat- terns of action, such as the impersonality of rules and the centralization of decision-making, have been so stabilized that they have become part of the organization's self- reinforcing equilibria (Crozier, 1968:187). Let us now look at some basic characteristics of bureaucracy. When bureaucracy refers to governmental organization, it is characterized by a rigid hierarchy of bureaus, adminis- trators and petty officials. The most important character- istics, common to most bureaucratic organizations and often stressed in the literature, are specialization of roles and tasks, the prevalence of autonomous, rational, nonpersonal rules in the organization, and the general orientation to rational, efficient implementation of specific goals (Blau, 1963). Non-personal rules determine who shall be chosen for each job. Two basic rules dominate in most bureaucratic systems. First, promotion is determined by open competitive examination, and second, seniority determines job allocation, transfer, and promotions. Usually officials' personality and past work achievements are not taken into consideration, especially when the seniority rule is applied (Crozier, 1968:188). Once a society has developed from a traditional to a modernized stage, there is a need for bureaucracies. In the twentieth century, most of the developing countries have heavily relied on the bureaucracies in their attempt to in- crease output by newly introduced technology and to allocate (“r ’u‘uu...’ 14 national resources. Social services and legal services are other major tasks of the bureaucracies. It is not only so- cial and economic goals which bureaucracies have been ex- pected to achieve. Bureaucracies are also essential in meet- ing basic political requirements, at least for the mainten- ance of national independence and unity. In using bureaucracy to deal with these social econo- mic, and political problems, leadership in bureaucracy is confronted with difficulty between the immediate organiza- tional objectives and the overall bureaucratic objectives. Since bureaucracy comprises numerous organizations with dif- ferent objectives to carry out specific assigned tasks, or- ganizational boundary maintenance is therefore an unavoidable phenomenon when these organizations have to interact with each other within certain limits. Every organization, however, must continue to adjust to some kind of goal change in order to cope with the chang— ing environment. Government organizations are no exception, although the ultimate goal is to serve the public, means and approach to achieve such a goal are often flexible. In reality, the organization's original objective may be neg- lected without being changed officially and the organization nay develop alternative or competing objectives which are more in line with the interests of its staff. Or the or- ganization may see its predominant task as maintaining and expanding itself (Etzioni, 1969:155). 15 Change in organizational objectives, and development strategies are consequences derived from the decision—making process. The structure of decision-making within the bureau- cratic organization is one of the predominant factors that limits the design and process in making decisions. In gen- eral, the power of decision-making in most bureaucratic or- ganizations is focused at the points where the control of resources is located. People who make decisions are often at the top and lack direct firsthand knowledge of the prob- lems confronted. On the other hand, the field officials who know the problems can never have the power to decide. A bureaucratic organization is composed of superimposed strata that do not communicate very much with each other. There is very little room for the subordinates to cut across the strata to help the superior in making decisions (Crozier, 1968:190). Decisions in major policies are often made where power is located. The concentration of decision-making and the concomitant strata isolation make it impossible to ex- pect a continuous adjustment in development policy which will coincide with the changing environment in the rural sector. Since development policy is formed at the top, a uniform approach to all rural communities is often the case, irrespective of differences in social and economic condi- tions. Of course, almost every position in the bureaucracy -involves some decision-making, but most decisions are mat- ters of routine judgment, or decisions that must conform to the top echelon. 16 Decision making process is very much influenced by the leadership pattern. It has been found that leadership behavior affects both behavior and attitudes at lower levels in the organization (Hall, 1972:268). As in Gouldner's (1950:17) definition, a leader is usually any individual whose behavior stimulates patterning of the behavior in some group. The leader in the bureaucratic organization, there- fore, has an influence on what the subordinates do and think. In this case, the lower echelon may easily alter their decision in order to find consistency with those of the leaders. In most hierarchical bureaucracies the ten- dency of subordinates to go along with the wishes of their superior is not uncommon. In order to avoid inconsistency with a superior, the lower echelon often pass a non-routine issue upward for decision. In Thailand, the habit of pass- ing decisions upward has resulted in great delay in public service. Even ministers have been known to refuse to de- cide matters that are clearly within their jurisdiction, preferring instead to pass them on to the cabinet for col— lective resolution (IBRD, 1959:225). Decisions are not merely based on individual premises. When an individual decides upon a particular course of action, some of the premises upon which this decision is based may have been imposed upon him by the exercise of the organization's authority over him; some may have been the result of his training; others may be his desire for ef- ficiency, and still others may be a consequence of his or- .ganizational loyalty, and so forth (Simon, 1965:123). Of 17 all the modes of influence, authority can be considered as one of the major forces that give an organization its command to move on action. The exercise of authority involves an expectation of obedience by the one who possesses authority and a willingness to obey by those who are in the scope of authority. The division of labor, the specialization of roles and tasks in bureaucracy imply a hierarchy of author- ity. Rural development requires not a single agency but compartmentalized agencies with specified tasks to perform. Therefore, the bureaucratic structure is not only a horizon- tal line of agencies but a strata of vertical lines of functional units that possess certain amounts of legitimate authority. These intermingled organizations interact with each other according to their roles and functions. When personnel, equipment, money, and technical know-how are scarce, there is a tendency to protect and preserve the re- sources, and to search for means of obtaining resources in order to maintain the organization. The interaction pat- terns that occur under the sphere of legitimate authority and the scarcity of resources between functional units will certainly affect the development programs, and consequently there will be an impact on the rural sector. Syndromes of Bureaucratic Organization Perrow (1972:59) reclassified Weber's ideal types of bureaucracy into three major categories: (1) the structure 18 and functions; (2) the means of rewarding efforts; and (3) protection and promotion of individuals. The discussion that follows is an attempt to use Perrow's classification in reflecting some syndromes of bureaucratic organization in some countries where studies have been done both.by Western scholars and indigenous researchers. ThegStructure and Functions Riggs (1964:209) distinguishes between authority and control in the developing countries. "Authority" is formal power while "control" is informal. It is often difficult for an outside observer to determine the informal authority structure in bureaucracy. Personal patterns of power instead of legitimate authority often become the dominant force in the bureaucracy. In some cases informal power can flow from a man who happens to be in favor with those at the top of the bureaucracy. The formal organizational chart of an agency is only a written hierarchical blueprint to identify the formal designation of functions. As Riggs points out, "if you find an organizational chart which purports to de- scribe the structure of a government department, with elabo- rate statements of the duties of each unit and post in the department, you will hold this chart formalistic if you find the real people and units in the department doing dif- ferent things from those mentioned in the chart" (Riggs, 1964:210). The chart itself indicates the relationship of authoritative hierarchy within the organization, but in real 19 situations one may find the control of power is not consist- ent with that of. the chart. In spite of extensive written regulations, it is the informal rules which count in most of the government bureau— cracies. The informal rules can be a deviation of formal regulations; the deviation varies among persons, and depends upon the effectiveness of the control mechanisms which oper- ate in the bureaucracies. Studies in many countries show that informal rules become more institutionalized and may be a more effective form of control than written regulations. It is common for formal rules to be ignored altogether (Riggs, 1964). The written functions and rules of an agency can also be used by individuals for their own advantage. A common Saying quoted by Varma (1973:97) in Indian bureaucracy, "Show me the man, and I will show you the rule." It is un- doubtedly true that the written rules have been perverted to benefit individuals in many government bureaucracies. The perversion of rules is a crucial factor in creating cor- ruption. In every government agency, there is no doubt about Who ranks where within the hierarchy, because the rankings of the individual officials follow a strictly defined hier- archical pattern. Since the rank and hierarchy means power, it is quite common to find that officials put emphasis on the Power characteristics of their job rather than on their 8e”Vice obligations. The bureaucratic employees tend to 100k upon themselves as officials rather than public servants 20 (Greenberg, 1970:7). The hierarchy has its meaning in rank and authority whether it is formal or informal. At the same level of hierarchy within a given agency you may find that there is a more dominant force in one position than in the others. It all depends on the matter of function and leader- ship pattern. How one can preserve the dominant power with- in the given position is a personal tactic. As Rubin (1974: 3) observes in his study of Thai bureaucracy: "The bureaucrat is portrayed as desiring only his own career advancement within the extremely hierarchical and personalistic bureaucracy. To achieve these ends he must spend his time in pleasing and "buttering up" his boss. The su- perior in turn is concerned with maintaining his own position. Accordingly, formalistic reports which make the subordinate appear good on paper are more valuable to the official than the successful completion of a development project." Because of the formally and informally defined hierar- ChY', an intense stratification within the agency is created. This: in turn creates an obstacle in the communication pro- CESS. It is very difficult to transmit critical and controversial ideas through the hierarchical 'A ccnnmon complaint of superiors is that whenever r101‘s want to make a decision, they ask for more information, but always get back the same set of information channels. the supe— alternative information, le"=‘Vling no range for choice. All controversial information has lBeen filtered out from level to level before reaching the top . bureaucracy . Thus, changes do not occur very often within the 21 At least two common symptoms appear in the developing countries with respect to the political control over the bureaucracy. First, due to the weakness of political organi- zation. There is no real power to control the bureaucratic performance. Second, an intense overlapping between the Political and bureaucratic systems. It is hard to determine Who is an administrator and who is a politician, since "bureaucrats" also take part in political activity and "politicians“ make administrative decisions (Riggs, 1964: 55-56) . One popular administrative pattern which exists in the devealoping world is "centralization." Almost every one knows abotit it, but no one is able to make any drastic change in it. Finucane (1974:177) describes the situation in Tanzania whixzh.relates to the rural development program as follows: It is sometime difficult for local people to respond with enthusiasm to a call for develop- ment work which may be to their benefit, but which has been decided upon and planned by an authority hundreds of miles away....A civil servant in a region cannot spend even a single cent of government money without asking and receiving authority from his Principal Secre- tary who is in Dar es Salaam." It is quite clear that the centralized structure of the gov- ernment bureaucracy is not only a dilemma within the organi- zaticnl, but it is also a serious setback to the development ”Oat-am as well . 22 The Means of Rewardingifforts Bureaucratic employees exhibit a wide range of goals and motivations for seeking organizational positions. Among the most important motivations are income, prestige, power, security, loyalty, and personal self-interest (Dawns, l967:2). Greenberg discusses the bureaucratic motivation in Mexico and divided the employees into different categories reflect- ing similar characteristics in most of the developing coun- tries. According to Greenberg (1970:104-105) , the motiva- tion of base workers and low-ranking personnel appears to Center on security and convenience. This category does not Seem to place emphasis on efficient performance, viewing their work as something which they are obligated to do rather than as something which serves a useful and necessary purpose. The middle-level technicians and administrators reflect their Situation with ample loyalty to the superior. The techni- Cians take pride in work while the administrators are greatly motivated by the desire for power and income. The bureau- cratic elite appears to be motivated by several seemingly contradictory desires. They all display great pride in the accomplishments of the agency and a wish to serve the public. H°“’eVer, a desire to increase their incomes is also a strong motivational force. The chance to make money is institu- tionalized in the positions which the administrative elites occupy, which are of a reward nature. The use of official cars for personal affairs is also a. Colman practice among most government officials, and it | IT ___ 23 is a source of personal prestige. One of the excuses known to the public is that a car is too expensive for middle ad- ministrators to purchase, therefore, it is rational to offer some personal inducement to the officials. This sort of issue has been debated in public during the past two decades in Thai bureaucracy, but there seems to be no alternative solution. On the average, officials receive lower salaries when Compared to those who work in the private sector. But the Social esteem and prestige that officials receive is particu- larly high. Security and privilege after retirement is also One of the major attractions to most government employees (Greenberg, 1970) . The attraction has great impact on the attitude of the parents toward the future career of their children. Research results in Thailand reveal that most fatmers believe their son's future career would be best if he becomes a government employee (Yatsushiro, 1966). The reason is not the high income but rather the special privi- 1.ages and social prestige that go with government positions. In countries where political organization is either weak or overlapping with the bureaucracy, the fringe bene- fits which the officials receive is almost equal to the nor— mal Salary. For instance, officials in Mexico (Greenberg, 1970) are entitled to receive overtime pay; arbitrary com- p ensation between the difference of the government salary and the private business; and over-salary according to cost of living for various locations where officials are stationed. 24 Certain levels of officials in Thailand receive children's education fees, rental housing costs, medical care, overtime pay, and relocation costs. It is commonly found that the higher ranking officials receive greater rewards than the lower ranking officials in most of the fringe benefits. Be- sides, the administrative elite also receive extra pay for serving on various committees. In analyzing bureaucratic motivation, Anthony Downs (1967:95) concludes that there are two types of employees in most organizations--"climbers“ and "conservers." Climb- Ers tare persons in whose value systems power, prestige, and income are dominant motives. They are young men on the way up, career-oriented men who do not stress security as a goaJL. Conservers, on the other hand, have security as their mail: goal. Retention of benefits is a primary preoccupation Of (sonserver types. They consider themselves professional employees of the government. There is no empirical research datii to support the conclusion of Downs in the developing country bureaucracy as yet. As Heady (in Riggs, 1971:460) POiths out, the knowledge of actual behavior in developing bureaucracies is growing but is still grossly inadequate, partlicularly as to internal operating characteristics. HoweVer, general findings from various studies indicate that although many officials are not themselves strongly motivat- ed to join the bureaucracy, most of them do expect a career in the bureaucracy to provide power, high‘status, a life of c“““fort, and more importantly security. 25 Protection and Promotion for the Individuals In most of the developing bureaucracies, recruitment for new officials is usually based on educational qualifica- tions and a competitive examination. This is true of the entering stage, for after all, success in a government ca- reer is not necessarily measured by one's technical compe- tency and accomplishment. Promotion may require selective qualifications and educational attainment, and may or may not require a competitive test, all of which vary as to par- ticulars from country to country. However, the test results are not always the major factor determining the promotion of a person. Other factors like "suitability" are sometimes more important. Many studies indicate that the recruitment of new of- ficials, the promotion process, and the transfer of offi— cials within the bureaucracies are quite often influenced by politicians and by kinship relations. According to Varma (1973:97) political influence constitutes a potent danger in Producing incompetent officials since many of them were se— lected not on merit, and they continue in service in spite of bad performance. Greenberg (1970:100) describes frankly that a very common method of recruitment, apart from direct persOnal or family connections, is the writing of a letter by a high-ranking politician to someone who. has ultimate authbrity in the selection process. This incidence of such intervention applies to others as well as politicians. Very Often a "verbal consultation" or a letter can also be written - \ U can vv‘ a I. A '6- q '7' 1 26 by a member of the bureaucratic elite to his subordinate who is in charge of the recruiting process. The promotion of officials to different positions, in- fluenced by kinship, clan group, and clique relationships, is another common practice within the bureaucracies. One can easily find relatives, kinship groups who are working together in the same agency. Key positions of an agency are Passed out among clan members. In addition to that, senior- ity plays an important role in position promotion. The im- Pact of these promotional rules is to hamper many young men Who are active at the beginning but tire of waiting in line. Even when their early achievement is well accepted, they cannot advance to the next level because of their age or the number of years in service is not sufficient to qualify them. As a consequence, seniority systems seem to preserve the status quo of unqualified officials in the bureaucracy (Vanna, 1973). Some studies reveal that position promotion in the bureaucracy does not necessarily rely on seniority and ac- °°mplishment. The individual official knows that his ad- vancement depends on the‘justice or prejudice of his supe- rior - The easy way to be promoted is to buildup personal loyalty, and to devote oneself to his superior's personal affa11:5 more than official business. As Wit (1968:142) Pointed out in his study, "excessive subservience and defer- en°e to superior leads individuals to devote more attention to Pleasing and cultivating their bosses than to efficient A" to“ RF ' v‘v 1 so: ba- ”'7 hi. 4., M.‘ ‘IO .4. vs. ‘e .O F... (n u "I 27 and productive job performance." Though some of the instances cited here may be extra- ordinarily remote by Western standards, yet these are ob- served cases that appear in various studies and many more could be cited. Most of the studies in contemporary bureau- cracy tend to examine, clarify, and describe the bureaucratic characteristics as an ongoing phenomenon without looking deeply into the causal factors that create such characteris- tics. This might be one of the most interesting and challeng- ing areas for future research. I would like to conclude with a brief reference to a personal opinion which I wrote some tinue ago. In the words of Perrow (l970:4), "people's at- titrudes are shaped at least as much by the organization in Wthch they work as by their pre—existing attitudes." This is a.reflection of my attitude concerning how one can sur- Vive in the bureaucracy. "There are four alternatives that one can choose to survive in the bureaucracy: First, you must forget and ignore your good intention, your self- discipline, your life philosophy, and your tech- nical qualifications, so that you can enjoy and go along with the bureaucratic system. Life is too short to be a reformist in the bureaucracy. Secondly, if you cannot devote yourself to the first category, then it is better for you to de- cide, as early as possible, to leave the govern- ment before it is too late. If you decide to stay, then be prepared and ready to sacrifice yourself and cease to grow intellectually. Thirdly, you may follow what Buddha called 'A middle way,‘ pretend and direct yourself to go along with the system, but you should not con- form or insist others to do so if you are in a position to avoid it. You may change some things within your legitimate power whenever you have a chance, but remember the change must not affect 28 too seriously on other's personal interests. You must keep building up your competency and gaining credibility within the system, so that you will have a constant energy to fight in a middle way. By doing so you may not gain any- thing for your own, and may not change anything drastically. The last alternative is to be a revolutionist or an aggressive reformist. You may be labeled as 'Deviant' in the system. If you choose this pattern, the position you hold will not last long, especially if you are hold- ing a key position. There are two possible consequences: one is to transfer you to some- where with idle role and hang you up in the corner; and the serious one is to fire you with an excuse of deviant behavior if you do not give up your choice, there are a lot of traps you can easily fall into." "System Approach" as a Theoretical Framework The following discussion is an attempt to draw a theo- retical framework which will serve as a conceptual tool in this study to analyze the complexity of rural development In. tzearms of system interaction process. Many approaches to a 1:11eeoretical framework may be employed in organizing a study of 11‘11ral development. The "system.approach" seems to be an apTPIPC>priate one when social phenomena are under study. As It Seéee it, the system approach can help us to understand the strwlsztural conditions in the rural communities as innumerable interconnections with other systems both within and without. The system approach can direct us to comprehend the inter- reliited systems, the functions which a particular system per:forms, and how it affects the other systems. Toennies, Max Weber, Durkheim, and Cooley acknowledge the fact that man is not only an individual and a social be- ing, but part of groups and larger social structures (Chodak, 29 1973:124) . Man, is undoubtedly the most vital component of the system, who constantly interacts and makes adjustments to other enviromnents. It is my belief that societies are constituted of systemic relations and, therefore, have to be explored as systems. This is not to say that all other approaches have to be replaced by a system approach. I would agree with those critics of system theories who point out that numerous societal phenomena cannot be explained by means of a system approach. Yet numerous questions posed by rural development can be best answered by means of a sys- tem approach because of its complexity and involvement of various sectors . The word "system" is used here to refer to any group of human beings (Axinn, 1975:2), members of which share cer- tain key elements like objectives, norms, status-role, power, and social rank. In one case the system may be the Community 13e"elopment Department of the Ministry of Interior. In an- other case the system could be a group of administrators at the provincial level, or a group of local leaders in the village. Systems are constituted of standardized, replace- able. exchangeable elements in patterned, repetitive, regu- lar interactions (Chodak, 1973:123). An effective under- standing of system action and of system interaction process “3968 to identify the elements comprising the system as in- dications and measurement of differences in the related sys- tens, For the purpose of this study, the key elements of a 8(DC-tial system have attributes as follows (Loomis and Beegle, 30 1975 : 3-7) : Ends and objectives: Changes that members of the sys- temn expect to accomplish through the operation of the system. Retaining of the status quo is also an end and objective of tdaes system. Ngrms: Rules or guiding standards that are socially accepted or unaccepted within and without the sys- tem- Norms govern the application of means in the attain- nnesrai: of ends or objectives. Status-role: Both are important éieei:eerminants of what is to be expected from an incumbent and 11c>vv the role is performed by him. Power: The ability to control or command over others. There is legitimized power designated as authority and non—legitimized power which may tiiliea the form of influence or coercive force. Social rank Lt Standing: A member's rank in a given system is derived fr‘Dnn more than one status-role in the system, from status- role outside the system, and power and wealth both inside and outside the system. The above elements can be applied to individual members of the system, or to a system as well. The attributes or elel“ents are significant determinants of system interaction pattern. Interaction between systems is a reciprocal action or linfluence--a two-way directional process. There are two kixuas of interaction: horizontal interaction--interaction based on equality of position of the interacting system; and vertical interaction--interaction based on differences of POSition of the interacting systems. 31 When system interaction takes place, at least three majcxr processes have been involved in conducting and direct- iJ g ‘the patterns and consequences of interaction: the decision-making process; the organizational boundary mainte- nance process; and the communication process. The decision- making process is a process whereby alternate courses of action are reduced. The strategy of action involves decision- rnaking is primarily based on the systems' members in terms of 't11£3 available choices and the maintenance of the elements. <2<>nnmnunication is a major process that serves to transmit in- ftblrnnation which includes knowledge, opinions, attitudes, and deczision of action from one system to another. Communication between systems is carried on through formal and informal channels which usually provide the opportunity for two-way interaction in which individuals are both imparters and re- cei‘rers (Loomis and Beegle, 1975:8) . Organizational bound- ary maintenance is a process whereby members of the system retain their identity, value orientation, and interaction pattern when a system interacts with other systems. When a System engages in the process of boundary maintenance, it actively resists forces that tend to destroy the identity and the interaction pattern (Loomis and Beegle, 1975:9) . Methodology and Hypothetical Model E!Ei_hodel of Systems Interaction Process Having reviewed the relevant literature and theoreti- cal framework, it is appropriate to propose a model of 32 systems interaction process _for the study of rural develop- ment in Thailand. It is quite clear that the previous re- search has not linked the related determinants of rural de- velopment together and conceived them all as a system inter- actional process. Failure and success in rural development is not merely a question of strategy and approach, and it is 11c>1: a question of western paradigm, nor a question of bureau- <:1:£11:ic dynamics. Rather, rural development is a complex pro— cess that involves compartmentalized systems interacting with each other. As the literature appears, the theoretical IRC><:ess between the donor system and the recipient system. The Foreign Community Agencies Development Department in Thailand -¥‘ 2 2 : I {-..--.----. """""'R Elsaggor System : Community Recipient System : Development : Program Figure 2 Stage One: the Interaction Paths Between the Donor System and the Recipient System, and its Influence on Thai Community Development Program 34 Figure 3 presents the second stage of the interaction pajflns within the bureaucratic subsystems and its consequences in terms of constraints and operational problems in the Com- munity Development Program. If the hypothesized model is valid, I would expect that the constraints and operational problems in the Community Development Program are conse- qgtieerices of the vertical interaction process within the bureau- cratic subsystems . Po 1 icy-making and Re source-control sttem Constraints and Operational I wnistrating I l : Problems in I I “\d Supervising S s w Community Development gimmementation —& Operatirg W Figure 3 Stage Two: the Interaction Paths Within the Bureaucratic Subsystems and its Consequences 35 Figure 4 presents the third stage of the interaction ‘patflis between the bureaucratic system and the rural sector, axni .its impact on the Community Development Program. If the hypothesized model is valid, I would expect that the impact of the Community Development Program is limited by the ver- txiczail interaction process between the bureaucratic system axidi the rural sector. Bureaucratic System .‘+ ......................... ‘ i ! E Impact of the i .. ------ ------..: Community 3 ; Development 5 ; Programs 3 ',.'.'""" ‘ "““""““""'. Rural Sector Figure 4 Stage Three: the Interaction Paths Between the Bureaucratic System and the Rural Sector, and its Impact on the Community Development Program 36 Unit and Scope of Analysis In the first stage of the hypothesized model, the organi- zation will be used as a unit of analysis. For instance, the United NationsEducational, Scientific, and Cultural Organiza- tion (UNESCO), and the United States Operations Missions (USOM) will be considered as a separate unit of analysis in the donor system; and the Community Development Department will be con- sidered as sole unit in the analysis of the recipient system. The scope of analysis in the first stage will include the his- torical background of foreign aid to Thai CD in general and then narrow to focus on the aid of UNESCO and USOM, the influ- ences and assistance of the donor systems, the involvement and Process of project adoption by the recipient system, and fi- na11y the interactional patterns between the two systems. In the second stage of the hypothesized model, the unit of analysis is based on three interrelated bureaucratic subsystems. Namelyp (1) the policy-making and resource- control system which refers to (a) the Director-General and his Deputies of the Community Development Department, (b) the CD Regional Center's Directors, and (c) the Directors of Divisions in the CD Department; (2) the administrating and supervising system which refers to (d) the provincial Governors and their Deputies, (e) the provincial functional Officials, and (f) the District Officers; and (3) the imple- mentation and operating system which refers to (g) the dis- trict functional officials, (h) the district CD Officers, and (i) the village workers. 37 The scope of analysis in stage two will include the \k functional structure and interactional patterns of the three bureaucratic subsystems. The seven major development pro- jects will be used as case studies to analyze the course of aetion in terms of the decision-making process, the conununica- tion process, and the organizational boundary maintenance Process between the bureaucratic subsystems. The constraints and operational problems of the seven major development pro- 3 acts will also be diagnosed to find out the causal factors that may derive from the interaction process of the bureau- Q ratic subsystems . In the final stage of the hypothesized model, the Com- tttlalmity Development Department will again be considered as a L11'lit of analysis in the bureaucratic system, and the rural villages where CD programs have been operated will be treated as rural sectors. The scope of the analysis will include the investigation of the interaction patterns between the bureau- QI‘atic system and the rural sector. The impact of the Com- I“'llinity Development Programs will be evaluated by individual G~evelopment projects as well as by areas of operations. Data Sources and Method of Analysis There are three reasons why this study has chosen to eIuploy a documentary analysis instead of survey research. B'J'.rst, there have been numerous field research reports and Q15ficia1 documents which contain sufficient information for this study. The data sources that will be used for the g 38 analysis can be classified into six major categories: (1) the field research and evaluation reports published by the Community Development Department, and by Western researchers; (2 ) the CD staff and field officials meeting minutes; (3) the monthly summary on problems of field operations; (4) the administrators and field officials seminar reports; (5) the Selected official correspondence and circular letters; and ( 6 ) the official. statistical bulletins. Secondly, from my personal experience in working as a researcher in the government bureaucracy since 1962, it is J:‘a‘ther difficult to design research which can avoid bias and the unwillingness of the incumbent officials in answer- ing the questionnaires, especially when this study is design- ed to analyze several correlated bureaucratic phenomena. F:i—Jnally, as Director of the Research and Evaluation Division Of the Community Development Department since 1969, this would be an appropriate time for me to reinvestigate, search QtIt, and analyze the research reports which I have personally 6infected and participated in during the past decade and put them objectively together from a theoretical perspective. The method employed in analyzing the documentary gQurces will be an analytical explanatory presentation. where will be no attempt to use statistical tests. Instead genuine cases in point, narrative descriptions, and statisti- <2a1 tables will be quoted and reconstructed from the avail- alite sources in order to support or to reject the hypothe- sized model. A check-list technique will also be used as 39 an analytical tool for classifying and sorting out pertinent information from various sources according to the scope of this study. N A .--* ./-\\ CHAPTER II HISTORICAL CONDITIONS IN THAILAND This chapter presents a descriptive analysis of the Gleaxreelopment of Thai bureaucracy and the emergence of the Cofllnmnity Development Program in Thailand. The first sec- 124i.<311 will examine the historical background of Thai bureau- <:=J=‘Ei<:y from.the monarchy period to the present administrative £3"tzilf-‘Iacture. The second section will deal with an analysis of the historical background, philosophy, objectives, organi- 2=i3l‘tLional structure, and development projects of the contem- porary Community Development Program in Thailand. This chap- t1‘523=’ is designed to provide some general background informa- tion before proceeding on to the results of the analysis of the system's interactional process in Thai rural development. The Development of Thai Bureaucracy As George Homans (Blau, 1975:136) has observed, if you want to know why institutions are what they are today, "look at the historical record of their development." The same principle can be applied to the bureaucracy. The literature Q E Thai bureaucracy has been written by several authors ex- I):'La.ining different dimensions according to their objectives (Jacobs, 1971; King, 1954; Kingsbury, 1961; Nairn, 1966; R:i~9g_c;, 1966; Rubin, 1974; Shor, 1960; Siffin, 1966; and 40 41 Sutton, 1962) . One point of general agreement found among these authors is that Thai bureaucracy has roots in the tra- ditional structure of Thai society, and that the contemporary bureaucratic structure has been influenced by a historical Pattern which continues down to the present, despite various changes and modifications within the bureaucratic system it- Self. This section does not seek to duplicate or even to Search for a detailed historical perspective of Thai bureau- eiraxzy. Instead, the purpose is to examine the available 1 iterature written by the authors mentioned above and then to reorganize it into an unsophisticated but informative fac- t1Ital account, in order to illustrate the past development and present trends in the bureaucratic structure. As I see it , the development of Thai bureaucracy can be roughly di- vided into three major periods: the monarchy; the reform and constitutional period; and the contemporary structure. The following overview of the evolution of bureaucracy in Thailand is a product and combination of findings from the l§ons and articles mentioned above. 'le-h \e Monarchy Period During the Sukothai Kingdom (1237-1350) , the major fea- 1lure of bureaucracy was a paternal king and a territorially- based feudalism. There was little distinction between ci- vilians and soldiers; all men performed both military and cElvil duties under the feudal system (Siffin, 1966). The 42 traditional bureaucracy was formally organized on the premise that the people’existed to serve the king. The King pos- sessed all legitimate power. Yet the King was not unbounded. His power to some extent was limited by influences of Bud- dhism, his personal charisma, and the traditional kinship sl’sztem. The monarch's role as chief of state was viewed as Comparable to that of the‘father of a family. In this ca- Pacity, the kings had direct contact with their subjects. The various provinces were governed by loyal semi-hereditary rlobles who, in turn, received the allegiance of warrior nobles operating from agricultural estates to which the peas- aritry was attached. Social and economic systems were inte- grated with the political system, whose domination was justi- fied pragmatically by the ability of its hierarchy of royal and noble leaders to perform successfully such functions as ~the maintenance of law and order, the administration of jus- tice, and the provision of military defense. After the decline of the Sukothai Kingdom, a rival ruler from U-thong gained power and moved the capital to Ayudhaya-- the Ayudhaya Kingdom (1350-1767). After the 14503, feudal- ism ceased to be based on land and became a personal system. The warrier nobles became civil servants. Under this new system, everyone in the Kingdom, from the government offi- cials to the lowest freeman, had a definite place in the hierarchy. A system of ranks and titles for officials and royal princes, and a system of grades for common officials, ——___ __ _ / 43 indicate the status, rights and privileges of each person. The most impressive characteristic of the bureaucracy during / this era was its elaborate and explicit hierarchism. The Status of each participant in the system was defined in great detail, essentially in terms of the position he hap- Pened to occupy in the bureaucracy. Evidence shows that the foundation of Thai bureaucracy was laid by King Boromtailokanat in 1448 (Kingsbury, 1961) . The King spelled out a pattern of socio-bureaucratic organi- zation whose forms persisted for more than four hundred years. In its broadest sense, this pattern encompassed EVery person in the kingdom. Its essential characteristic was a structure of ranks or statuses which designated every conceivable level in the society. A key feature of the rank- ing arrangement was the quantification of status designated through the use of Sakdina (power over land). The bureau- Qracy was differentiated from the populace at large in terms of status as well as functions. Some of the effects of the bureaucratic ranking system during the later period of the Ayudhaya Kingdom have lasted Until today. For instance, the importance of status in of- ficial ranking, the superior-subordinate relationship, and the system of official ranks which are granted by the present King to the individual officials. During the reign of King Boromtailokanat, the bureau- cracy was organized into two essential parts (Siffin, l966)--. a headquarters and a set of provinces. The headquarter's _ 44 organization included the King, and two great ministers, the heads of the civil and military sections. The civilian side included four major departments: Royal Household (Krom Wang); Treasury (Krom Pra Klung): Interior (Krom Muang); and Agri- culture (Krom Na). Outside the capital, the country was ar- ranged into provinces. These provinces provided manpower and a flow of wealth into the capital. The provincial gov- eI‘nors, appointed by the King, were responsible to him through the great Minister of Civilian Affairs. This highly central- ized pattern between the capital and the province still re- I‘l'tains basic to the relationships today (Sutton, 1962) . The Reformation and Constitutional Period After the fall of the Ayudhaya Kingdom, there was a Short-lived regime of King Klungdhon,who defeated the Burmese in 1767. In the following year, Bangkok became the capital Of the Chakkri Reign. In the nineteenth century, the Chakkri I(ings began to engage in extensive trade with the West and the East. The earliest impacts of the West upon the Thai administrative system occurred during the reign of King Rama II (1809-1824) . An English ambassador proposed the farming Out of collection of taxes to private entrepreneurs (Siffin, 1966) . The practice was adopted. The adoption of a tax on farms changed the relationship of the King and the subjects. The labor for public works was hired instead of being requi- Sitioned. 45 The association with foreign traders and the threat of Anglo-French colonialism during the Chakkri reign produced many environmental changes in the Kingdom. Starting from King Rama IV (King Mongkut) and followed by his son, King Rama V (King Chulalongkorn) , the roles of kingship were modi- f ied from unlimited or absolute divine power toward a human- ized and rationalized sense of responsibility to all classes of people. King Rama IV was the first king to introduce the Practice of employing European advisors. The advisors were drawn from different countries in order to maintain a bal- a~Ilce of foreign influence among the advisors while obtaining ‘ the desired assistance in improving the administration. On April 1892, King Chulalongkorn issued a reorganiza- tion edict to replace the traditional Ayudhaya departments Qf government with more functionally specialized Western- tYPe' ministries in fields of Foreign Affairs, Defense, In- terior, Justice, Finance, Education, Agriculture, Public Works, Royal Household, Royal Service, and the Capital (Riggs, 1966) . In addition to that, the large degree of au- tonomy which had come to characterize the previous ministries was reduced, ministerial budgets and a system of accounting to the King for expenditures was required, tax collection was improved, and the King's personal funds were distinguish- ed from those of the state. The governmentalstructure and Practice were modified along Western lines. A civil service system was established; royal officials were transformed into 46 civil servants with definite salaries and regular working hours; there was an increase in the degree of specialization and centralization; provincial officials were brought under central control by replacing the semi-hereditary local rulers with centrally-appointed governors who were given salaries, rotated from post, and made responsible to a central ministry. The reorganization of the central administration dur- ing King Rama V led to the establishment of a Council of Ministers, which met regularly under the King's chairmanship and served as an advisory cabinet. It also produced a Coun- cil of State, composed of princes and noblemen, which was accorded advisory legislative power, plus a Privy Council, which was designed to brief the King as preparation for his discussions with the Council of State. The governmental re- forms of Kings Rama IV and V inevitably caused modification in the interrelationships of the political, social, and econ- omic subsystems (Jacob, 1971). The Chakkri reformation was viewed as a constructive foundation of the present Thai bu- reaucracy. Since that time, there has been little develop- ment and no drastic change in the structure of the Thai bu- reaucratic system. The coup d'etat of June 1932 ended the absolute mon- archy and changed Thailand to a constitutional monarchy. The bloodless coup d'etat was led by members of the bureau- cratic elite, civil and military. The elite was composed primarily of Western-educated (chiefly in France) young com- moners. These Thai, with their European education and \r 47 experience, were frustrated in their careers by the princely oligarchy which dominated government and society. The re- sult of the coup d'etat was mainly the proclamation of a limited monarchy and the transfer of power from the King and princes to a new commoner oligarchy. After 1932, there were several coup d'etats that oc- curred in the capital. Regimes came and went and constitu- tions have been rewritten several times. The overall bureau- cratic structure was not affected by the change of regimes. For the new occupants of the highest position, power and au- thority were always centered in the military and civil bu- reaucracy. The military elite has been taking turns in power with the civil elite, like playing a game of musical chairs. The latest military regime was finally overthrown by the students in October, 1973. Another new constitution was then written by mostly civilian bureaucrats and techno- crats. The new constitution has changed some legislative structure, but the bureaucratic structure remains untouched. There were two elected governments during 1973—1976. One lasted over a year, and another about one year. The fight- ing of leftist and rightist students in Bangkok, caused the seizure of power by a group of the military on October 6, 1976. Now the country is under a military appointed civilian government administration. According to the lZ-year plan, announced by the National Administrative Reform Council, there will be a general elected national assembly in 1980. —--—_'~ 48 The findings reveal that since 1932 the bureaucratic system has gone through various slight reforms which are de- signed to improve its modernity and efficiency. Many of the imported administrative techniques have been used in rela- tively traditional ways and for traditional objectives, with- out changing the basic structure. Several studies (Riggs, 1966 and Jacobs, 1971) observe that one reason the basic structure remains unchanged is because the Thai leadership has selectively borrowed and adapted foreign techniques which are suited to its purpose and its interpretation of national objectives. The Contemporary Administrative Structure In the formal structuring of the public administrative system of Thailand, supreme leadership is vested in the Prime Minister and Cabinet (Wit, 1968), who provide general administrative supervision and control, arbitrate conflict- ing bureaucratic interest claims and jurisdictional disputes, and make major administrative policy decisions. Excessive centralization and upward transfer of responsibility for administrative decision is characteristically so great that the Prime Minister and Cabinet are unnecessarily overbur- dened by their administrative roles. The central administrative structure is composed of thirteen ministries whose heads, the ministers and deputy ministers, constitute the Cabinet. The minister and his deputy are political appointees. The minister is responsible 49 for execution of government policy and, together with his deputy minister, undersecretaries, and the director- generals, who head the departments, provide coordination of ministerial activities. The undersecretary is the highest ranking career officer of the ministry. It is his responsi- bility to provide general administrative supervision over the activities of the departments within the ministry. He directs an Office of the Undersecretary which, in turn, is divided into divisions and sections. The basic line agencies of a ministry are its depart- ments. Each department is headed by a director-general and may also have one or more deputy director-generals. The director-general and deputies, although senior career civil servants, customarily have some political influence derived from association with the political elite (Wit, 1968). The departments are relatively self-contained, controlling their own budgets and actively engaged in personnel administration, and concurrently they are the primary operational units of the administrative system. Hence, the director-generals are in a very strong position in any given regime. They ex- ercise direct administrative supervision and control over their departmental subordinates. Departments are composed of an Office of Secretary, the Technical Divisions, and sev- eral line Divisions composed of sections and headed by Divi- sion Chiefs. It is these divisions and their sections which employ the bulk of Thai civil servants and conduct most of 50 the day-to-day business of Thai public administration. The provincial administrative structure in Thailand is divided into provinces, and districts. A provincial gov- ernor is appointed by the Minister of the Interior Ministry. He is a career civil service official from that Ministry. A governor is assisted by functional officials who are ap- pointed by the various departments in Bangkok. The District is headed by the District Officer who, as a line officer, is in charge of the members of the administration section. As an area official he supervises all government activities in the area. He is also appointed from the Bangkok office by the local Administration Department. The District Of- ficer is assisted by various functional officials who are career civil service officials and appointed from different departments in Bangkok. Observations From the literature reviewed above, one can conclude that the unity of command in Thai bureaucracy remains at the central offices. Although there were several attempts made to delegate power to local offices, in reality there was no such system of local government, especially as viewed in terms of Western standards. Some forms of municipality structures have been created in the past few decades but they do not yet have full capacity for local self-government. They are functioning under the provision of the Ministry of Interior's regulations. There have been acts to establish 51 local government councils but with the off and on of 2222 d'etat, the local elected councils have only a short-lived history. Another notable characteristic of Thai bureaucracy is its comprehensiveness. The bureaucracy is responsible for a wide range of activities. It includes public education at all levels, and about twenty more public enterprises. To some Westerners, the continuance of Thai society would be impossible if the services performed by the civil bureau- cracy were withdrawn. Because of the predominant role of bureaucracy in Thai society, it functions in a largely tra- ditional authoritative manner in its relationship with the people, and the imbedded value of high status and esteem of being a government official, all these factors have led the people generally to believe that all power and prestige with- in the society is located in the bureaucracy. With this cir- cumstance, there is very little chance for self-reform in bureaucracy and even less chance for the public to control and make corrections in the bureaucracy. This, perhaps, is one of the reasons why the Thai bureaucratic structure re- mains so stable. It might not be wrong at this point to conclude that the present unified bureaucratic system, its absolute power structure, and the nature of hierarchical centralization, have undoubtedly been influenced by the long history of the role of kingship in administration. Although there has been cultural and political flexibility sufficient to introduce 52 some western patterns as observed during the absolute mon- archy period, the traditional values and behavior patterns continue to predominate in the bureaucracy in the absence of other strong institutions. The study of historical evolution has always been con- fronted with a wide range of criticism of its validity. Most of the studies reviewed were done in the 19503 and 19603, and primarily derived from documentary research plus some empirical observations made while a consultant or schol- ar in a selected Thai university. None of them has done an in-depth organizational analysis. Careful future re- search should be carried out in which one or more bureau- cratic organizations are used as units of analysis and the historical influences are traced back in terms of structural changes of the organizations. Such a study should be very helpful in drawing a solid picture and in getting a deeper understanding of the Thai bureaucracy in an evolutionary perspective. The Community Development Program in Thailand This section brings together information on the forma- tion and development of the Community Development Program in Thailand, starting with a historical background which can be traced from the absolute monarchy down to the present time. The philosophy and objectives of community develop- ment will focus on the literature of the 19503 and follow some changes during the 19705. This section is designed to 53 provide a general background of the Community Development Program as an overview rather than a sophisticated analysis of literature. Historical Background When a broader definition of "community development" is applied, such as "greater participation of local people with an assistance of the government," then community devel- opment is not new to Thailand. Thai history shows that com- munity development activities had been introduced through- out the country during the different kingdoms of the mon- archy. During the Sukothai Kingdom (1237-1350), King Ramkhamhaeng the Great conducted a successful agricultural development program. The successful story was recorded on stone which was later found and renovated by the Governor of Kampenphet in 1510. Throughout the reign of King Boromtrailokanat efforts were made to eliminate misery and to improve the welfare of the peOple with local participa- tion (Yingvorapunt, 1969:16). Prince Damrongrachanupap (1914), the first Minister of the Interior, introduced two new movements for rural development during the Rattanakosin period. The first was massive rural reconstruction works, such as the construction of village roads for bullock carts, mapping and surveys of waterways and the clearing of underwater stumps to facili- tate boat transportation. The village headman (Puyaiban) and the chief of Tambon (Kamnan) asked for cooperation of 54 the village people to assist in these development projects as a form of "merit making." The second movement was one de- voted to decorating public works, and included construction of government office buildings and the residence of govern- ment officials in the provinces (Yingvorapunt, 1969:24). After the end of "absolute monarchy" in 1932 to the present day "constitutional monarchy," the well being of ru- ral people has been a major concern of all incumbent govern- ments. Rural development programs have been periodically implemented in various forms by different functional depart- ments. In 1939, a program of levying local taxes was started for local reconstruction measures, such as health, roads, ir- rigation, agricultural extension services and public utili- ties. Nine "model" villages were created for experimental purposes. However, the program collapsed during World War II (Nairn, 1966:104). One of the more formal rural reconstruction programs was operated from 1942-1944 and administered under the De- partment of Interior. The principal objectives of that pro- gram were to develop good citizens and to improve family liv- ing. The village people were encouraged to take part in lo- cal development activities through village committees and were supervised by trained village workers (Palad Tambon). The village workers received one month of training and were assigned to work at the Tambon level (approximately 5 to 20 villages). Unfortunately, the program failed to acquire 55 sufficient budget support and was discontinued after three years of operation (Yatsushiro, 1964:3). During the 19508, when community development was well recognized internationally, the foremost contemporary com- munity development program was introduced by UNESCO. The program (1955-1959) was called Fundamental Education Pro- gram and was under the Ministry of Education with assistance of UNESCO (Nairn, 1966:48). In 1956, the Department of Pub- lic Welfare developed a National Plan for Community Develop- ment, but the Plan was not implemented because no funds were provided. A year later the Department of Interior formulated its own pilot community development program and launched development projects in 21 villages located in various prov- inces. The Provincial Governors and District Officers were responsible for directing and coordinating the projects at the provincial and district levels. The first group of com- munity development workers were selected from a class of 42 deputy district officers who had received two months training in the community development process, with an em— phasis on general knowledge in agriculture, health, sanita- tion and water supply. The trained officers were assigned to live and work in the project areas as multi-purpose work- ers for at least nine months of the first year (King, 1971:7). In 1959, an international seminar on Planning and Com- munity Development was held in Bangkok. The seminar was under the sponsorship of the United Nations to which Thai- land was host. A group of Thai delegates was composed of 56 representatives from the Public Welfare Department, the De- partment of Interior, the Ministries of Health, Education, and Agriculture. The report following the seminar and the recommendations of the delegation resulted in a consolida- tion of Community Development Program in Thailand. The con- solidation included the transfer of the Thai-UNESCO Fundamen- tal Education Program. There were about 330 Fundamental EduCation Organizers working in fifty provinces at the time of the transfer of the program from the Ministry of Educa- tion to the Department of Interior (King, l971:5). In early 1960, the Ministry of Interior submitted a draft of the National Community Development Program which was approved by the Cabinet and became part of the National Economic and Social Development Plan. A special Bureau of Community Development was established within the Department of Interior to administer the program. By 1961, the incum- bent government recognized that the Bureau of Community De- velopment did not have sufficient status to carry out its extensive responsibilities for both operation and coordina- tion of the community development program. Therefore, on September 30, 1962 a bill raising the Community Development Bureau to department status was passed. On October 1, 1962 a new Department of Community Development was in full action and was under the roof of the Interior Ministry. At the same time, the Interior Department changed its name to the Department of Local Administration. 57 Philosophy and Objectives The basic philosophy of the Thai Community Development during the early stage was based on the principle of "aided self-help." This principle simply meant assisting village people to help themselves in achieving a ”better life" (Yatsushiro, 1964:3). In operational terms, the program was considered a village level program that was designed to bring about a partnership between the government and the vil- lage people, to exercise initiative, to improve their com- munities and ways of living through cooperative efforts on a self-help basis, and to bring the coordinated support of various ministries concerned with rural development, in order to assist the villagers in carrying out their projects. According to a government document published in the 19703 (CDP, 1970c:15), Community Development is referred to as a joint undertaking of the people and the government to mobilize the resources of local areas in the most useful way. The government would provide technical assistance and materials that are beyond the abilities of the villages to provide for themselves. By this means it is possible to ac- celerate the areas of development: people do not have to wait for the government to solve their problems for them, since some problems can be solved successfully without aid from outsiders. Communitleevelopment is not only to create a sense of responsibility in the people to help themselves, it is also a suitable means to be used in a country with a limited budget like Thailand. In addition to that, 58 Community Development plays a significant part in improving the relationships between the people and the government. The same document described two major aspects of com- munity development goals in Thailand: One is the ultimate goal which aims to foster local self-government and another is instrumental goals which are means to attain the ultimate goal. Instrumental goals in general are the creation of the necessary things for a better life which include higher in— come, better education, better health etc. The instrumental goals as stated by the Community Development Department dur- ing the 19603 are (CDP, l970c:l6): (1) increase income per family; (2) promote public utility work through self-help project activities; (3) improve health and sanitation; (4) promote education and recreation; (5) promote culture and tradition; and (6) foster local self-government. After 1970, when a former governor in Ubon province became the Director-General of the Community Development Department, the philosophy and objectives of the Community Development Program changed to a different concentration as compared to the 19603. The general philosophy, such as people participation and government assistance remain the same. The principle of self-help was no longer a key issue during the 19703. The philosophy of community development stresses the following aspects (Boonyaratapunt, 1974:2). The human being is the most valuable resource and every human being has a potential to develop himself if an opportunity is given. Among other things, the rational 59 self-image of the individual is the most basic foundation for development. Community development is a movement to per- petuate a common faith in social justice. The elimination of social conflict and stratification is the most desirable goal of civilized societies, and this desired goal can be reached by means of community development. Ignorance, ir- rational toleration, and coercive force are major inhibiting factors in development. The individual potential has to be developed to serve the collective efforts. The effective- ness in development basically relies on group efforts. Man is a social animal who lives in groups, works together in groups, and generates growth in human society as a group. The ultimate goal of local self-government during the 19603 was no longer included in the stated objectives. The former instrumental goals had changed to the following cate- gories (Boonyaratapunt, 1974:77): (1) to increase produc- tion, increase income and reduce community expenditure; (2) to improve and promote better community environments; (3) to improve and promote better health and sanitation; (4) to promote education and culture; and (5) to develop and pro- mote knowledge of leisure time utilization among villagers. Organizational Structure Although Community Development was a newly adopted developmental paradigm during the 19603, the administrative structure of this new paradigm had no way of escaping from the entrenched setting of Thai bureaucracy. One of the 60 special settings which was created in the new organizational structure is that there are now permanent coordinating com- mittees at all levels of the administrative hierarchy. How- ever, the actual performance role of these committees in re- lation to community development is doubtful. The Community Development Department is legally divided into two administrative units which is characteristic of the general structure of other functional departments. There are central administration, and provincial administration. The Central Administration was composed of five divisions from the beginning until 1975 when the Department added two more divisions recently. The Central Administration in- cludes nine Regional Centers which are located in different provinces throughout the country. The seven divisions are: 1. Office of the Secretariat. This office has the responsibilities for general correspondence of the depart- ment, preparation for departmental meetings, and for admin- istering the departmental finances and supplies. 2. Operation Division. This division provides support and operational guidance for most of the field operations of the Department. The office is responsible for supervision and administration of the provincial operations which include the allocation of government grants-in-aid to village develop- ment projects, and the followup of such projects. 3. Communitnyducation Division. This division is responsible for the production and dissemination of informa- tion produced within the Department. The responsibilities 61 include preparation of training aids for village workers, publishing educational leaflets and posters for villagers, and producing motion pictures and slides for public relations purposes. This division is also responsible for local youth development projects in the villages. 4. Training Division. This division plans and pre- pares course work for the pre-service and in-service train- ing for village workers. The division also prepares the curriculum and provides trainers for local leader training and all other training projects. 5. Research and Evaluation Division. This division is primarily concerned with collection of village survey data and analysis of such data for village development plans. The division also conducts field operational research and evaluation of development projects. Annual reports and sta- tistical bulletins of the Department are also a main respon- sibility of this division. 6. Personnel Division. This division is responsible for civil service examinations, placement, appointment, pro- motion, and transfer of civil servants within the Department. The division is also responsible for personnel records as well as personnel welfare. 7. Volunteer Development Division. This division has responsibilities to administer, supervise, and provide sup- port for the Thai volunteer workers and the foreign volun- teer workers who assist in the field. The division is also 62 responsible for the local volunteer leaders, and the city youth volunteer projects. Regional Centers. The Centers serve as a point of ad— ministrative decentralization designed to coordinate techni- cal support for field operations. The Center receives as- signed functions from the central headquarters for assist- ing provinces and districts in development and training pro- grams. The Provincial Administration The provincial administration has two levels of of- fices. One is the Provincial (Changwat) Community Develop- ment Office which has a Provincial CD Officer and a small administrative staff. The Provincial CD Officer is to work within the provincial administrative organization and work as an assistant to the Governor on all matters pertaining to community development. The Provincial CD Officer is, therefore, responsible for planning, implementation and ad- ministration of the Provincial Community Development Pro- gram. He supervises and controls CD officials who work in the field, and coordinates CD activities with provincial functional officials. The next level below the province is the District (Amphoe) Community Development Officer. The District CD Officer is in charge of the overall administration of the District Community Development Program and supervises all field workers in the village. He also serves as an assitant 63 to the District Officer (Nai Amphoe) in administrating the community development activities in the district. Community Development Coordinating Committees At the national level below the National Cabinet, there is a National Community Development Executive and Coordinat- ing Committee which is in charge of policy formulation, plan- ning and followup of the overall Community Development Pro- agram. The committee members include all the concerned Directors-General of various functional departments. The Director-General of the Community Development Department serves as Secretary-General of the Committee. The Committee is subdivided into two subcommittees. One subcommittee is responsible for policy and planning, and the other subcom- mittee serves as an advisory group. In every province, there is a Provincial Development Coordinating Committee which is chaired by the provincial governor. The Committee members consist of heads of func- tional offices at the provincial level, district officers in that province, and a number of local representatives. The Provincial CD Officer serves as a secretary of the Com- mittee. The provincial committee is also divided into two subcommittees as is the National Coordinating Committee. At the district level, there is also a District Develop- ment Coordinating Committee which is chaired by the District Officer. The Committee is composed of heads of district func- tional offices, chairmen of the Tambon Development Committees, 64 and a number of appointed local leaders. The Committee is also divided into two subcommittees. Development Projects and Implementation Since the beginning of the Community Development Pro- gram in 1962 to 1971, the major development projects which appeared in the National Economic and Social Development plan were the following (CDP, 1970:21-23); (1) Opening Area Coverage Project; (2) Community Development Personnel Train— ing Project; (3) Local Leader Development Project; (4) Oc- cupational Development Project; (5) Self-help Public Facili- ties Improvement Project; (6) Community Development through the Women and Youth Project; (7) Community Education Project; (8) Regional Technical Assistance Center Project; (9) Re- search and Evaluation Project; and (10) Rural Development VOlunteer Project. After 1971, the Community Development Program proposed a new set of major community development projects to the National Economic and Social Development Committee and re- quested that consideration be given to replacing the previous projects. The proposed projects were accepted by the Com- mittee and it is the plan to include them in the Fourth National Economic and Social Development Plan (1977-1981). 'The new major projects are the following (Decharin, l974a:7): (1) Leadership Development Project; (2) Occupational Develop- ment Project; (3) Youth Development Project; (4) Women De- velopment Project; (5) Child Development Project; 65 (6) Community Volunteer Development Project; (7) Community Public Facilities Development Project; (8) Relations Promo- tion Project; (9) Productive Leisure Employment Project; (10) Special Project; (11) Personnel Training Project; and (12) Research and Planning Project. As a matter of fact, the proposed development projects are simply a revision of name and a splitting up of the former projects. For example, the former project number 6 has been divided into projects 3, 4, and 5. Project number 7 has been divided and names were changed to form new projects numbers 8 and 9. The opera- tional definitions of the stated new projects will be dis- cussed later. One simple way to comprehend how a development project is implemented in the village, is to look at the assigned role and functions of the village workers. The village worker or Pattanakorn has been recognized as the key govern- ment official who is assigned to work in the village. The newly recruited village workers have to be trained for a number of months according to their educational background. In general the training subjects are concerned with agri- cultural development, health and sanitation, rural public ‘works, public relations, and special roles and functions of the village organizer. Pattanakorn is expected to be a multi- purpose worker and required to live among the village people and work closely with them. He assists the people in organ- izing themselves more efficiently, in developing more effec- tive local leadership, in identifying their basic needs and 66 problems and in seeking ways and means for resolving them. Pattanakorn also assists the people in mobilizing local re- sources and obtaining supplementary outside assistance in terms of materials, equipment, money, and technical advice towards effecting desired local improvements. Upon the completion of training, the village worker is usually assigned to work in his home province. His first task is to conduct a socio-economic survey in the assigned villages. A computerized village survey form is provided for him by the Community Development Department. The pur- pose of the survey is not only to provide opportunity for the village worker to familiarize himself with the village conditions, but also the information gathered in the survey will be used for planning future development plans and for evaluation purposes. After the survey, the village worker has to analyze the initial results and compile a set of prob- lems to be confronted which derive from the survey. The survey results and village problems will be presented to the Village Development Committee for general discussion and for preparation of a set of resolutions under the guidance of the village worker. According to the official manual (CDP, l970d» most of the concerned functional officials of the district will be invited to participate in the discussion and help the Committee formulate a future working plan. The plan is divided into five consecutive years which includes statements of present conditions, nature of the problems, alternative resolutions, estimated cost of some feasible 67 development activities, future obstacles in project implemen- tation, location of the projects, involvement of various agencies, and a time table of activities. During the Village Development Committee meeting session, the village worker will introduce the CD Department's major projects and persuade the Committee to adopt some projects. He explains how the projects can be adopted to result in a confrontation of the village problems. The criterion and procedure to obtain the CD Department's assistance is given in full detail but without any solid obligation that the as- sistance will actually be provided by the CD Department. Eventually, after the session is over, most of the develop- ment activities which were discussed in the Village Develop- ment Committee will fall into various categories of the major projects introduced. It is the responsibility of the village worker to work out in detail and prepare a development plan along with the District functional officials and some mem- bers of the Village Development Committee. The draft de- velopment plan will be further submitted to the District Development Coordinating Committee for technical considera- tion and endorsement of financial support. The final ap- proval of the village development plan will take place at the Provincial Development Coordinating Committee meeting. In June of each year, the Village Development Committee will review and readjust the development plan, and then submit an- nual development projects to the District Development Coor- dinating Committee. The planning process is well described 68 in Figure 5 (CDP, l970d:9). Concerning the size of the area in which the village worker has to work closely with the people, before 1971 one village worker was responsible for 10 to 15 villages, but the number depends on the size of the Tambon. Development projects are scattered in every village. After 1971, the area of responsibility changed from a Tambon to a village level, which is called "Concentrated Development Village." Especially trained and active village workers are assigned to take responsibility in the concentrated development vil- lages. The village workers in the peripheral villages have to work cooperatively with the concentrated village. It is planned that the development activities in the concentrated village will extend an impact to the peripheral villages after the five-year plan is completed. Approximately 1500 villages were selected as concentrated development villages in 1974. However, the peripheral villages continue to work on their development projects with a reduced rate of out- side assistance. Priority in governmental assistance will be given to the concentrated villages. Conclusion: it is reasonable to conclude at this point that community development is not new to Thailand if we use the broader definition. The more sophisticated and system- atic approach to community development program in Thailand actually began after WOrld war II with the first assistance of UNESCO in the Fundamental Educational Program. The basic organizational structure has not been changed since the 69 pommoum ucmEQOHw>mo Husscd tam swam unmemon>mo Hmmmlm>wm mmmaaw> mo.mmmooum m musmwh AsowumusmEmHmEH coasmuwmo How coaumummmum a muomnonm Hmsccm unshtd can 3mw>mm I muoonoum om>oumm< 0:» mo xomntomm 4W nonsmooflfla was 3mfl>om Hu>oumm¢ mwmroum Hmscc4 mmmmaafi> J*Ihm>usm sumo am>usm mo mamaamcs {I swam mmomoum can mmsomwo swam tm>ou d may no somnvmmm ucmemHOtsm tam 3mw>wm Hw>oumm¢, ammwmiummhlm>wh 7O establishment of the Community Development Department. The philosophy and objectives have been changed after the third Director-General assumed the office of Community Development in late 1971. The major projects of the Community Develop- ment Department remain more or less the same, except for some changed names and emphasis in operation. The project implementation process has undergone no substantial change from the beginning until today. The only differences are in the area of operation and strategy in development. The evidence in the first section indicates that every department in the Thai administration is an autonomous agency. The Director-General of any department has the ultimate de- cision to determine what to do and what not to do. In the case of the Community Development Department, changes have actually taken place after the third Director-General as- sumed control. As Axinn (1972:172) has observed, "although leadership is a personal and dynamic matter, changing from time to time in any situation, the quality and position of leadership sets the tone and level of operation." CHAPTER III INTERACTION BETWEEN THE DONOR AND THE RECIPIENT SYSTEMS, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THAI COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM This chapter is designed to investigate the fact of community development's origin in Thailand and the interac- tional process between the donor and the recipient systems. The scope of analysis in this chapter will include an over- view of foreign aid in different perspectives, the histori- cal background of foreign aid to Thai community development in general and then focus on the aid of USOM, the influences and assistance of USOM, the involvement and process of pro- ject adoption by the recipient system, and finally the inter- actional patterns between the donor and the recipient systems. To follow the conceptual framework of this study, each foreign agency, which had been involved in assisting the com- munity development program will be treated as a separate donor system. The Community Development Department or other government agencies are considered as independent recipient systems. The findings of this chapter will be used as em- pirical evidence to support or reject the hypothetical model in stage one, namely, that the Community Development Program in Thailand is influenced by the vertical interactional pro- cess between the donor system and the recipient system. 71 72 Foreign Aid in Different Perspectives In a simple and straightforward definition, foreign aid is a transfer of resources from rich countries to poor ones. What resources to be transferred is made by decisions of public bodies. Public bodies include multilateral agen- cies as well as nations (Baldwin and Maxwell, 1975:84). Foreign aid or foreign assistance in the modernization of the less developed countries has been a controversial issue during the 19703 (Caldwell, 1974). Foreign aid is not merely inextricably bound up with the major international political conflicts. Foreign aid has also suffered from the ambigui- ties of inadequacy and uniqueness in theoretical framework. Contemporary foreign aid can be viewed either in a negative or a positive perspective. In a negative view, foreign aid is a form of imperialism (Hayter, 1971). International aid programs of advanced countries are interwoven and oriented toward the promotion and maintenance of influence and con- trol in the developing countries. This is one dimension of imperialism. To quote Johnson (in Cockcroft, Frank, and Johnson, 1972:?1): "Imperialism is an institutionalized system of control which systematically shapes the institutions and structures of dependent, domin ted countries and limits their freedom of ac ion, if they are to avoid the system's sanctions, to system-defined alternatives." The concept of dependence (Bodenheimer, 1971), as it has been developed in recent years, refers to the situation that the history of colonialism has left and that contemporary 73 imperialism creates in the underdeveloped countries. Theo- tonio dos Santos (in Cockcroft, Frank, and Johnson, 1972:71) has provided a clear conceptualization of dependence. He suggests that "dependence is not an 'external factor,‘ as is often believed." Rather, dependence is a "conditioning situa- tion" in which the specific histories of development and underdevelopment transpire in different regions and countries. "Dependence is a situation in which a certain group of countries have their economy condi- tioned by the development and expansion of another economy, to which the former is subject ...the basic situation of dependence leads to a global situation in dependent countries that situates them in backwardness and under the ex- ploitation of the dominant countries. The domi- nant countries have a technological, commercial, capital resource, and social-political predomi- nance over the dependent countries. This per- mits them to impose conditions of exploitation and to extract part of the domestically produced surplus." When foreign aid is viewed in a positive perspective, international development assistance, and international co- operation are frequently used as conceptual terms to explain the relationship between the developed and the developing countries (Angelopoulos, 1972; Radetzki, 1973; and Zeylstra, 1975). Development assistance does not benefit any particu- lar country but for the sake of "living together for common good." A common purpose of development assistance is to solve international problems of economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character. Development assistance to developing countries should not be of a permanent nature. It is essential during the 74 take-off stage of a country's economy to make possible the acceleration of development up to the point in which the country can maintain a satisfactory rate of growth by its own resources. Therefore, the external aid should be only temporary (Angelopoulos, 1972:100). International cooperation is a joint responsibility of the developed and the developing nations. It is a co- operative agreement of the donor and the recipient countries with an objective to assist the receiving country in further- ing its economic growth and social progress. The donor coun- try should recognize the receiving country's sincere endeav- or to improve its standard of development. The receiving country in its turn should recognize the donor country's in- tention to help, and should take full responsibility for the nation's economic and social development. There are two major types of international cooperation: bilateral and multilateral. According to Radetzki (1973: 37), one might differentiate between the bilateral aid doc- trine, consisting of a mixture of self-interest and more altruistic motives, and the multilateral doctrine--also ad- hered to by several of the smaller bilateral donors--which emphasizes the obligation of the advanced countries to as- sist the poorer ones simply because of the demonstrable pov- erty of the latter. In Radetzki's (1973) view, bilateral aid is highly affected by nondevelopmental considerations. The donor's interest in furthering his own exports, or promoting his 75 political and military objectives, is likely to make the aid program less development-oriented, and consequently of less value to the recipient. Furthermore, the donor's self- interest also explains the uneven distribution of assistance among receiving countries. National donor considerations tend to be less prominent in multilateral programs. It should therefore be easier to make development the primary objective of such programs. This is one important aspect in favor of multilateral aid. A closely related deficiency in bilateral aid is that each donor country follows its own specific rules and pro- cedures in scrutinizing and accepting or rejecting requests. Thus the same project has to be presented in different terms, and with emphasis on different aspects, to be received favor- ably by assistance agencies in various countries. This be- comes administratively cumbersome for recipients. Many bilateral programs also suffer from the fact that funds are appropriated for a single year at a time. This re- sults in difficulties and uncertainties with regard to the many ventures dependent on steady aid support over a long period. In addition, it complicates the planning procedures in recipient countries. This problem is less prevalent in multilateral aid. First of all, some multilateral donor con- tributions are fixed in advance for several years. Secondly, a multilateral body, on the average, receives its funds from many more donor countries than does an individual recipient country. This will tend to even out fluctuations inindividual 76 donor flows. As Radetzki (1973) observes, current evidence from multilateral institutions shows.that competition and duplica- tion of effort seems to be common features in multilateral aid. For example, there is fierce competition between the International Labor Office (ILO) and Food and Agriculture Organization with regard to promotion of cooperatives, and between ILO and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization on matters pertaining to industrialization and labor. Similarly, duplicated activities are reported for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the regional development banks. Multilateral aid organs have not, in general, been innovators or promotors of new ideas. With few exceptions, they have been followers, pick- ing up innovations from others. The same criticism, however, can be applied to many bilateral donors. In conclusion, it is apparent that both multilateral and bilateral aid prac- tices contain severe deficiencies. With the present multi- lateral setup, the argument that more aid should be multi- laterally channeled, is not particularly convincing. Tendler (1975) summed up five major categories of criticism in development assistance which were often found .in recent literature: (1) assistance too often takes the form of unnecessarily large capital projects, overly inten- sive in equipment and foreign exchange; (2) the technology of such projects has often been too sophisticated to be ab— sorbed by developing-country institutions; (3) the design 77 and execution of financed projects has too often coincided with the interests of developed-country firms in the business of exporting consulting services and equipment; (4) in the case of bilateral aid, legislative and administrative require- ments have been imposed which make the program look more like an attempt to subsidize exports than an effort to assist less- developed countries to grow; and (5) the "ethnocentric type" of advisor is a final contributor to the problem, because of his tendency to think that his country's way of doing things is best. Finally, foreign aid in recent years has become an un- favorable issue among university technocrats in some develop- ing countries. For example, self-reliance has become a popu- lar theme in seminars on the role of foreign aid to Thailand (Baldwin and Maxwell, 1975). In Thai technocrats' view, the transfer of useful technology is far more difficult from one culture to another in the social sciences than in the physi- cal or medical sciences. Therefore, it is more important for Thailand to become self-reliant in this respect, al- though no nation ought ever try to become self-reliant in the sense of isolating itself from the international exchange of ideas. As a matter of fact, the Thai technocrats call for "ideas exchange" instead of "resources transfer." Some of the justifications provided by technocrats for Thailand to become self-reliant may be rational and worth- while for national development. The question that arises is how to convert these justifications into practical action. 78 This question remains unanswered. One of the crucial justi- fications, as I see it, is that Thailand's recent problem is underutilization of existing human talents and lack of an ef- fective delivery system for government services to the grass- roots level. These two problems must be accomplished by the government itself. There is indeed very little that the developed countries can do by means of aid and technical as- sistance. Historical Background In an initial review, it appears that there were at least three major foreign donor systems involved in stimulat- ing the formation of the Community Development Program in Thailand. However, a more detailed search of the documents revealed that the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) had the least involvement among the three donor systems. The SEATO's involvement first appeared in the form of assist- ance in setting up the first community development regional center in the Northeast in November, 1962. Although the cen- ter in the beginning was called "The Thai-SEATO Community Development Technical Assistance Center," evidence shows that the Center had received only a minimum support from SEATO. Another involvement of SEATO in the Community Develop- ment Program was a donation of cash to supplement the govern- ment prize awarded to the winners of the annual CD model- village contest. The contribution of SEATO continued through 79 the past six years (1971-1976). The change in the political situation in Southeast Asia has in part influenced the de- cisions of SEATO's country members to close down its opera- tion some time by the end of 1977. This will automatically terminate the cash awards from SEATO. The historical review of SEATO assistance in Community Development will not be examined further beyond that which has already been mentioned. This chapter will concentrate, therefore, on the assistance and influence of the UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) and the USOM (the United States Operations Mission, now the Agency for Inter- national Development). UNESCO Involvement Shortly after joining UNESCO in 1948, the Thai govern- ment requested UNESCO specialists to conduct a survey of edu— cational conditions in Thailand. In February, 1949, a two- man team arrived in Bangkok. After a few months, the study was completed with some general recommendations which could be summarized as a familiar reiteration of standard Western ideas--the need for a centrally controlled, free, universal system of education designed to obtain effective literacy and a command of fundamental process of reading, writing, arithmetic, language and similar skills (Nairn, 1966:31). Following those general recommendations, another sur- vey was planned and conducted.in 1951-1952 by UNESCO in an effort to establish a Fundamental Education Center in 80 Thailand. The survey was conducted by a distinguished soci- ologist, Sir Charles Madge. In his final report, he suggest- ed that Thailand was a country, in many ways ideally suited for a planned program of social change. From his report, the Thai and UNESCO policy-makers concluded that an ideal location for a Fundamental Education Center should be in Thailand in order to serve the Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, on December 9, 1953, a formal agreement was sign- ed between the Thai government and a few other United Nations organizations, whereby Thailand-UNESCO Fundamental Education Center (TUFEC) came into existence in 1955 in the province of Ubol at the Northeastern border. According to Nairn (1966:36), the report of Madge was mainly a reflection of some village situations in which the survey had been conducted. The survey did not examine the existing administrative apparatus in the nation. The af- firmation of social change by means of fundamental education was determined at the village level. Other factors at the macro level, such as economic and political circumstances, were taken for granted as conditions to implement a proposed fundamental education program. The term "Fundamental Education" employed by the UNESCO during the 19503 was not merely to be described as literacy training, but included other basic education neces- sary for overall community development and social and eco- nomic progress (Nairn, 1966:13). By this broad definition 81 as well as the nature of TUFEC's operation in Ubol province, the Thai-UNESCO project was therefore considered to be the foundation of community development program in Thailand. Since the beginning the major operational scope of TUFEC was to train 71 teams of Fundamental Education Organizers (FEOs), one for each of 71 provinces in the kingdom. Each team was to consist of five to seven persons who were teachers, with 13 years or more of schooling. FEOs were trained in teams, each member specializing in different technical areas such as health, education, agriculture, home economics, village crafts and social welfare. The training period was full- time for two-years and included in class lectures and field training. By 1961, 71 teams had been trained and were working in 71 provinces. Officially the team was to come under the pro- vincial education officer, an official of the Ministry of Education, but unfortunately, no record has been found of any clear directive ever given to this official as to what he was to do with his new assignment.‘ The role of the Center was defined to send supervisors to visit and provide techni- cal guidance to the FEOs while working in the provinces. However, the Center was afraid of confusing the administra- tive control over the FEOs, so the FEOs team was left alone to work in the province without formal connection with the Center or recognition from the Education officer. In the beginning the international staff at the Center headed all training sections and held administrative posts 82 up to and including deputy director. One or more Thai worked with each international expert as counterparts. It was plan- ned to transfer all posts to Thai in later years. By the end of 1959 all sections and services were under Thai control, with the international staff acting in an advisory capacity. The major achievement of TUFEC, besides training 426 FEOs, was the creation of a training center and its associat- ed training pattern. However, the trainingcenter in Ubol was not accepted into the national community development pro- gram in early 1962, partly because of UNESCO's failure to align itself with the appropriate bureaucratic authority. To quote Nairn (1966:109): ...that the TUFEC operation was assigned to the Ministry of Education. The consequence of this basic decision was that United Nations officials, regardless of level, simply did not have the ear of those who mattered. At best, the chief of mission might have reasonable access to the minister of education, but more probably to an undersecretary....This was not where power was located in the Thai hierarchy. However, some part of the responsibility must be borne by the inflexibility of the Thai bureaucratic structure, since there was reluctance to make the interdepartmental ad- justments necessary to give TUFEC a proper function in the emergence of national community development program. The following statement is another explanation to this complicated issue (Nairn: 1966,108): ...the intrusion of the army, with its open political goals, made clear the immediate purpose of community development--to counter Communist infiltration. Thai planning and operations at this level ignored the United 83 Nations. TUFEC was quietly allowed to phase out without comment; and the new National Community Development Plan ignored TUFEC methodology, material resources, and person- nel. ...In answer to the question of how far TUFEC has influenced and intruded into the new Department of Community Development, the Direc- tor-General of that Department said that as far as he was concerned TUFEC played no part at all, that TUFEC came under the Ministry of Education, .and as far as he knew, the Ministry of Education had changed its program at TUFEC into one of providing in-service training for rural teachers. The virtual ignorance of TUFEC operations was not merely an inflexibility of bureaucratic structure; or fear of Com- munist infiltration; and or right or wrong access of hier- archical power; but it was a combination of these. As a more appropriate explanation, perhaps, it was a bureaucratic ri- valry or a problem of organizational boundary maintenance between bureaucratic systems. The UNESCO assistance to TUFEC began to phase out in late 1960 as originally planned. By December 1961, UNESCO withdrew completely and the Center was passed into the self- reliance operation of the Ministry of Education. It was about the‘same time, another donor system, the United States Operation Mission, began to send in community development experts to help with some pilot projects in the Department of Public Welfare and the Department of Interior. These two departments are under the Ministry of Interior. To quote Nairn (l966:97,1ll): 84 Inside Thailand, the Minister of Interior holds vast powers: all provincial administra- tion, including the control of the police force, is in his hands (p. 97). The Ministry of Interior has two great claims to authority and prestige. First, it manipu- lates all levels of provincial administration. It appoints and dismisses heads of provinces and districts. Secondly, the Ministry of In- terior has the largest budget in the nation outside the Ministry of Defense and has more .employees than any other ministry (p. 111). Coinciding with the phasing out of UNESCO, the incum— bent cabinet council decided to transfer all the FEOs from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Interior in late 1961. (Reasons for transferring of FEOs will be dis- cussed in the following section). The Transfer of FEOs caused uncertainty in TUFEC, and by 1963 most of the build- ings of the TUFEC center had closed down which practically ended the TUFEC program. When the interactional process is analyzed from a sys- tems approach perspective, some interesting consequences are revealed. The UNESCO as a donor system came to help Thailand with predefined objectives as well as means to carry out the objectives through technical assistance and financial sup- port. The Ministry of Education as a recipient system also had its objective to promote educational standards in the rural sector.‘ However, the means to carry out such objec- tives of the recipient system were bound by the national bureaucracy. The newly introduced development program must adopt the existing administrative structure. Throughout 85 the life of the TUFEC project, the Center was officially under the directorship of the Under Secretary of the State, Ministry of Education. The director travelled periodically from Bangkok to Ubol (510 miles one way). The deputy- director was the one who really ran the Center. Since the Center was part of the central administration, personnel and budget were also controlled and allocated by the Bangkok office. From 1953 to 1959 the Center had more than 30 for- eign experts, with different backgrounds and nationalities, who worked in TUFEC (Nairn, 1966: Appendix 3). The newly defined role of the trained FEOs was not recognized by the existing bureaucratic system in the pro- vince. The Ministry of Education as a system, by the Thai standard, has much less power to control the other ministries. This is why the Ministry of Interior was able to generate its experimental CD projects much faster with other donor systems during the late 19503. It would not be wrong to say that a competitive phenomenon arose during this period. The stronger and more powerful system usually has a better chance to win over other competitors. The competition among sys- tems may become clearer when the analysis is pursued further to see the emergence of the USOM in Thailand. The United States Involvement An appropriate place to begin an analysis of the emer- gence of the United States in Thailand is with George Axinn's thesis (1975:18) on the U. S. involvement in rural development 86 work in Asia. He classifies six different periods of U. S. foreign policy which reflect the changing emphasis of the United States' strategy in assisting the developing world. According to Axinn, the time before the 19403, the longest period of time, he refers to as the Early Exchange Period. The decade of the 19403 is referred to as the Reconstruction Period. The 19503 has been labeled the Point Four Period. The 19603 is called the Institutional Building Period. The 19703 is labeled the Integrated Approach, and the future of the 19803 is called Linkage Maintenance. The pioneer engagement in cooperative programs of eco- nomic development and social modernization between the United States and the Thai government began in 1950 during the early period of the Point Four Program. This was the period in which the United States wentfrom its Technical Cooperation Administration, Economic Cooperation Administration, and its Mutual Security Administration to a combination of these and others into the Foreign Operations AdministratiOn. President Truman, in his inaugural address late in 1948, suggested in his fourth point that Americans should try to do throughout the world what they had been doing in the past decade in Europe--and share "U. S. Know-how" and capital with the so- called "underdeveloped world" (Axinn, 1975:21). Another President of the United States, in his mes- sage to the Congress of January 10, 1955 said, "The United‘ States has a vast store of practical and scientific know- how that is needed in the underdeveloped areas of the world. 87 The United States has a responsibility to make it available. Its flow for peaceful purposes must remain unfettered" (Axinn, 1975:23). The only reason to quote these two foreign policy statements made by two different Presidents, is to show the continuity of the policies of assistance and a common doc- trine which the United States employed to interact with the developing world during the 19503. Viewing the United States as a donor system, it is clear from the presidential policy statements that the donor system has come to assist the de- veloping countries through a set of objectives and an as- sumed status quo. Let us now turn to examine the Thai gov- ernment as a recipient system during the 19503. In February 1950, a conference of all American ambas- sadors in the Far East was held in Bangkok for the purpose of discussing the implications of the Communist victory in China. Thai Prime Minister Pibulsongkhram took the oppor- tunity to raise the question of Thailand's eligibility for assistance under the Point Four Program. The American re- sponse was favorable and on July 19, 1950, a Point Four Pro- gram Committee was established within the Thai government whose duties were to render assistance in the planning of an assistance program (Caldwell, l974:4). Later the name of the Point Four Committee was changed to the Thai Techni- cal and Economic Cooperation Committee (TTEC). The Commit- tee had neither a formal place in the government hierarchy not autonomous status in the administrative structure. 88 In 1959 a Technical and Economic Cooperation Division was created within the National Economic Development Board (NEDB) to function as the TTEC Committee. In 1963, with the creation of a Ministry of National Development, the Technical and Economic Cooperation Division was transferred from NEDB, and the Division was elevated to a Department of Technical and Economic Cooperation (DTEC). In 1972, the Ministry of National Development was abolished and DTEC was moved to the Office of the Prime Minister. The main function of DTEC is to generate foreign aid, to coordinate aid activities, and to control the counterpart funds and procurement under aid programs. Some actual roles of DTEC concerning community development will be discussed later in this chapter. Over the twenty-year period (1950-1970) the United States provided a total of $580 million for economic develop- ment and social modernization in Thailand. The Thai ex- pended $134 million in direct association with the United States input, and indirectly several hundred million dollars more through normal budgetary allocations to the aided pro- jects themselves, and to closely related support activities (Caldwell, 1974). Of the total of $580 million in gross ob- ligations, $63.5 million, or 11 percent was in the form of development loans, $139.9 million, or 27 percent in the form of technical cooperation or development grants, and another $339.2 million, or 62 per cent as grants in the form of con- tingency funds, supporting assistance and defense. 89 Of total net obligations channeled through USOM by July 1970, aid to the police and closely related programs amounted to 19 per cent of net accruals, transportation re- ceived 17 per cent, health and sanitation 12 per cent, educa- tion 8 per cent, the Office of Accelerated Rural Development 7 per cent, community development, social welfare and hous- ing 5 per.cent, public administration 2 per cent, labor 0.1 per cent, and general and miscellaneous 14 per cent. USOM and Rural Development Both Nairn (1966) and Caldwell (1974) agree that the reason for the boom of community development during the 19603 was mainly stimulated by the threat of Communist insurgency in Thailand. Caldwell (1974:27) concludes in his study of American Economic Aid to Thailand as follows: The level of American economic assistance to Thailand over the years has been directly de- termined by the American assessment of the seriousness of communist threat to Thailand and to Southeast Asia as a whole....The type of program supported has been in part the result of the American interpretation of the nature of the threat, and in part the result of a socio-economic analysis of Thailand's developmental needs. In fact, Community Development was not the only program that was assisted by USOM. Simultaneously, there were other de- velopment programs that had received both financial and technical support during the 19603. At least two of them are closely related to community development, and they are also part of the rural development program. One program is 90 under the administration of the military and is called the Mobil Development Units. The program is considered as a task force which is composed of perhaps 120 military and civilian officials sent to sensitive areas to assist in development activities, to offer civic action services, and to conduct propaganda and information gathering activities (Caldwell, l974:58).. This program is still in full operation in many sensitive areas up to the present time. Another key assistance program supported by USOM dur- ing the counter-insurgency period was the Accelerated Rural Development Program (ARD). ARD was initially intended to provide an organizational focus for the coordination of the Thai government development activity at the provincial level and below (Scoville and Dalton, 1974). Since 1968 to the present, there has been ongoing discussion in public on the similarity and duplication of functions between the Community Development Program and the Accelerated Rural Development Program. The critical issue is whether these two programs should be integrated and come under the responsibility of one department or remain two separate departments. As a re- sult of a new political regime in 1973, the Office of ARD was transferred from the Office of the Prime Minister to the Ministry of Interior. The program is still Operated by the same autonomous office which is equivalent to a de- partmental status. Interestingly enough, the CD program and the ARD program were started and supported by the same 91 donor system--USOM during the 19603. The only difference is that the latter started five years later than the former. Both programs make equal claims in concepts and phi1030phy of community development but at a different pace. As one former Deputy Director-General of the Community Development Department (who used to serve on the national committees of 'both programs) often explained, the major differences of these two programs by saying that "Community Development is an ordinary train" while "Accelerated Rural Development is an express train." Influences and Assistances The official records show that USOM assistance to the Community Development Program in Thailand began on December 17, 1956, and terminated on June 30, 1972. The first com- munity development advisor, Mr. Robert McMillan, arrived in Thailand in December 1956 to work with the Department of. Public Welfare and the Department of Interior. His efforts were directed primarily toward training and counselling the government officials on the objectives, principles, philosophy and organization of community development. Most of his work produced at that time became basic literature on community development even after the establishment of the Community Development Department. Frequently his work was cited as a reference source. By the end of his assignment in 1958, he recommended in his report that the Department of Interior was the logical 92 existing agency to administer a national community develop- ment program. One of his major reasons was that the Interior Department had more than 6,000 employees working in the dis- trict and provincial offices, and they possessed administra- tive control over other functional officials. Mr. McMillan's observation on the key role of the Interior Department was quite right. Even a few years later, Nairn (1966:112) ob- served the same situation as follows: ”When one travels up-country (in the province) one cannot help but be struck by the all power- ful role of the Ministry of Interior officials. The Governor, the District Officer and others of the Ministry of Interior are not mere figure- heads. They hold the keys to effective action at the rural level. They cannot be sidestepped. Without their fullhearted cooperation no rural program can be successful." In the same report McMillan also recommended the trans- fer of the TUFEC project from the Ministry of Education to the Department of Interior, and the use of existing training facilities in Ubol (King, 1972:10). His two major recommen- dations were favored by the high ranking officials in the Ministry of Interior, but a decision was not made until 1961. The issue of integrating the scattered community develop- ment programs which were operated by the different agencies was brought up again by several prominant Thai delegations who attended the first international seminar on planning and community development in Bangkok in 1959. A3 a result of the seminar report, the scattered CD programs were then transfer- red from the Public welfare Department, the Ministry of Edu- cation, to the Department of Interior in 1961. 93 Mr. John Sheldon Turner, the second USOM advisor in community development arrived in Thailand in June 1959 and served as head of the USOM Community Development Division until May 1964. His contribution and influence on the Thai community development program included the extensive help in the final draft of the National Community Development Plan, and the participation and support in the first nation- wide community development orientation seminar for governors, deputy governors, district officers, and provincial technical officials. I Shortly after Mr. Turner assumed the office, he arranged for Dr. Robert Arnold Polson, a rural sociologist and one of the foremost authorities on community development at that time to stop by Thailand for a week of consultation while enroute from London and India to the Philippines. Dr. Polson recommended to the National Executive and Coordination Com- mittee the implementation of a comprehensive community develop- ment program which covered the entire district territory in- stead of concentrating in a number of villages. The deci- sion was made to follow the advice of Dr. Polson, and in late 1960 four pilot districts were selected for this new approach. The "Amphoe Area Coverage" which was recommended by Dr. Polson was adopted as a nationwide policy after 1962 and the approach continues to expand until the present day. In August 1962, through USOM's support, the Community Development Department obtained the services of Mr. Frank W. Sheppard, Jr. (later he became Chief of USOM CD Division in 94 Thailand from 1964 to 1966) to make a three month study of village worker selection process and pre-service training program. The study recommended that with the adoption of the new approach which was introduced by Dr. Polson, the Community Development Department would need at least 320 new village workers per annum to fill the post. The Community Development Department utilized this figure to gain support and approval from the National Economic Development Board for the Department's annual budget. Due to the limited na— tional budget the number of village workers was reduced to 200 per annum. Another recommendation included in the same report was that recruitment and training of new village workers should be done in the region where they would be assigned to work. This advice was also adopted by the Department. The central training division was extended as a section to each regional center in order to provide training. This recruitment and training process has been carried on through 1975. During the early stage of community development pro- gram, all divisions except the Office of the Secretary of the CD Department had been under some advisory service from USOM. The advisory efforts were directed toward research, training for village workers, youth development, CD Way, occupational, and local leader training programs. One greater influence received from USOM advisory service was local leader train- ing program. In King's report (1971:23): 95 "Mr. Sanders assisted the Community Develop- ment Department in planning and executing a successful trial of three pilot village leader training workshops in 1964...The pilot training program was an immediate success. The program gained the highest priority within the Depart- ment of Community Development and by 1971 over 45 thousand village leaders had been trained." Table 1 shows a total of 28 USOM advisors working in community development since 1956 to 1972. The duration of service in Thailand ranges from the longest, six years, to less than one year. The average is from two to four years at most. The background experience of advisors in other ‘countries besides Thailand as shown in Table l was concen- trated in Vietnam, Iran, India, Philippines,and Laos, re- spectively. The total cost of advisory service contributed by USOM was over $1.5 million as shown in Table 2. Beginning in 1963, USOM and the CD Department approved an agreement for participant training which included: (a) Master's Degree program for selected officials; (b) short term academic training for specific job skills; and (c) ob- servational tours for officials and village leaders. Each year a certain number of training participants were selected according to the needs and financial availability of both governments (roughly the travelling cost of participants was paid by the Thai government, and the cost of training in the other countries was paid by the United States govern- ment). For the Master's Degree program, participants were sent to the Philippines and the United States. 96 TABLE 1 USOM COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ADVISORS 1957-1972 Nudmr Dumnfion Enxuiemxain Admfixm' luriwfl. Inpanuue Yemm: lkxmhs Oan:COmu:ies 1 Dec. 1956 Dec. 1958 2 -- Not listed 2 June 1959 .May 1964 5 11 NOt listed 3 Feb. 1961 Mar. 1963 2 -- Laos, Iran, Vietnam 4 Mar. 1961 Apr. 1962 l - Iran 5 Jan. 1962 Oct. 1966 4 9 Iran 6 June 1962 Oct. 1966 4 4 India, Philippines, quflq Imixmsia, Bmfiflbd,ikmadca 7 July 1962 .May 1964 l 10 Not.Listed 8 Oct. 1962 Jan. 1967 4 2 India, Laos, Pakistan 9 Jan. 1963 Ju1y 1965 2 6 Not listed 10 Jan. 1963 Jan. 1965 2 - Not listed 11 Aug. 1963 Sept. 1966 3 1 India, Philippines 12 Sept. 1963 JUne ‘1966 2 10 Philippines, Iran, Turkey. Egypt 13 Sept. 1963 Aug. 1964 -- 11 NOt Listed 14 Oct. 1963 .May 1964 - 9 Iran 15 NOV. 1963 JUne 1967 3 8 India, Nepal 16 Aug. 1965 Sept. 1971 6 - Vietnam 17 Oct. 1965 June 1970 4 8 Vietnam 18 Oct. 1965 Apr. 1966 - 6 NOt listed 19 NOV. 1965 July 1966 - 8 NOt listed 20 NOV. 1965 Ju1y 1966 -- 8 NOt listed 21 Jan. 1966 Jan. 1968 2 - NOt listed 22 JUne 1966 Dec. 1968 2 6 NOt listed 23 NOV. 1966 Dec. 1968 2 -- KOrea 24 Dec. 1966 May 1969 2 5 Vietnam 25 JUne 1967 JUne 1972 5 - Iran, Laos,‘Vietnam1 26 June 1967 JUne 1971 4 - Guatemala, Vfisflsuun Cosuafdca 27 Dec. 1967 June 1972 4 6 Vietnam, Dar es Saalam 28 Dec. 1967 Dec. 1969 1 11 Iran, Laos, Vietnam Source: Biographic Register, Department of State, United States, 1972. 97 The short-term training and observational tour participants were sent to Taiwan, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, and a few to the United States. A total of 78 officials in the Community Development Department received from three- months training to complete Master's Degree training. Four- hundred-thirty-seven officials and village leaders received short-termobservational tours by the end of the USOM assist- ance in 1972 (King, 1972:22). The total cost of participant's training contributed by USOM was $723,800, as shown in Table 2. No empirical study has been made to evaluate the effec- tiveness of job performance and the contributions of these officials after they came back from the training. One major impact that occurs after the completion of the Masters Degree is due to the salary scale system of the civil service. Once an official obtains a higher educational degree, if one's current salary is below the standard of that new degree, then one is eligible to be raised to meet the higher scale. The raise to a higher salary scale means more responsibility and a higher position for the officials. The impact of the Masters Degree training has brought the CD Department to the status of a new government organization which has many young Western-trained personnel holding the key positions. The official statistics show that there has been a high mobility of western trained officials occurring in the CD Department since 1965. It is estimated that in 1975 at least 32 out of the 78 USOM trained officials have joined other agencies (6 joined the private sector, 7 joined the 98 TABLE 2 USOM ANNUAL OBLIGATED SUPPORT COSTS TO THE CD PROGRAM 1957-1971 (THOUSAND U.S. DOLLARS) Advisory Participants Year Service Training Commodities Sub-total 1957 15,539 16,765 -- 32,304 1958 15,000 400 -- 15,400 1959 15,000 -- -- 15,000 1960 15,400 15,600 10,000 41,000 1961 37,800 26,300 59,700 123,800 1962 65,000 64,825 98,000 227,825 1963 120,000 57,035 130,000 307,035 1964 110,000 58,000 117,000 285,000 1965 114,500 18,000 100,000 232,500 1966 165,000 51,700 138,000 354,700 1967 153,300 97,075 442,000 692,375 1968 275,000 94,000 350,000 719,000 1969 200,000 88,750 280,427 569,177 1970 125,000 62,550 174,200 361,750 1971 120,000 72,800 175,000 367,800 Total 1,546,539 723,800 2,074,327 4,344,666 % 35.50 16.66 47.74 100 Source: WOrk and Accomplishment of Community Development 1963-1971,King, 1971: Annex 1. 99 universities, 12 transferred to the local Administration De- partment, and 7 transferred to other governmental agencies). The major cause of the high mobility among Western-trained officials is due partly to the limitation of position ad- vancements in the Community Development Department and the stimulating incentives given by other agencies, for instance, the better pay from private enterprise, and high social pres- tige of District Officers in the local Administration De- partment. It is anticipated that under the present circum- stance the trend of mobility may continue throughout the coming decade. Besides the advisory service and participant training program, conunodities were another major form of assistance received from USOM. Table 3 shows that vehicles for field officials had the highest cost in commodities assistance, a total of more than $1 million. Australian Jeeps and In- ternational Scouts were the two popular vehicles sent to Thailand. Field officials used them as a means to reach villagers as well as to travel to Bangkok for official busi- ness. The growing trouble with these vehicles is that after a few years of use most Jeeps begin to be worn out and it is very difficult to obtain spare parts. At present many of them have'been idle in the field without repairs. The second largest item of commodities,in terms of cost, is some light construction equipment requested by the CD Regional Centers for use in public work constructions in villages. The cost is over half million dollars as shown 100 in Table 3. Audio visual equipment has the least cost in commodities assistance. These were overhead projectors, movie cameras and projectors, photo equipment, and audio visual kits for the village workers. The CD Department started several mobile units in the early 19603, intended to bring government information to remote villages. The project was dropped after a few years because of insufficient funds from the government's regular budget. Some of the audio visual equipment was requested primarily for that project. In conclusion, USOM's assistance to community develop- ment primarily consists of advisory service, participant training programs, and commodities. The statistics (Table 1 and Table 2) show that the advisory service amounted to a total of 78 man/years with a cost of less than 1.6 million, almost twice the size of the participant training program, which cost 723,800 dollars (excluding the travelling expenses borne by the Thai government). The commodities assistance started three years later and cost a total of 2.1 million dollars (Table 3). The cost of vehicles provided for field officials was almost equal to the cost of audio visual equip- ment plus the cost of light construction equipment for vil- lage public works (Table 3). Figure 6 shows a clear relationship between three types of USOM assistance over time. The overall assistance in- creased dramatically during the years of 1966 to 1969. Al- though the peaks of the three types occurred in different 101 .usmfiuummmo unmamoam>ma muflsssfiou mwawm push unmmumucsou tam mosmumwmm¢120mo umoan—om ooo.ooa.~ ooo.vmm ooo.m~¢ ooo.mvo.H . Axuoz owansm mmmaaw> How acmemflsvm mo sowumcwneoov ucwEmwsvm sowuosuumsoo unqu A.oum .usmemwsvm “was mambo: .muwx >¢ .ucmamwsvm ouonm .muouoomoum mH>oz .muouomnoum Ommnuw>ov ucmfimaswm Hmsmfl> oatsd Amuw>om pawn can mmmmnv mamaowmmo tame“ How mwaownm> mHmHHoa .m .o as umoo mmfiuflOOEEou no make BZMSBMfime AHanuomch ezmzmoum>mo maHzozzoo use 09 some um omoH>omm mmHeHoozzoo m mqmda .102 msflcflmua musmmHOHuumm moa>umm mnemw>tm mmaufinoesoo N magma Eouw smxmu mama "monsom umoo uuommsm omummnano Hmsccm some m musmwm .2. on mm mm no mm me am mm me am om mm mm hmmH om 00H 4 omH 1 com omN com omm coo 1 omv ooo.a mumafloo .m .a 103 years, not surprisingly the increase in assistance corres- ponds to the same range of time when the Vietnam war was at its peak. The participant training assistance has a normal trend of increase when compared to the other two types. The drop of assistance in participant training in 1965 was due to the returning of officials from abroad, and the Depart- ment decided to stop sending more officials for training. The other two types of assistance also show a decline from 1963 to 1965. This was the end of the first five-year as- sistance agreement between USOM and the Community Develop- ment Department. The rise of the participant training program during 1966 to 1969 represented a new agreement of the CD Depart- ment and USOM the sending of officials for short course training and observational tours. This program included field officials and some selected local leaders. Group ob- servational tours were organized for three to four week per- iods to observe rural reconstruction programs and the Far- mers Association in Taiwan, training in community develop- ment in the Philippines, Comilla project in Pakistan, Com- , munity Development and Cooperative movement in India, and rural development planning in Malaysia. According to King (1971:27), USOM assistance to com- munity development was first planned to be phased out gradu- ally in 1966. Following the announcement of the communists that Thailand was the next target for the "War of Liberation," 104 a U. S. policy decision was made to assist the Thai govern- ment in meeting the increased subversion and insurgency threats. Therefore, USOM assistance increased and continued another five years. This explains why the trend of assist- ance from USOM had risen sharply during the years of 1966 to 1969 in Figure 6. Among the three types of assistance provided by USOM during 19503 to 19703, advisory service can be considered as one of the more influential inputs to Thai community de- velopment program when compared to the other two. As dis- cussed earlier, the beginning of the CD program, USOM ad- visors assumed major roles in drafting the National Community Development Plan, and after the establishment of the CD De- partment, all operating divisions except the Secretary's Office, had employed USOM advisors as consultants. The con- tinuity of advisory service extended from 1956 until the termination in 1972, as shown in Table 1. Although detailed information is not available to investigate how much and what kind of input that USOM advisors had put forward to the individual activity in community development, it is rational to believe that the association of advisors with Thai CD of- ficials in a long period of almost two decades the USOM ad- visors certainly had helped to lay down some basic foundation in the community development program. One good example of advisor influence is to look at the organizational structure of the Community Development Department. When I was invited by the SEATO to participate 105 in the Exchange Program of CD Experts in the Philippines in 1970, I found that the organizational setting and names of divisions of the Presidential Arm on Community Development in the Philippines were identical to that of the Thai CD Department (Decharin, 1970). When asked, "how come we have the same names and similar organizational structure?" one of the Division chiefs simply said "because we have the same group of USOM advisors." Another example is to look at the newly established programs in the Community Development De- partment, in some extreme cases it depended very much on the foreign advisors, especially during the early part of 1960. For instance, one of the Directors-General wrote (CDP, 1962:52): "The initiation of a suitable program of research and evaluation will require the assistance of foreign experts who will work closely with Thai counterparts." The influence of advisors should not be a surprise, according to Bhattacharyya's study (1972), he found that community development programs in countries like the Philip- pines, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Thailand, have shared vir- tually the same approach. Bernard (1973:167) explains the similarity of community development among countries during the 19603 as follows: "...in order to forestall such stress of change, UNESCO commissioned a staff of specialists under the editorial direction of Margaret Mead to draw up guidelines for orienting the experts who were to go all over the world in community development cru- sades. The principles enunciated in the man- ual became revealedgwrit and were repeated 106 with monotonous regularity in all reports of community development work: Go slow, do not impose plans from the outside, let the community itself decide what it wants to do; failure will surely result sooner or later if you try to impose your own ideas on the community." From 1957 to 1971, USOM had employed 28 U. S. advisors to supervise the community development program in Thailand. These advisors have their experiences either in extension work in the United States, or they had worked as advisors in many other developing countries besides Thailand (Table 1). Naturally, they would come with a particular kind of experi- ence and preconceived developmental framework to apply in Thailand. Rohrer (Zimmerman and Duwors, l970:26)observes a very interesting situation which can be applied to the case of community development as well. ”No matter what national background a techni- cal assistance person has, he will be conver- sant with the history of development of his nation's agriculture and will employ what he knows of that experience as an applicable model for change." Adoption of Development Projects The analysis of project adoption processes between USOM and the Community Development Department has been limit- ed. The available documents are insufficient to explain how all the present development projects were adopted. The in- formation is quite inadequate, and it is not certain whether the development projects have been instituted during the UNESCO program or after USOM assistance. From Nairn's (1966) analysis, it appears that some of the projects, such as the 107 local leader training, the home economic activities, the self-help public works, and the vocational training, were operated at the village level during the Thai-UNESCO program. Perhaps the emphasis and official names of the projects might have changed. For instance, the home economic activities during TUFEC program was called the CD-WAY when USOM began its assistance. However, this study found that the follow- ing development projects have continued to receive support both in advisory service and financial assistance from USOM since 1962 until termination in 1972. Village Leader Training Project. The purpose of this project is to increase the abilities of the village and the Tambon Development Committees to act as representatives in the community for initiating cooperative action in order to improve village living conditions. The training session is held at the village level and the village workers and the functional officials from the district will serve as train- ers. Usually the training will last from 3 to 5 days plus one to two days educational tour to other districts or pro- vinces after the formal training is over. The curriculum of such training is designed to increase the leaders' self- confidence and their skills in democratic group discussion, problem analysis, decision-making process, planning and or- ganization of action, better use of government services, and the responsibilities of the committees. Community Development for WOmen and Youth Project (CD-WAY). The purpose of this project is to develop the 108 potential, and to change attitudes of rural women and youth so that they will become more actively involved in the vil- lage develOpment activities. Home economics, dressmaking, and household management are major subjects that are taught to the members of women's groups in the village. For the youth training program, the subjects emphasized are occupa- tional skills, rural recreation, leadership development, and group activities. Child development is also part of this program. Pre-school child centers are established at the village level where the parents can support the day-to-day expenses of the center. Adult village girls are selected by the Village Development Committee and receive special train- ing in child care in Bangkok for about 3 to 4 months. After the training they will return and work in the center with minimum pay, which is partly supported by the CD Department. The Community Volunteer Leader Training Project. This project started later than the two preceding projects. The purpose of this project is to train active villagers to work “as administrative assistants to the Tambon Development Com- mittee (TDC). The job is to carry out development activi- ties which the TDC has decided to implement in the villages. The volunteer leader is selected by the TDC and receives three weeks of training, provided by the CD Department. He receives a subsistence pay from the TDC, again funded by the CD Department. It is hoped that in the future the volunteer leader will be able to substitute for the village worker. Some evaluation of this project has been made and will be 109 examined in the last chapter. The Occupational Group Development Project. The pri- mary purpose of this project is to uplift the standard of living of the villagers by increasing family income and en- couraging savings. The project is designed to encourage farmers to organize themselves into occupational groups ac- cording to their present occupations. The members of the organized groups will be taught the modern techniques of their occupations, marketing problems, and some initial man- agement skills. The trainers are local agriculturalists, and the village workers. The training lasts 3 to 5 days plus another one or two days of field trips to visit other occupational groups in other provinces. Process of Program Development Since it is impossible to trace the project adoption process in the early stages, some comprehension of the pro- cess is implied through an examination of annual assistance request procedure of the two systems after 1965. From of- ficial files and evidence drawn from the CD departmental minutes, the procedures of the annual assistance requests from the Community Development Department can be summarized. Before January of each year, the CD Department circu- lates a memorandum to all the division chiefs and the re- gional directors. The memorandum consists of information concerning the Department's policy and guidance in making a request for USOM assistance in the following year. It is 110 the responsibility of the division chiefs and the regional directors to submit their initial request, which is usually based on assistance received from USOM in the previous years. The Operation Division calls a Department meeting after re— ceiving all the proposed requests from the divisions and regional centers. The meeting is chaired by the Director- General, and attended by the Deputy Directors-General, all the Division Chiefs, and the Regional Directors. In this meeting they consider the soundness of the new requests and review the needs of the old assisting projects, then inte- grate them as a departmental request for assistance. Before the departmental request is submitted for for- mal consideration with the Department of Technical and Boo- nomic Cooperation (DTEC), the CD Department usually arranges an informal consultation with the Chief of USOM Community Development Division. Very often the proposed request may be rejected in part as some of the requested items do not meet USOM's assistance policy, or that the items are too large and there are no funds to support them. The Depart- ment reconsiders and readjusts the priorities of the request. If the Director-General agrees and confirms the original re- quest, then the proposal is submitted for formal considera- tion with DTEC and USOM. In this meeting there will be representatives of the DTEC, of the Community Development Department, and of USOM. 'The meeting may continue for several days before a final proposal is agreed upon by the three parties. Discussions 111 often center either on details such as the forms and sources of administrative support, or the number of advisors and counterparts that will be assigned to work with the assist- ance projects. Available counterpart funds in the annual Thai budget are usually a primary constraint in considering the proposed request. After this meeting, it is the respon- sibility of the DTEC to include the CD Department's proposal as part of the national government request. A Country Field Submission (CFS) will be prepared by USOM along with other government agencies' requests, and then submit it to the US/AID in Washington for further processing. Caldwell (1974:22) describes a complicated procedure which shows how the submitted CFS has to go through the bur- eaucratic hierarchy in AID and other offices in Washington. According to Caldwell, for funds that must be committed by USOM before July 1973, the formal program process begins in May 1971. This means the discussion and finalized request has to be prepared by Thai government officials in January 1971. Substantively, it contains a discussion of the prob- lems Thailand is facing and American interests in Thailand. It usually proposes an overall strategy for dealing with those problems and meeting those interests. The supplemen- tary aspects of CFS contain narrative project descriptions and tables detailing anticipated funding and personnel re- quirements. Since USOM support for a given project gener- ally continues for several years, the narrative portion of 112 these proposals may vary little from one year to the next. The Thailand Desk in AID/Washington, the Office of Southeast Asia, and the East Asia Bureau of AID, will criti- cize, comment, and compare the CFS and the individual pro- ject proposals with administrative priority and AID world- wide strategy. The proposed Thailand aid has to obtain ap- proval from the Office of Management and Budget before it is included in the President's budget. The Thailand Desk has to prepare a summary version of the CFS and the project pro- posals. This becomes the Congressional Presentation, which is submitted to interested congressional committees--Generally the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives, the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the Foreign Aid Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations. If the process of congressional apprOval proceeds smoothly, funds authorized for CFS will be ready for action by July 1972. The obligation of funds represents simply a promise by the United States government to provide the commodities and services specified. The next step is to make those goods and services available in Thailand. This process is a com- plex and time-consuming one. If equipment or contract ser- vices are to be provided, then bids must be solicited, evalu- ated and awarded. If expert services are required, then ap- propriate personnelmust be selected, identified, and trans- ferred to Thailand, or perhaps a contract with an American firm must be entered into. 113 In summary, the commodities and services requested for USOM's assistance, for which the formal planning started in January 1971, will not be fully provided by the donor system until some time in 1975 or 1976. There is a lag of at least five years between the initial planning of a project and the arrival of project components. The hard facts of funding are that it absolutely requires the intervention of the bureau- cratic system, the congressional appropriations procedures, and then the delay in procurement of goods and services. There are no other alternatives for the donor and the recipi- ent systems. The Interactional Patterns Interaction between systems involves a reciprocal action or influence. It is a two-way directional process. In this study two kinds of interactional patterns are defined: the horizontal interaction and the vertical interaction. The former refers to an interaction that is based on an equality of position of the interacting systems, and the latter refers to the interaction that is based on a difference of position of the interacting systems. The hypothetical model in stage one of this study postulates that the interactional pattern of a donor system (USOM) and a recipient system (the Community Development Department) has an equality of position (Figure 2). Therefore, this section is designed to find out in which pattern the two systems have interacted. 114 Superiority Syndrome George Axinn (1975:6) uses the term "Superiority Syn- drome" to describe the interactional phenomena that happen when one group of individuals attempts to help or to assist the others. He explains: "The syndrome usually develops among person- nel of any foreign mission in any host country. .They tend to forget all of the negative aspects of their home institutions; they tend to see and magnify all the negative aspects of the 10- cal situation. This is accentuated by their ignorance of and failure to understand the lo- cal situation. It is almost inescapable that an "up-down" form of interaction results." Axinn's point is supported to some extent by evidence in this study. After examining some official monthly re— ports and articles written by USOM advisors and concerned Thai officials in the early stages of the program, the supe- riority syndrome did exist, it varied in degree, depending upon individuals. Since interaction is a two-way process, it is also found that Thai officials to some extent possess an inferiority syndrome in interacting with USOM advisors. Some official documents appeared to place very high status on technical knowhow of the USOM advisor, though the compe- tency was not applicable to the indigenous conditions. The review of materials also indicated that Thai officials, who were assigned to work with USOM advisors on the development projects, very often would go along and confirm what the ad- visors had proposed or suggested in order to obtain aid as- sistance. Such expediency is not frequently found in the 115 documents dated after 1968. Instead an increasing disagree- ment between USOM advisors and the Thai counterparts occurred after 1968. This reversed syndrome is also observed by Caldwell as well (1974): "...Particularly as Thai began returning from the U. S. and elsewhere with advanced training, it became apparent that farang need have no monopoly on technical or general understanding in the various fields relevant to moderniza- tion (p. 75). ...that the effective assistance to a country of Thailand's level of development is no longer possible by generalists in the development field. The problems are so involved, and the quality of Thai officials so much higher than used to be the case, that only a person already deeply familiar with Thai conditions is likely to be able to make appropriate judgments (p.158)." Vertical and Horizontal Interaction In analyzing the system interaction patterns, after a careful investigation of the available materials and official documents, it seems to me that the interaction between USOM and the CD Department appeared in several patterns. It is hard to find one particular pattern that represents a confir- mation of the hypothetical model in stage one. The follow- ing phenomena reflect several patterns of interaction between these two systems. When interaction is viewed in terms of conceptual transmission between USOM and the Community Development De- partment, there is a tendency towards a vertical interaction- al pattern, especially in the beginning of the program. Pub- lications concerned with community development during the 116 early stages included a great deal of simple translation from the Western terminology. It was commonly found that many new terms used in Thai were followed with an English word in pa- renthesis. The most commonly used terms were "felt-need," "self-help," "stimulation," "self-reliance," "local self- government," "local leaders," and "group dynamic." Also it was found in many documents that American advisor's notations were quoted to gain recognition and acceptance from readers and decision makers. It is quite alright if the quoted no- tation conforms to social fact, but in many cases the quota- tion is simply not consistent with reality. Just to cite a simple example from one of the documents (Sukaviriya, 1965: 217): "...Furthermore, through a democratic process of village development, we hope, a community with self-reliance can be established and lo- cal self-government can be fostered." Obviously, the historical review in Chapter 2 clearly showed that Thailand had been under military control since 1932, with periodically short-lived elected governments. How can a democratic process take place in the grassroots community with such a political configuration? The concept of democratic process is Western ideology. The "self- reliance" and "local self-government" are no more than a government slogan to preserve the status quo of the incumbent political regimes. All these Western concepts can also be used as public designed goals to attract foreign aid. 117 When the interaction pattern is examined in terms of activities in which both systems participate, the general pattern is found leading to an equality of position--that is, a horizontal pattern. Both systems seem to have an equal status in bargaining and directing the activities toward the system's objectives. Some major activities are abstracted here from the official files in order to support and demon- strate the interactional pattern mentioned above. Normally the selection of USOM's advisors depends upon the decision of the donor system. However, if an advisor is found incom- petent in his advisory service, the recipient system has a right to request a replacement. During the life of USOM as- sistance, at least one advisor has been replaced at the re- quest of the CD Department because of his incompetency. The selection of Thai officials as candidates to par- ticipate in the overseas training program is the responsi- bility of the CD Department. However, the selected candi- dates must pass the English proficiency test which is ar- ranged by USOM. If the candidates fail to pass the test, then the CD Department has to send in new candidates. In practice, a list of alternates is also submitted for the test simultaneously. The major field for the Master's Degree and the short course training is determined by the need of the CD Department. The school and the country for the train- ing program is up to USOM to arrange and consult with the CD Department which usually finds no objection. 118 The scope of financial and technical advisor assistance provided by USOM, is somewhat limited within several major development projects. As long as the requests for assist- ance fall into those major development projects, USOM will eventually give full support. The details in operation such as curriculum for training, duration of training, and place of training usually depends on the Thai decisions. Limitation of Interaction Patterns The interactional pattern of USOM and the CD Depart- ment has also been inferred from other agencies in the bur- eaucracy. On the Thai situation, the Department of Techni- cal and Economic Cooperation (DTEC) is the intermediate con- trolling system. The regulations and decisions of the DTEC have limited the freedom of the CD Department to interact with USOM. Several new proposed projects to USOM were re- jected by the DTEC, although USOM had already agreed to sup- port the projects. Insufficient counterpart funds for the new requested projects was the main reason given for the objection. On the donor system side, since USOM is an overseas mission, the controlling system is even more complicated. Starting with the internal organization of USOM, the mission has 45 recipient departments in Thailand which differ in their objectives and nature of their responsibilities. Fur- thermore, all the recipient departments are under different ministries which have policies and approaches in various 119 directions. Therefore, the organizational setting of USOM has to be arranged to meet with the complication of the re- cipient departments. The structure of USOM's internal organization has varied over the years. There has been a major reorganization of USOM approximately every four years. The alterations reflect chang- ing problem content, as well as changing USOM views of the most effective way of structuring communications with the Thai recipient departments. The change of USOM organization pat- tern has several other factors involved. First, the change is mainly due to the turnover of the leadership in USOM. Secondly, the change is due to structural preferences. The central concern in mission administrative structures has been whether organization should be patterned after Thai bureau- cratic structure, or whether organization should follow sub- stantive, goal-directed lines. Caldwell (1974:14) described the different consequence of these two approaches. "The first approach can ease communications. It can also result in the transposition of the biases, parochialisms and loyalties of recipient country ministries and departments into the aid agency....The second approach, on the other hand, while it may permit more rational aid agency perspectives on the sub- stance of developmental issues, may, because of internal rivalries within the aiding agency itself, not result in improved program coordination; and the Thai experience has shown that it also can result in less satis- factory relationships with host country or- ganizations. Besides the internal change in structure which affects the interactional pattern of the two systems, USOM itself is 120 not a completely autonomous agency. The immediate controlling system is the United States Embassy in Thailand. According to Caldwell (1974:14), USOM is under the overall supervision of the American ambassador. While the embassy is rarely in- volved in day-to-day aid activity, the ambassador has on oc- casion in the past played an important role in program devel- opment, and sometimes program implementation. The hierarchical procedure in AID/Washington and in- volvement of legislation discussed in the previous section has already demonstrated that USOM is indeed not a totally free donor system. USOM has its limitations in interacting with the recipient system as well. The limitation of the donor system is even greater than that of the recipient sys- tem. Conclusion and Observation Three donor systems have been examined in this study. SEATO has had the least involvement and has not had much influence on the community development program in Thailand ‘when compared with the influence of UNESCO and USOM. UNESCO ‘was the pioneer donor system that brought the community de- velopment program to Thailand in 1953 under the label of Thailand-UNESCO Fundamental Education Program. The primary objective of the UNESCO was to improve rural communities by promoting fundamental education with a community develop- ment approach. After seven years of operation, the program was terminated because of several intermingled reasons. 121 The United States assistance to Thailand began in 1950 during the early period of the Point Four Program. The assistance of USOM to the community development program was not started until 1956. The boom of USOM assistance to com- munity development during the 19603 was mainly stimulated by the threat of communist insurgency. The establishment of the National Community Development PrOgram in 1960 was‘ substantially supported by USOM both financially and techni- cally. USOM's assistance to community development during the last decade consisted of advisory service, participant training program, and commodities. Commodities are the largest items in terms of cost, advisory service, and the participant training, rank next, respectively. The interaction process between USOM and the Community Development Department revealed no unique overall pattern; but rather depending on the dimension one is analyzing, spe- cific patterns emerge. For example, vertical pattern is ap- parent when interaction was examined in terms of conceptual transmission, and a horizontal pattern was evident when the activities were examined. USOM terminated its assistance to community develop- ment completely after 1972, although other rural development programs have continued to receive assistance from USOM. The Community Development Program has since become the task of Thai government without any major foreign assistance. Several major development projects which were introduced by 122 USOM have continued to operate in the rural communities. The question is: how long will these projects last? Has there been any major change in the nature of the projects since the termination of USOM? Have all these projects proved to be beneficial to the rural communities? What will happen to the Community Development Program from this point onward? Will the Community Development Program cOntinue its present structure and approach? Some of these questions will subse- quently be answered in the next two chapters. Some of these questions are beyond the scope of this study but they are crucial issues that will reflect the consequence of the over- all rural development program in Thailand. The Community Development Program in Thailand, as found in this part of the study can be a good case to determine in the future whether foreign assistance for rural development is really needed. If it is needed, whether the similar assistance is required, and whether the interaction patterns between the donor and the recipient systems should be designed along the line of the experience of this case. All these questions re- quire future research to obtain the answers. CHAPTER IV INTERACTION WITHIN THE BUREAUCRATIC SUBSYSTEMS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES Introduction The findings of the preceding chapter show that the Com- munity Development Program in Thailand has obviously been in- fluenced by the foreign donor systems from the beginning of the program until the end of 1972. Several major development projects which had been introduced and assisted by the donor systems have continued to operate in the rural communities. This chapter is designed to use the seven major development projects (the leadership development; the occupational devel- opment; the youth development; the women development; the child development; the community volunteer development; and the community public facilities development) as case studies, to analyze the course of action in terms of the decision- making process, the communication process, and the organiza- tional boundary maintenance process between three major bur- eaucratic subsystems. The three subsystems are: the policy- making and resource-control system; the administrating and supervising system; and the implementation and operating sys- tem. At the end of this chapter, the study will diagnose the operational problems and causal factors on various devel- opnent projects from the available research and evaluation reports. 123 124 The findings of this chapter will be used as evidence to support or to reject the hypothetical model in stage two, namely, that the constraints and operational problems in the Community Development Program are consequences of the verti- cal interaction process within the bureaucratic system. The analysis will be divided into five interrelated sections._ The first section will cover the general structure and interactional pattern between the three major bureaucratic subsystems. The second section will analyze the types of decision-making processes and the variables and constraints in decision-making. This section will focus on the policy- making and resource-control system only. The third section will examine the communication linkages and processes verti- cally within the bureaucratic system. In the fourth section, the organizational boundary maintenance will be analyzed in terms of power and authority to include the control of re- sources in government funds, personnel, and equipment. The final section will diagnose the constraints and problems of various development projects and identify the causal factors. The major sources used for the analysis in this chapter, besides thoselisted in the bibliography, are numerous offi- cial documents from the personal files of the researcher. Namely, six years (1971-1976) of departmental staff meeting minutes; three years of abstracts and summaries of the region- al, provincial and district monthly and quarterly meeting re- ports (1973-1975); 14 summarized reports of different CD personnel seminars held at various times from 1968 to 1975; 125 .30 copies of official letters, circulars, and memoranda; and IL4 copies of Document (P) and 10 copies of Document (W)*. All the official documents are in Thai and have been (distributed for official use only. It would not be possible :for the researcher, as an incumbent official of the CD Depart- Inent, to list the mentioned documents individually. The re- searcher also finds impractical to make individual reference, for the findings are often a combination of various sources. Moreover, if a specific reference or quotation is cited, it :nmy be harmful to individual members of this bureaucracy. In addition, this chapter is intended to diagnose the inter- actional process in the bureaucracy of a system, not on an individual member basis. Thus, this chapter will avoid spe- cific references, especially to the documents mentioned above. However, all the descriptive documents have been sorted out by several check lists designed to cover the scope of the study stated earlier. Some of them are used to construct tabulations and quantitative data to support the discussion. Functional Structure and Interactional Pattern Functional Structure The policy-making and resource-control system has three major components: the Director-General and his two Deputy *Official documents issued by the responsible Division ‘to serve as working manual and guideline for carrying out ‘the development projects. (P) refers to operation and (W) refers to technical subject. 126 Directors-General; nine regional Center Directors; and six Division Directors and one Department Secretariat. The Director-General, and the Deputy Directors-General are spe- cial grade officials and are appointed by the Minister of the Interior Ministry. The regional Center Directors are appointed by the Minister with recommendation of the Director- General. Three of them are special grade and the rest are first grade officials. The Director-General appoints all the Division Directors and the Secretariat. At present the seven development projects are unevenly distributed among different divisions. The Operation Divi- sion has the largest responsibility. Four out of the seven major projects are under the responsibility of this division. The Community Education Division is responsible for the Youth Development project while the Community Volunteer De- velopment Division takes care of the Community VOlunteer Development Project. The Training Division is responsible for the Leadership Development Project. The annual operational budget of the development pro- ject is formulated and controlled by the respective respon- sible Divisions. This includes the authority to allocate operational funds and to execute the approval process for the project propOsal requested by the provincial offices. The responsible division has to summarize, screen, propose alternatives, and submit them to the Director-General for final approval. 127 The major role of the regional center is to provide technical assistance to the field operation. The CD super- visors at the center are key personnel to visit field pro- jects on a monthly basis and report back to the center. The center is responsible for in-service and pre-service train- ing, and different kinds of seminars both for CD personnel and local leaders. The center has its own budget for normal operation. For special projects such as training for youth leaders, volunteer leaders, and occupational groups, the training expense and curriculum would be transferred from the responsible divisions in Bangkok. The administrating and supervising system is composed of the provincial Governor and his Deputy Governor; the pro- vincial officials; and the District Officer. The Governor is appointed by the Minister of the Interior Ministry while the Deputy Governor is appointed by the Director-General of the Local Administration Department. The provincial offi- cials besides the provincial CD Officer, also include all concerned functional officials who are appointed by various departments in Bangkok. The District Officer is a first grade official. He is appOinted by the Director-General of the Local Administration Department. His role is to serve as an administrator and operating coordinator at the District level. The involvement of the Governor in administrating and supervising the Community Development program varies from province to province. Evidence found in the summary of the 128 provincial staff meetings reveals that some Governors have close involvement in administering the Community Development program. The Governor in this case often attends regular meetings to consider the proposed requests from the District. He would pay mOre attention to the field project reports and would frequently visit the project areas in the villages with the provincial CD Officer. In some cases, the Governor even contacts the Director-General of the Community Development Department personally to consult on operational problems in his province and ask for additional financial assistance on the development projects. The evidence also showed that some Governors have less interest in the community development program. The provind cial CD Officer then has some difficulty in asking him to call the staff meeting or the Provincial Coordinating Com- mittee to consider the annual development projects which are proposed from the District. The approval of the projects would take place by circulating the proposal to the individ- ual member, with no formal meeting called. The Governor in this case prefers to attend some official ceremonies occa- sionally, such as the completion of a community hall or the opening ceremony of the local leader training sessions. The major role of the provincial CD officer, besides handling the correspondence between the CD Department and the District offices is to supervise the District CD officer in carrying out the central designed projects properly. According to the assignment, the provincial CD Officer is an 129 assistant to the Governor in administering the provincial CD program. In reality, as found in many CD personnel semi- nar reports, he is neither an assistant to the Governor nor an administrator in the provincial CD program. He is more likely to be an intermediary between the CD Department and the District CD office. He has very minimum authority to make decisions, especially on issues concerning financial and equipment support for the development project. The following statements, found in many provincial CD Officers seminar reports, reflect the limitation of the Provincial CD Officer as an administrator. l. The pre-school child center was set up to meet the need of the Department, in fact the village does not have enough children to keep the pre- school child center in operation, so after two years the center had to close down. 2. We can not sell birth-control pills in the villages because our price which was fixed by the Department is higher than the price given by the health officers. 3. The District CD Officers received only 5 days a month from the Department for travel expense, so he cannot follow-up all the field projects. 4. The kind of occupational development project supported by the Department did not meet the needs of the villagers, so the project failed. 5. More villagers would like to join the pig- raising group, but the present membership of the group has already exceeded the required number specified by the Department. 6. By the time the Department approved and trans- ferred the money of the project, it was the end of the rainy season and we have to send the money back. The villagers are upset about it. 130 7. The Department designated the proportion of financial support to the occupational develop- ment project, the child and woman development project, and the public facilities development project. The proportion makes it difficult to implement the projects according to the people's needs. 8. The Department often rushes out with orders for project implementation and would like to know the result within a short period. We have no choice to make, so we rush to get the people to accept the project, and it failed finally. 9. We have sent the District CD Officers and the village workers to work in that district for more than six months but we have not received all the office equipment from the Department. 10.. After the training was completed, we received no recreational equipment from the Department ,and the youth cannot afford to buy them. The central officials who were in the training session had told the youth that sports equip- ment would be sent to the village after train- ing. The youth are very upset. The role of the District Officer as an administrator at the district level also has its limitations, for the Com- munity Development program is only part of the other develop- ment activities which the District Officer has to administer according to the will and instructions of the functional de- partments in Bangkok. The District Officer is appointed by the Ministry of Interior to be the Chairman of the District Development Coordinating Committee. He also serves as a com- mittee member in the Provincial Development Coordinating Com- mittee. The major task of these two Committees is to review, consider, integrate, and approve the development projects that are proposed by the Village Development Committees. According to the CD Department regulations all five-year 131 development plans and annual projects have to be endorsed by these two Committees before presenting them for resource a1- location in Bangkok (CDP:1970d). Many studies (CDP:1969a; 1971b; l971c; 1972b; and 1973a) show that in practice the development projects do not have to be approved by these two committees and that they still can obtain the financial sup- port from the responsible divisions in the central department. The involvement_of the District Officer in the Community Development Program is subject to many other forces (Rubin: 1974). Since the Local Administration Department is also implementing a number of development projects both physically and institutionally in all the villages (CDP:1972b), the District Officer has difficulty in balancing his role as an administrator, especially when he is directly employed by the Local Administration Department (Philco-Ford Foundation:l968). The implementation and operating system is composed of the district functional officials who are appointed from vari- ous departments in Bangkok. Mostly they are third and second grade officials. The other two components are officials ap- pointed by the CD Department; the District CD Officer (third and second grade), and the village workers (third and fourth grade). According to the community development approach, the district functional officials are seen as major technical resources to work on the development projects side by side with the village workers (CDP:1970c). In practice, the 132 functional officials are not able to assist the development projects because they all have their own assignments from the mother organizations in Bangkok. They have to work ac- cording to the design strategies, budget availability, and time schedule (Yatsushiro:l964; Philco-Ford Corporation: 1968). Rubin's study (1974:69) found that the development projects from various agencies have confused the villagers. He wrote: "Villagers were confused by the existence of the many agencies and often did not under- stand which agency was sponsoring which project. When failure occurred, villagers frequently blamed the wrong officials. Malcoordination increased villager distrust of officials...the multiplicity of farmer, agriculture or coopera- tive groups within the village confused the villagers. They saw few of them actually func- tioning and had little idea about their purposes." The village worker is, in fact, the one who carries out all the development projects in the village (CDP:1970b; CDP:1973a; CDP:1973b) with some help from the functional officials. Table 4 shows the amount of time the village workers have worked on the development projects as reported in one Study (CDP:1973a). Among the seven development pro- jects, the public facilities development rated the highest amount of time (45%) that the village workershave spent an- nually. The occupational development project is the second (27%), and the child develOpment project is the least (1%). The document used in the in-service training in 1975 indicates that the village worker has an average of 27 dif- ferent kinds of reports that he has to fill out during the 133 TABLE 4 AMOUNT OF TIME THE VILLAGE WORKERS HAVE WORKED ON THE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS ANNUALLY Projects Amount of Time in % The public facilities development 45 The occupational development 27 The woman development 11 The youth development 8 The local leadership development 4 The leisure time utilization 4 The child development center 1 Total 100 Source: Community Development Department:1973a Note: Studied in 27 provinces, N=62 village workers. working year. Many of them duplicate each other. The same situation has also been found in the early studies done in 1964 (Yatsushiro:l964). In this case, it was 14 different kinds of reports that the village worker had to fill out annually. Rubin (1974:81-85) recorded a list of actual activities which were performed by the village workers in one of the districts in the Northern province. The list can be used to illustrate the role of the village workers. Although it is 134 not exhaustive, it is representative of the seven major de- velopment projects. I list some of the activities which were directly related to the major development projects. 1. The Public Facilities Development. The village worker helped the villagers plan a bridge and obtained a small sum to help with the bridge construction. The village worker tried to convince villagers to build a reservoir and use household water storage tanks. Neither project succeeded. The village worker contacted a health official to help install water-sealed toilets in the village. The village worker had to collect villager's'payments before the health official would begin work. The village worker in Tambon without running water went, at the request of the village leaders, to see the Governor. He requested the Governor to sponsor the project but the Governor had decided to put it in another Tambon. The Local Leadership Development. The village worker helped teach the hamlet leaders how to run the Tambon Council 275. Role varied from nonparticipant, to technical consultant to advocate of new methods. The village worker listened to long complaint sessions by the village leaders about the cor- ruption of high ranking officials. The village worker offered sympathy and explained they did not have the power to do anything. The village worker met frequently with the elite of model villages to explain advantages of being a "model" and to provide technical and liaison assistance. Leaders by the large op- erated by themselves. The Youth Development. Female village workers conducted classes for several months for local girls with 4th grade education. Teaching included household tasks, 135 some introduction to household industries, sanitation and wise marketing. Female village workers taught how to use sewing machines. Limited number of machines required District CD Officer to move them fre- quently. Village workers helped coordinate Tambon athletic contests. In one case a village worker helped convince a village to host the contests. In another, he worked along with . the school headmaster to manage the events. The Occupational Development. Village worker tried to encourage villagers to grow bamboo sprouts. He lacked the techni— cal expertise to do so and the agriculture of- ficial was overwhelmed by his own work and could not help. Village worker encouraged villagers to grow sugar daddy watermelons. He helped them with the demonstration field. Marketing was done locally at a roadside stand. Village worker brought the villager problems caused by worms to the attention of the agri- culture officials. Village worker bred pigs and ducks to the local Tambon headman as a demonstration project. There was little followup; the gain mostly accrued to the Tambon headman. Other activities. District Officer wanted certain facts about development projects filled out by village leaders. Village worker helped distribute the sheets and helped the village leaders fill them out. Village worker collected various statistics desired by the provincial and national level officials. As part of the CD program, CD worker interviewed villagers on needs. Results were not utilized. 136 CD workers filled out project reports. In general the forms favored reports on material project in contrast to "motivational" work. 'Attempts to convince villagers to invest in apparatus that used water buffalo feces for fuel. Device involved capital outlay and no village interest was obtained. Project proposed by either national or provincial level offices. CD worker acted as host to various dignitaries in their villages. If the visitor was of a high enough rank other officials or the Dis- trict Officer acted as host while the CD worker prepared the villagers for the welcome. CD worker decided to establish a model village in his Tambon; by himself he drew up complete plans which were then presented to the vil- lagers; villagers listened and did not con- . tribute. From the activities performed by the village worker quoted above, one not only can see the role of the village worker but also many activities show the relationship between the village worker with his superior of the other systems, and his limitations in working with the village development projects. 'The activities described by Rubin have many simi- larities to that found in other studies conducted by the Research and Evaluation Division. The only difference is that official research reports do not describe tasks in de- tail, only conclusions are drawn. Interactional Patterns One way to comprehend the interactional patterns be- tween the three major bureaucratic subsystems is to look at the procedure of transferring the seven major development projects from one system to another. The following is the 137 result of an analysis of how the seven development projects have been started at the level of the policy-making system, how the projects have been passed to the administrating and supervising system, and then to the implementation and operating system. All seven development projects, except the community public facilities development project, have been written in a standard format of a project proposal designed by the department. The proposal includes a general statement of policy, objective of the project, nature of the problem, operational approach of the project, implementation procedure, cost, equipment and personnel required, anticipated results, and followup methods. The project proposal is prepared by the responsible divisions and approved by the Director- General, with his signature and date at the end of the last page of the proposal. The size of the proposal ranges from 8 to 15 pages, each 14 inches long on typing paper. After a project is officially approved, the responsible division summarizes the essential part of the project into an official letter. Along with a copy of the approved pro- posal, the letter is signed by the Director-General and is sent out to all the provincial Governors for further action. When the letter arrives at the provincial office, the Pro- vincial CD Officer summarizes it in a few sentences and re- ports to the Governor either in person or simply submits the letter for his consideration. In practice, the Provincial CD Officer also attaches a provincial letter which contains 138 similar information as the Department letter and submits it to the Governor. If the Governor agrees to the proposed letter, he signs it and sends it to the District Officers for implementation. Besides sending an official letter, two common practices have been found. One is that the Provincial CD Officer would call a meeting with the District CD Officers to discuss how the assigned project can be implemented in the village. Another is that the Provincial CD Officer may go out to consult with the District CD Officer individually. When the District Officer receives the provincial letter, he may call the meeting with the District CD Officer with the village workers to discuss the project implementation. In most cases, the District Officer would simply pass the letter to the CD Officer to handle the meeting with the vil- lage workers and report back the result to the District Of- ficer. The time consumed from the beginning of sending the letter from the Department to the District Office, on average ranged from two to four weeks, depending on the distance of the provinces and districts. After attending the meeting in the District Office, the village workers will then go back to their villages and consult concerning the assigned project with the local leaders or present it to the Village Development Committee. This is the time the village workers try to persuade, stimu- late, and convince the leaders to adopt the project. In some cases, a village meeting may also be called by the village headman to decide whether the village should accept the 139 assigned project or not. If the project is accepted and it usually is, then a project-request form (CD form 3 or Po-cho- saam) will be filled out by the village worker. According to the regulation (CDP:1970d), the form should be filled out by the leader and he must use the information that was dis- cussed in the Village Development Committee meeting. In reality, as many studies found (CDP:1969b; CDP:1972b; and CDP:1973b), the village workers filled them out and they were signed by the local leaders. The project-request form con- tains information of the village which desires to implement the project: cost of the project, participation from the villagers on material, money, and labor; date the project begins and ends; people involved in the project; and mainten- ance of the project. After a period of time, which varies from two weeks to three months, the CD Officer gathers and reviews the project- request forms from all the villages and submits them to the District Officer for approval. If the project-request form is approved then it will be sent to the provincial office. The provincial CD Officer will collect and review all the requests from other Districts and then submit them to the Governor for approval. If the Governor approves the requests, they will be sent to the CD Department for allocation of financial and equipment support. The responsible division in the Department will con- sider the project-request forms either at one time or at different times individually. It depends upon the nature 140 and types of projects. If the Department agreed to the project-request, then funds and equipment will be transferred to the province. If the Department disagreed or the requests did not meet the requirements, then the requests will be sent back to the province for reconsideration or correction. The transfer of funds and equipment usually take longer time, for the procedures have to go to many outside agencies who control the national budget. In some extreme cases, it takes more than six months to reach the village (see related dis- cussion on problems and constraints in CD program). The findings on the project transmitting procedure from the top down and the project request procedure from the bot- tom up has obviously confirmed the vertical interaction pat- tern between the three bureaucratic subsystems. It is quite clear that the development projects have been transmitted through the hierarchical structure in the bureaucracy. This downward procedure undoubtedly contrasts with the basic ideo- logy and approach of community development. As mentioned earlier, there is one development project which does not con- form to this procedure, that is, the public facilities develop- ment project.1 The evidence shows that the project was essen- tially initiated at the village level according to the village needs. However, the project request must still be sent up- ward to the CD Department for funding allocation (CDP:1969a; CDP:1972b; and CDP:1973b). The following chart (Figure 7) illustrates the flow projects, both downward and upward, within the bureaucratic subsystems. 141 .uumno.3on many on pwaammm uoc ma uomnoum unwEmoHo>m© mwfluflawomm owansm one "muoz coauomuwo amazon can pum3czoa cw muownonm ucmfimoam>mo mo 3oam one u ousmwm pumzms muowmoum uHsmoH so xuo3 on» mumxno3 unommm ommaafi> mowmmo uoauumwo on» 0» Umuufiensm can mama ma ummsvmu luomfloum .pmummoom mum muomnonm NH T /\ mmuuflesoo ucmEQOHm>op can mumpmma £DH3 pmmmsomwp mumxuo3 mmmHHfl> muomnoum may. pmuumum a.po>fimomu 9:25.“qu can mos?” mowmmo Hmwoafl>oum on» on pmuuflsnsm can Um>oummm ummavmuluomnoum muowkumaa o» pmuummmcmuu was .cm>flmomu unmemwswm can pssm {mmwammmmwo no may on pmuuflfinnm .pm>oummm ma po3ww>mn can p0>fimomu ummsvaIUOOnoum a consummcmuu.oum ufiafisvm can awash _ moms ma mpcsm mo «umooaam .pm>oummm ma pozwq>mn can po>flooou ummsqmutuomnoum fl> op pouuwfimcmuu can pommsomflp .pm>wmomu mcamwwwww can muomnona ucoemon>mo cowwmusoemamEH mwowuumwa on» on Emummm pouuafimsmuu a po>wmomu mcwmfl>ummsm_psm muomnoum usmfimo~m>mo mswumuumacflfivd m>oummm cam woumfiufica - Emumam mMUOnoum unmamoam>mo mcwxmelaowaom 142 Decision-Making Process After analyzing all the related sources, the policy- making process in the policy-making and resource-control sys- tem can be roughly discussed under three general headings: (l) participative decision-making process; (2) arbitrary and autocratic decision-making process; and (3) variables and constraints in decision-making process. Participative decision-making process. The most common place for participative decision-making is found at the de- partmental staff meetings. The staff meetings before 1971 were held on a weekly basis. They were attended by the Director-General, as chairman, and by two Deputy Directors- General, all the Division Directors, and the Department Secretariat. Once a month all the Regional Directors would also attend the meeting. Between 1971 to 1976, the staff meetings have been held once a month with all the officials mentioned above. The meetings were often held after the ministerial staff meeting so that some policy issues could be announced to the departmental staff. The staff meeting in the CD Department usually lasts for a long working day. The agenda of the staff meetings usually comprise the follow- ing topics: (1) announcements and remarks made by the Chair- man; (2) approval and correction of the previous meeting's minutes; (3) followup last meeting's commitments; (4) con- sideration of new proposed project (if any); (5) discussion of matters proposed by the Divisions; (6) reports and discus- sion of accomplishments and operational problems of the 143 Regional Centers; and (7) others. The seven development projects which consisted of several different activities in each project were brought up for discussion in the meetings from time to time. Most of the discussionis primarily aimed at finding better solutions for the prdblems confronted in project implementation. How- ever, the results of the discussion often become alterations of policy and operational approaches in the development pro- jects. Many new development activities have derived from the results of the discussions. Table 5 indicates the number of discussions on the major development projects in the staff meeting in which the discussions have totally or partially affected the change of operational approach in the existing projects. The occupational development project and the volun- teer development project received the highest frequency of discussions. The youth development project and the local leader development project were high during the years of 1973 and 1974. The public facilities develOpment project and the child development project received the least discussion in total.‘ From Table 5, the discussion of the projects was con- centrated in 1972 onward and beganto drop in 1975. Coinci- dentally 1971 and 1975 were the transitional years of the top executive in the CD Department.- 1 From 1971 to 1975, this study found that there were fifteen new development activities (city young volunteer to work in village, moving poor families to rural areas by 144 TABLE 5 NUMBER OF DISCUSSIONS ON THE MAJOR DEVELOPMENT ' PROJECTS IN THE STAFF MEETING 1971-1976 Projects 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 Total Occupational Development 2 4 3 7 3 2 21 Volunteer Leaders Development 0 2 6 7 3 3 21 Youth Development 2 2 3 10 1 l 19 Local Leaders Development 1 2 7 3 l 3 17 WOman Development 1 4 l 3 2 0 11 Community Public Facili- ties Development 2 l 3 l 1 2 10 Child Development 0 3 l 4 1 0 9 Total 8 18 24 35 12 11 108 145 village sponsorships, exchange of youth training by different families in various provinces, village development laboratory, gratitude to elderly people program, and Thai CD Association etc.) added to the community development program. Nine out of the fifteenbelong to the six major development projects. The evidence was not clear who initiated all these new develop- ment activities. Some of them had been discussed in the meet- ings several times before they were put into action. Some of them were discussed once and were ready for action. The evi- dence shows that in the last quarter of 1975 and the year of 1976, only five development activities out of the fifteen were occasionally discussed in the meetings, and the rest were not mentioned at all. Interesting enough, there were five more completely new activities introduced in the meet- ings, some already in operation in 1976. Another occasion for participative decision—making is the quarterly meeting which is held regularly at the regional centers. The meeting is chaired by the Regional Center Di— rector, and is attended by the CD Supervisors of that Center, the Provincial CD Officers in that region, and the Division Directors or their representatives from Bangkok. Frequently the Director-General or the Deputy Directors-General also participate during the last part of the meeting to answer policy questions. In these meetings, the operational problems and con- straints in implementing the development projects were brought up by the Provincial CD Officers and the CD Supervisors for 146 general discussion. Discussion was dominated by the officials who presented the problems and by the responsible Division Directors. Other attendants occasionally inserted opinions and shared their experience as to how they had tackled simi- lar problems. ‘Very often there was no discussion following the problem presentation; instead it was a "question and answer" session between the officials and Directors concerned. In many instances, the discussion in the meetings was an exchange of information concerning policy and practical issues between the policy-makers, the field administrators, and the CD Supervisors. As a matter of fact, the evidence shows that the discussion in the quarterly meetings was not substantially dominated by the decision-makers, and the field officers frankly complained about their difficulties in pro- ject implementation (see related discussion on the constraints and operation problems). The 1974 and 1975 quarterly meeting reports showed a different style of problem presentation than in the previous years. Instead of presenting a list of problems confronted by a province, genuine cases of failure and success of the development projects were presented to the meeting by the village workers, and the CD Officers concerned with that pro- ject. At the end of each case they also presented solutions which they had undertaken to keep the project alive. And then they presented a set of unresolved problems which were beyond their capacity to solve for the meeting to discuss. The method of problem presentation was different but the 147 end-result showed no significant differences. All the problems presented in the meeting were intended to seek assistance from the policy-making system. Some of the problems were not solved during the meeting, and had to be brought up fordiscussion in the following staff meeting of the Department. For some problems, the members of the policy-making system who were in the meeting had no option except to take the suggestions made by the field officials as a new practice in the existing development project. This means that some previous decisions on operational approaches of the project had been changed to cope with the genuine conditions in the field. The most common decisions resulting from the discussion were the extension of a time schedule for project implementation; the change of a number of trainees in different kinds of training activities; the adjustment of training curriculum for different training groups; the adjust" ment of financial and equipment support on some particular cases; and an extension for reporting the outcome of the pro- ject. A few days after the end of the quarterly meeting at the Center, the Department usually issued official letters of circulars to the provincial offices to assure and recon- firm the decisions which were made during the meeting. The purpose was to see that all provinces in other regions would follow the same.practice on the development projects as had been discussed in the meeting. 148 The 1976 documents show a new type of participative decision-making device. The newly appointed Deputy Director- General has been assigned to be the chairman of the ad hoc technical committee in the Department. This new committee is composed of a selected group of officials. Several policy issues were passed on to be considered by this committee before presentation to the staff meeting. The available documents at the time this study was made were not sufficient to make any further evaluation of this newly-emerging decision- making device. Arbitrary and autocratic decision-making process. When the responsible divisions received requests for financial and equipment assistance to the development projects from the provincial offices, or received consultation for changing some minor operational strategy for certain kinds of develop- ment projects, the decision of final approval can be made in two different ways. The responsible Division Director could go directly to the Director-General or the Deputy Director- General, and propose alternative resolutions verbally. After a decision was made, an official letter would follow and would be sent out to the provincial office. The other way of obtaining the final approval was rather slow when compared to the first one. The requests made by the province would have to go through several officials in the responsible Divi- sion. The concerned officials would propose their comments and alternative solutions to the Division Director. The Director would add to or endorse one of the proposed 149 recommendations and then submit one to the Deputy Director- General. If the matter were within the authority of the Deputy Director-General, he would make the decision. His de- cision is final and ready for action. In case the matter is beyond his authority, or he does not want to make such a de- cision, the memorandum will be submitted to the Director- General for final decision. Of course, a brief statement of agreement or disagreement with the proposed recommendation will also be endorsed by the Deputy Director-General. One common form of autocratic decision-making process found in this study simply comes as a form of "official order" either from the Director-General or from the Deputy Director- General. It can be a verbal or a short written note made to the responsible Division Directors. This type of decision does not concern crucial issues or a major change of policy or operational approaches in the development projects. Rather the decisions usually deal with some malpractice in the devel- opment projects which the top executive encounters from vari- ous sources and which needs some adjustment. Another form of decision-making is an interpretation rather than a process. When some top executives make official statements on some occasions, the statement is often inter- preted as policy which the field officials should follow. Different CD personnel seminars reported many instances of this case. The trouble is that the statement has been inter- preted in many ways by different officials. The interpreta- tion of the statement is not a problem, the problem is that 150 the officials put the interpretation into practice on the development projects. Very often the interpretation contrasts with the former decisions, or is even against the existing regulations. This sort of decision has affected many operat- ing projects, especially those in remote villages. Variables and constraints in decision-making process. In the Department staff meeting minutes, several research re- ports were presented in full detail. At least three reports out of ten presented in the meeting had been used as justifi- cation in determining changes in the existing operational ap- proach of three projects--the rural youth development center project; the volunteer leaders development project; and the occupational training project. In the discussion of changes in policies and operational approaches on most of the develop- ment projects (except the three projects mentioned above), no evidence was found that hard data or quantitative information was used to support the decision. The support used in the discussions are mainly drawn from personal experiences, es- pecially in reference to things that have been seen and heard during field visits. Whenever the top executives return from the field, the following staff meeting would eventually discuss the observations that were made on the development projects during the field trip._ The impressions and observa- tions made on the field visits became crucial information to make changes in the operational approach of those visited projects. 151 For the newly introduced fifteen development activities discussed earlier, the documents yielded no evidence of use of any data to determine the pros and cons in the initial discussion prior to the decision. The discussion simply took it for granted that those new activities would be beneficial to the rural people. Most of the discussion concentrated on the matters of how the project should be implemented, where it should be implemented, and who should take the responsi- bility to draft a project proposal. Financial allocation and some other administrative details in launching the project were left for the responsible division to figure out and re- port to the next meeting for final decision. Another general decision-making phenomenon found in most of the documents is "instant decision," when a high ranking executive is present in the meeting or seminar. The expectation from the lower ranking officials to have an "instant decision" in such cases is relatively high. The question put forward to high ranking executives to obtain a decision goes somewhat like this: "Can you grant the per- mission for us to move this project from this village to an- other one, the people in the first village are not interested any more?" "Could you grant additional funds to this project so that after training we could bring the trainees to tour other provinces?f There have been several transitions of leadership at the level of Director-General, the Deputy Director-General, the Regional Director and the Division Director between 1971 152 to 1976. The changes in leadership in these offices have affected the decision-making pattern. The changes can be easily observed from the discussions in the staff meeting minutes. Some Directors expressed strong views in opposing some issues in the meetings, some show weak resistance even if they disagreed on the issue, and some simply went along with the collective decisions. One of the Directors- General demonstrated more domination of the Directors than the others. One of the Deputy Directors-General was very much concerned about project implementation and its practical problems while the others were more interested in official regulations and malpractice of officials on the development project. The leadership variables and patterns of decision— making can only be described as to general configuration due to the limited sources. Detailed analysis of the impact of leadership pattern on decision-making will require more sophisticated empirical study. Communication Linkage and Process Communication is defined in this study as any process whereby decisional premises and feedback information are transmitted from one system to another System by members of the system. According to Simon (1965:154), communication in organization is a two-way process: it comprehends both the transmittal to a decisional center of orders, information, and advice; and the transmittal of the decisions reached from this center to other parts of the organization. 153 This section is designed to analyze the availability of communication linkages and processes in which decisional information is distributed both downward and upward within the bureaucratic subsystems. With the limitation of sources, the scope of this study will not cover the effectiveness and the efficiency of the communication linkages. In other words this section will describe how the information is transmitted from the policy-making system to the administrating and the implementation system. This will include the feedback of information from the field. Communication Linkages The transmission of decisional information between the bureaucratic subsystems is found in two major forms, one written and the other unwritten. As found in this study, there are 13 kinds of written forms that have been used for transmitting infomation both downward and upward. Each form has its own function, purpose, and use by different systems. Table 6 shows a matrix of the written forms which are clas- sified under the headings of producer and receiver in each system. From the matrix, the policy-making system produced 10 and received 7 forms. The administrating and supervising system produced 7 and received 13 forms. The implementation and operating system produced 8 and received 11 forms. Table 6 simply indicates that the policy-making system produces _most of the communication forms but receives less, as com- pared to the other two systems. In contrast, the other two 154 H H co m H l‘ l‘ O H Hmuoa \O \DI-OW mmmmm m vm M \\\ \\N\\ \ >4\ \ \- \\\ NN\><\ >4 \\ >4 \ \\\ \\\\\ \ \\ \ \ \R\‘> x> X \Dx X \- \><\ ><><\><\ x \\ x \ \\\ \\><\\ \ xx \ \ mmhmmame pom Emummamelowomm muuom umm soummmmm manommm Hmcwswm unommm mmomoum pomnoum _ A39 can any mucmssooo mousswz mcwummz Hanan: pomnonm ummsvmm pomnoum Homomonm pounoum mcowumasmmm pomnoum Esosmuosoz unasouflo umuumq Hmwoflmmo O I-INMQ' IDDFQ Haves oo>flmowm couscoumm...om>amoom. ooosooum om>flmomm owosooum Emumhmfiwswumuumm, Empowm.msfiumuumficflsod Emummm mcwxMSIMOflHom 'b}- V L, ‘ mSmHmHmmDm UHFfiMUDflHfiDm mmB ZHEBHK ZOHB€ZMOKZH UZHBBHZmz¢MB mom DmmD HU¢MZHQ ZmoleMB w mqmda msfiom mo mosfix BHm3 155 systems produce less communication forms but receive most of the communication forms, especially the administrating and supervising system receives all the 13 forms. Four out of the thirteen forms are most commonly used by the three sys- tems.. There are official letters, memoranda, meeting minutes, and radio-telegrams and teletype. ‘ i The_unwritten form of linkage occurs in eight different types, namely, the staff meeting at all levels; the seminar; the in-service training; the pre-service training; the individ- ual consultation; field inspection; special meeting; and tele- phone. Just as in the written-form linkage, these eight un- written forms have been used differently to carry out the de- cisional information and the feedback from one system to an- other. The most common forms used by the policy-making sys- tem to spread decisional information about the development projects to the other two systems are seminars and in-service training. From the findings, most of the seminars and in- service training held by the policy-making system use the following outline format: 1. Objectives of the seminar. 2. Present community development policies and projects. 3. Individual development projects presentation. 4. New rules and regulations which participants should know. ' 5. Exchange of operational problems and con- straints in operation. 6. Questions and answers session for unclear issues. 156 7. Evaluation and conclusion. From 1972 to 1975, there had been more than 30 seminars held in different provincial offices. The seminar was intend— ed to provide opportunity for the central officials to ex- change information with the provincial functional officials. Secondly, the seminar aimed to explain community development concepts and the newly introduced development projects to the newly appointed officials from different functional depart— ments in the provincial office. The seminar typically lasted for two days. The first day, the Director-General, the Regional Director of that region, and the Division Directors would present ideology, concepts, and approach of the community development program, as well as the existing and new development projects and their operational strategy. The second day of the meeting was a panel discussion which was led by the Governor, and participants included the heads of provincial extension of- fices, health officer, police officer, educational officer, and land officer. Each officer presented a brief descrip- tion of his role and function in development which included the difficulties and problems confronted in his work. At the end of the seminar, there was a concluding discussion among the attendants on the matter of how development pro— jects can be planned together. This kind of seminar will be continued for the next few years until all 71 provinces are covered. There has been no followup and evaluation report available for comment at the time of this study. 157 The Downward Communication Process The downward communication process starts from the policy-making system. After a development project is approved by the policy-making system, the responsible Division will prepare an official letter, signed by the Director-General, and sent to the provincial offices. A copy of the approval project proposal will also be attached for detailed informa- tion (see also discussion in the functional structure and interactional pattern in this chapter). A project manual is seldom published in a complete form at the beginning. Usually a few pages of simple instruction telling how the project can be properly carried out is dis- tributed to the field officials. Since 1971, the responsible Divisions have published document (P) and document (W) in which more systematic instructions and guidelines for develop— ment project are provided. These two documents are published separately on each individual project. Document (P) empha- sizes the pragmatic instructions while document (W) contains more technical information on the development projects. All CD personnel at all levels will receive a copy of both docu- ments for official reference.‘ The departmental staff meeting minutes is another means to convey more recent developments on policy issues from the policy-making system down to the other systems. Every de- ‘ cision made in the staff meeting is considered to be final and can be used as an official reference in project operation. Every individual office will receive several copies of the 158 minutes within two to three weeks after the meeting is over. In the provincial and district office, every monthly meeting of the CD officials, the departmental staff meeting minutes will be brought up to discuss some significant issues which are of concern to development policy. The radio-telegram and the teletype are recent communi- cation devices which are used to deliver urgent messages from the Department to the provincial office. The use of these two means is restricted to short and urgent messages. Ex- amples, are the confirmation of the approval of a project request, the amount of funds sent, and the summons of a par- ticular official to report to Bangkok. Another communication means that is available but seldom used is the telephone. Long distance calls have been used in a limited way. This is partly because not all the departmen- tal offices in the provinces and districts have their own direct telephones. Only the nearby provinces and districts which are located around Bangkok have such facilities. Be- sides, long distance is expensive when compared to the other means.’ Certain offices have different rules to allow some official business to be discussed by long distance calls. Field inspections and field visits made by various levels of superiors and CD Supervisor is another means to convey information down to the field workers. The high rank- ing officials from Bangkok would call either a formal or in- formal meeting with field officials after they finish the 159 field visit. The operational problems on the visited projects and recent information concerning development policy are brought up by the officials for discussion. According to the CD Department regulations, the provincial CD officers and the district CD officers have to visit their field projects at least 5 days a month. When they visit the village workers they also call special meetings to discuss their projects as well as the new development policy from Bangkok. The research and evaluation reports are documents pub- lished by the Department and distributed to the other two systems for information. Most evaluation reports are post- entry assessments of some development projects in particular villages. A study conducted in 1970 to find out the effec- tiveness and impact of the distributed reports in several provinces, found that only 65% of the field officials had seen and knew about the distributed reports, and only 25% had read some of the reports. The quarterly seminar held at the regional centers, and other seminars held by the Department and by the provin- cial and district offices for certain groups of officials are key linkages for information transmission. Table 7 shows at least 7,009 different officials repeatedly attended the pre-service, in-service training and seminars held by the Department from 1963 to 1970. The in-service training is the biggest group when compared to the other two. Almost all concerned officials in CD program had attended either 160 TABLE 7 NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS IN PRE-SERVICE AND IN-SERVICE TRAINING, AND SEMINARS HELD BY THE CD DEPARTMENT 1963-1970 Types Participants Subtotal Pre-Service Training Village workers and other officials 1,899 1,899 In-Service Training Village workers 2,075 District CD Officers 394 Section chiefs and other officials 208 Provincial CD Officers 70 Female village workers for CD WAYS 60 2,807 Seminars Provincial functional officials 1,781 District CD Officers 153 Trainers 119 Provincial CD Officers and CD Supervisors 100 Village workers for CD WAYS 75 District Officers 45 Village workers and officials 30 2,303 Total 7,009 Source: CDP:197la 161 one of the training groups or seminars. The village worker comprises the largest number that attended the pre-service and in-service training during the eight-year period. This figure does not include the seminars and in-service training held at the provincial and district offices. The evaluation of a quarterly seminar held at the regional center shows that 47 out of 56 officials who attend- ed the meeting, had used the decisions of the seminar as in- formation to resolve problems they confronted. One out of the 56 considered that the decision from the seminar was not final, and the other 8 did not respond (Table 8). TABLE 8 DECISIONS DERIVED FROM QUARTERLY MEETING BEING USED FOR RESOLVING THE CONFRONTED PROBLEMS Number of Descriptions Officials % Almost all decisions being used for re- solving the confronted problems. 30 53 Only some of the decisions being used for resolving the confronted problems. 15 27 All decisions being used for resolving the confronted problems. 2 4 Decision in the meeting is not final, it cannot be used. 1 2 Did not respond. 8 14 Total 56 100 Source: Evaluation of Regional Center's quarterly seminar;Research and Evaluation Division, September 18, 1972. 162 The Upward Communication Process The upward communication process, as found in this study, must follow the hierarchical structure of the bureaucracy. When the implementation and operating system would like to communicate with the policy-making system in written form, it has to pass through the provincial office. All official forms have to go from the District CD officer to the District Officer, then to the Governor, and from the Governor to the Director-General. Short-cutting is impossible. Even within the system itself a message must pass through the proper chan- nels. The village worker cannot communicate in written form directly to the other functional official in the same dis- trict, for it has to pass through the CD District Officer. However, informal or unwritten-forms of communication are more likely to bypass this layer within the hierarchical structure. One good example illustrates that the Department has once (1969-1970) asked the village workers to submit the pro- ject-progress report (CD form 6) directly from the village to the responsible Division in Bangkok, and simultaneously send a copy of the report to the District and provincial of- fices. This short-cut reporting process was in practice for only a year, then the Department had to call it off because there werea lot of complaints from all officials concerned. Some typical complaints were that the reports were not prop- erly filled out by the village workers; the village workers neglected to submit the reports; the reports were overdue; 163 the reports contained distorted information; and the district and the provincial officers lost control over the village workers. As Table 6 shows, the official letter, the circular, the memorandum, and the project progress report are major written forms which the implementation and the operating sys- tem use to communicate with the other two systems. Among these forms, the project progress report is the most problem- atic form that appears in most of the staff meeting and semi- nar reports. All the development projects have specific pro- gress report forms which are designed by different respon- sible Divisions. The CD Supervisors, the provincial CD Officers, the District CD Officers, and the village workers, all have to turn in certain kinds of progress reports on a certain day of the month to the different divisions in Bangkok. The contents of the reports vary from form to form. Some reports have to retain the original information filled out by the field workers, some have to be rewritten, and still others have to be condensed and integrated in a unique form before the reports are sent from one office to the other. Complaints of too much report paperwork are commonly found, especially from the village workers. As already cited in this chapter, the village worker has to fill out at least 27 dif- ferent progress reports. Many attempts have been made to solve this complaint, but no satisfactory remedy has been found. 164 Interestingly enough, the information contained in all kinds of progress reports has no substantial role in the de- cision-making process. The staff meeting minutes of the policy-making system give no evidence that the report informa- tion from the field is used as empirical fact to support the decisions made in the meetings. When the progress report was brought up in the meeting, it was a question of delay in send- ing in the reports, or a change of forms which the responsible divisions would like the meeting to endorse. Upward communication is also found in the form of indi- vidual consultation. For instance, the district CD Officer travels to consult on official matters concerning development projects with the provincial CD Officer; the provincial CD Officer travels to Bangkok to discuss operational problems or to make requests for additional funds for the operating pro- jects. In general, the decisional information and feedback in- formation are thoroughly transmitted within the three sub- systems. No complaints were found in the documents that there is a lack, or blockage of information flow as to the policy and strategy of the major development projects. On the con- trary, the evidence shows that the downward channels of in- formation are overloaded. Several examples found in the study are: "no time to work on the field projects due to require- ment of attending many seminars and training sessions"; "re- petition of listening to the same information"; "the Depart- ment and regional center send the same information"; and "the 165 CD supervisor has given the information contradictory to that of the provincial CD Officer." The upward information flow has been very frankly stated in most of the seminar reports. It is especially true that the constraints and operational problems of development pro- jects have been clearly specified in case studies presented in the seminars. The question is why do all these problems still exist. Some answers will be found in the findings of the last section in this chapter. Organizational Boundarnyaintenance Process Organizational boundary maintenanCe will be defined as the process which is employed to examine the interactional phenomenon of the bureaucratic subsystems. According to, Loomis and Beegle (l975:9), boundary maintenance is a process whereby members of the system retain their identity, value orientation, and interaction pattern when a system interacts with other systems. When a system engages in the process of boundary maintenance, it actively resists forces that tend to destroy the identity and the interaction pattern. This section will analyze two major categories; first, the identity of power and status in each bureaucratic subsystem, and second, the process of maintenance of power and status. Identity of Power and Status As shown in earlier sections, the members of each bur- eaucratic subsystem hold different official ranking status. The policy-making and resource control system is composed of 166 members with almost equal numbers of special grade and first grade officials. The members of the administrating and super- vising system at the provincial level is a mix of one or two special grades, a few first grade, and a majority of second grade officials. The implementation and operating system at the district level has the lowest status, with only one first grade, a few second grade, and a majority of third and fourth grade officials. The grade (changed to "position classification" after 1976) of officials determines the position (Siffin, 1966:196), the higher the grade the higher the position one can be posted. In Thai civil service system, higher grade officials are con- sidered to be superior to the lower grade, even though they are not working under each other (Shore, 1960). The official ranking system can be seen easily by looking at the staff meet- ing minutes or the seminar reports held by different offices. Names of those attending and the present official positions are listed in order from the highest ranking official to the lowest one. The official position is also used to address a second person in official meetings as well as in personal con- versation. This is true especially when a lower ranking of- ficial communicates with a higher ranking official, in which case the high ranking official position's name is customarily used by the lower ranking official. Within the bureaucratic subsystems, not only the differ— ence of grade among officials is recognized, the difference of control in decision and resources on the development 167 projects by different divisions is also well accepted among officials. This study has found no signs of "objection" or ”resistance" ever made by the officials in the other two sys- tems on the changes of operating strategy in the deve10pment projects. Whenever and whatever the policy-making system decides to change, literally no records of objection are found. Instead, only questions on how the projects should be properly carried out in order to meet the designed policy and strategy are mostly found in the documents. This non- resistance phenomenon conforms to what Weber wrote a long time ago about legal authority. According to Weber (1957: 328), legal authority is based on a belief in the right of those in higher offices to have power over subordinates. Another evidence of the nonresistance phenomenon is to look at the long-lasting operational problems which have been repeatedly found in most of the documents (see related discussion in constraints and operational problems). It is clear that the policy-making system has been well informed according to all sources used. The other two systems are aware of having no power to solve the confronted problems and they have to pass the problems to the policy-making sys- tem. However, whether the policy-making system solves them or not, it has never been questioned by the other two systems. This is one reason why most of the operational problems still exist. The other two systems have a right to complain and justify what sort of problems they have been facing, but if the problems are not solved by the policy-making system, then 168 the failure of the projects is going to occur. Each system has its limitation of authority according to the role and function designated by government regulations. As Hall (1972:205) points out, in highly bureaucratized organizations, power or authority would tend to be hierarchic: each level would have just that amount of power necessary to carry out its responsibility. The following list is a set of major activities which imply authority given to each system to carry out their responsibilities in development projects. Policy-Making and Resource-Control System l. Contact and obtain outside assistance and cooperation for Community Development Program; 2. Obtain financial resources from the National Budget of Bureau, and personnel procurement from the Civil Service Commission; 3. Formulate and control departmental annual budget; 4. Allocate and transfer quarterly operating budget to other systems; 5. Initiate new development projects; 6. Issue regulations and orders for project implementation; 7. Approve projects prOposed by the other two systems; 8. Allocate and transfer project funds to the ad- ministrating and supervising system; 9. Purchase and transfer equipment for projects to the provincial offices; 10. Make changes on operational strategy of develop- ment projects operated by other two systems; 11. Cancel and transfer projects operated in the field; 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 169 Make field inspection on development projects and make correction on wrong-doing practice of the projects; Punish wrong-doing CD officials; Transfer CD Officials at all levels and make new appointments; Make ultimate decision for annual promotion of CD personnel; Arrange and provide civil service examination for all CD personnel, including newly recruited personnel and those who take examination for promotion. Administrating and Supervising System 1. 2. 10. Contact and obtain resources and personnel procurement from the policy-making system; Reallocate and transfer quarterly operating budget and development funds which obtains from the policy-making system to the operating system; Approve certain changes on development projects which were granted by the policy-making system; Approve and help the operating system to make selection for project implementation; Help the operating system in solving the con- fronted problems on the development projects; Approve projects requested by the operating system and submit with recommendation for final approval from the policy-making system; Make field projects inspection and correct the wrong-doing practice in the operating system; Propose and submit constraints in project operation to the policy-making system; Issue orders and regulations for specific project for project implementation within the provincial boundary; Make recOmmendation for annual promotion of the district CD officials to the policy-making system; 11. 12. 170 Make transfer of the district CD officials Withinthe province with permission from the policy-making system; Punish the misbehavior of officials and report to the policy-making system. Implementation and Operating System 1. 10. ll. 12. Contact and obtain resource and personnel procurement from the administrating and super- vising system; Reallocate and make adjustment on the received funds and equipment for development projects to the villages; Approve and make change on project implementa- tion granted by the administrating and super- vising system; Approve project requested by the village workers and submit with recommendation to the administra- ting and supervising system; Approve and allocate travel expense and lodging allowance for village workers; Propose and submit operational problems con- fronted by the village workers and submit it to the administrating and supervising system; Issue official orders and regulations for spe- cific project within the boundary of the District; Help the village workers in solving the confronted operational problems on development projects; Contact local leaders and villagers to discuss project implementation and propose project request; Make field inspection and correct wrong-doing village workers on project implementation; Punish the misbehavior of village workers and report to the provincial office; Make transfer of village workers between villages with permission granted by the administrating system; 171 13. Make recommendation of annual promotion for village workers and submit to the provincial office. The Maintenance Process ‘Since every system has its power and status designated in government regulations, and has its role and function well defined as listed, the question of maintaining the status quo of each system becomes crucial. Let us first examine the policy-making system. Take the complaints of problems and constraints confronted in project operation as a case in point. When the policy-making system confronts the operational prob- lems presented by the other two systems, at least three dif- ferent choices can be made to maintain the status quo. First is by-passing the problems to outside concerned systems. The following statements have been found repeatedly in many docu- ments : The problems of inadequate funds for project development is because we (policy-making system) have received a minimum budget from the Budget Bureau. The delay in transfer of development funds is due to the heavy workload of the financial section, and the delay to get it approved from the Central Controller Department. The Department wants to delegate authority in approval of development funds and purchase of equipment to the provincial office, but the Prime Minister's Office regulations would not allow the Department to do so. We (the policy-making system) want to reduce the reporting forms as much as possible, but many of them are requirements from other offices, like the Bureau of Budget, and the Prime Minister's Office. This is a nation-wide requirement we can- not avoid it. 172 The second option which the policy-making system uses is putting the blame on the other two systems. Something like the following statements are often found: The field officials do not comprehend the objectives and principles of this project; they need more information. Seminars and in-service training is the best way to get the information down to them. - They (the field officials) are not acting ac- cording to the Community Development concept. They should take more time to educate and stimulate the village leaders until they (village leaders) are convinced and then start to motivate the villagers. The project fails because they (field officials) work on it by themselves, make their own de- cisions. They do not obtain cooperation from the functional officials, and they do not have enough village participation from the beginning. They (field officials) should not have made promises to the villagers until they get the project approved from the responsible divisions. How do they know the project is going to be approved in Bangkok. This made the villagers feel bad about the government. This is a kind of problem in which the provincial and the district CD officers have to solve, not always passing the problems on to us. We (policy- making system) cannot solve all these problems. The third option is rather obvious when compared to the other two. The strategy is simple but it brings much more problematic results in the other two systems. That is, the policy-making system decides to change-the operational approach of the existing projects. The local leader training program, and the youth development project, for instance, after three years of operation at the regional centers, the work was changed to the Tambon level, and a youth development 173 center was created in every village and no more training took place at the regional level. In a more serious case, the un- successful project can be cancelled by the policy-making system, and another similar project may be initiated. For example, the short-term (one week) training program for the occupational groups at the Tambon level, after two years of operation, was cancelled. And it has been replaced by a simi— lar training project which operates in a number of selected villages with permanent training facilities and a longer training (3 months to 6 months) program. The administrating and supervising system has a simi- lar way out to maintain the status quo, except the outside systems which this system refers to are different. The delay of project apprOval from the Department caused a lot of problems to us. We have no time to work on it. The other functional officials have heavy workloads, and besides they do not receive order from their mother organizations in Bangkok to cooperate with us on this project, and to get them involved is very difficult. It is hard to convince the Governor, for he has a lot of other important official business; just to find time to see him personally is al- ready a problem. The District officer does not understand our CD concepts and approach. He wants to do things his way. We have to follow him other- wise this project will not be accepted in his district. These problems (short of financial aid and equipment) are beyond our authority to solve, we have to submit to the Department. What we can do now is wait for the result from the Department. 174 The District CD officers do not go out to the field as often as they should, so most of the village workers are left alone in the village to work their own way. The village workers do not stay and sleep in the village; they go in the village in the morning and come back after dark.. This is why they do not get close enough to the villagers and learn genuine local problems. The question of promoting occupation in the village has to face serious marketing problems: we cannot find a market for the promoted prod- ucts. The villagers lose confidence in us. The Department did not send us more village workers as we need, so we have to work on the projects with less people. The implementation and operating system which is lo— cated at the bottom of the other two systems, uses different means of maintaining its status. This system, besides inter- acting with the hierarchical bureaucratic systems, the prime function is to interact with the rural people. The village workers who are key members of the operating system happen to have a lower status. Rubin (1974:46) found in his study, consistent with the results of many studies conducted by the Research and Evaluation Division, (CDP, 1969b; CDP, 1972c; CDP, 1973a) that: The community development workers have Tambon responsibility. Their generally lower social and official status appears to facilitate com- munications with villagers. Yet, they are only partially trained for technical work. And, their low status does not permit them to easily coordinate and motivate large group of villagers in development projects (Rubin, 1974:46). After analyzing all other related sources, the mainten- ance process of the implementation and operating system takes 175 two different forms. First, the system has to maintain an informal relationship with the village people. Second, the system has to maintain a mutual reciprocal relationship with other functional officials. To maintain an informal relationship with village people is not a difficult task, especially for the village workers. Most of the studies (CDP, l970a; CDP, l970e; CDP, 1973b) found that the village workers have no difficulty in working informally with the village people. Following are examples of supportive evidence: Village workers chatted informally with villagers and local leaders, drank together, ate together and amused themselves together. Many village workers in this province married village girls and live in the village. They become members of the village. They partici- pate in all village activities. In the village annual festival, or temple festival, village worker helps to organize different activities in order to raise village funds for the construction of public well. The village worker was able to convince the local elite to donate his personal land for a construction of village health center. This road did not exist until the village worker came; he talked over with several land owners who formerly refused to give away the land for road construction. The girls in this village are so anxious to learn dressmaking and sewing, they are con- vinced by the village worker that if they fin- ish the training in the village, they can be- come a professional dressmaker. The boys join the youth club in the Tambon because the village worker is a good football player. He teaches them how to play football and organize a team to tour around the District. 176 The above findings reflect some activities and informal means which the village worker employs to maintain his status. * The informal relationship is important in order that the vil- lagers recognize him as a village member. Also the informal relationship is useful for the village worker to accomplish some of his assigned projects. The CD officials are not trained as technicians. They have to rely on other functional officials to give advice or to help on technical problems, especially in the occupational training project, and in the building of public facilities projects. The centrally-designed development projects often expect the operating system to obtain cooperation and coordi- nation from other functional officials. One crucial dilemma the operating system faces is that all functional officials have their own assignments. Many of the assignments dupli- cate others. If the functional officials can manage to work on the assigned projects in different villages, then the prob- lem may not arise. But this is not always the case. The (problem arises when they have to work in the same village with different approaches in accord with their instructions. One evaluation report recorded the following dilemma (CDP, l970a:64). The bridge construction activity, however, produced rather dismal results. In 1966 the village worker and the development committee initiated a project to construct wooden bridges along the road leading to the village....In the initial stage the villagers apparently felt that they were to do all this work them- selves, assisted financially by CD. After the 177 sixth bridge was completed, the ARD office was prepared to bring in its equipment and finish the job. This prompted the villagers to stop working, and no further CD assistance was requested. One way of keeping pace with other functional officials is to maintain a mutual reciprocal relationship. Here are some examples of findings from different studies (CDP, 1971c; CDP, 1972c; and CDP, 1973c). Many village workers have to take care of the demonstration farms in the villages which operated by the agricultural officer in the district; even in a formal setting, the village worker was not included in the program. The village worker helped the animal husbandry officer distribute the pamphlets and organize cattle-raising families to meet the animal hus- bandry officer who is coming to give a brief demonstration. Village worker helped to arrange a meeting for a health officer who is coming to give mass inocula- tions and physical examinations for elderly people. Village worker collected statistics from farmers according to the form given by the agricultural extension officer. Village worker helped to convince the farmers to join the cooperative which will be set up by the district agricultural section. In one way, all these activities can be viewed as part of the work in which the village worker should take part in the village. In another way, the village workers have also their own assigned development projects to work on. In ad- dition to that the activities cited above were mostly infor- mal assignments either by the District CD officer or by the District functional officials. 178 Constraints and Operational Problems The purpose of this section is to investigate the major constraints and their causes which derive as a consequence from the bureaucratic-subsystems interaction process. The focus on constraints and operational problems does not mean that all the development projects have failed, or that they have not produced any positive results. As a matter of fact, every development project has produced both positive and nega- tive results, depending upon how one measures the results. The source used here continues to be the officials pub- lished evaluation reports, and the unpublished official semi- nar reports and all level of staff meeting minutes. The general constraints and operational problems found in the unpublished documents are classified into five major cate- gories: (l) the delay and inadequacy of resources; (2) the competency and morale of officials; (3) the condition of competition and coordination; (4) the physical, social and economic constraints; and (5) the local participative con- straints. The descriptive phenomenon listed under each cate- gory is not exhaustive but representative of most crucial problems that affect the operation of the development projects. Constraints and Operational Problems in General The Delay and Inadequacy of Resources 1. Shipment of office equipment and other facili- ties from Bangkok to the district offices takes almost a year, especially those sent to new open 179 area coverage districts. CD officials at the district level have to borrow from other functional offices. 2. Allocation of gasoline (150 U.S. dollars per car per annum) for official car is far behind the actual cost. The CD officials have to spend their own money to buy gasoline for of- ficial use. 3. The training session had been completed for a month but the lodging allowance of the train- ees was not received from Bangkok. 4. Development projects proposed to Bangkok have been approved only in a few cases and this means that many villages have not received any support funds for several years. 5. Development projects approved by Bangkok were cut so drastically that the allocation of funds is too small to implement the proposed projects. 6. By the time the proposed projects were approved, the cost of materials had already increased several times. 7. Some projects are in urgent need by the vil- lagers. There is no short-cut procedure, we have to go to many offices in order to obtain the financial aid and by the time the project is approved, it is no longer needed by the villagers. 8. When we received the late approval of develop- ment funds from Bangkok, it was too late to work on the project. If we send the late pro- ject back to Bangkok, they will blame us for incompetency. If we go ahead and work on the project, it is a total waste of resources. 9. When we want to change the location or some details of the approved projects, we have to obtain another approval from certain offices. This causes a lot of delay in project implemen- tation. The Competency and Morale of Officials 1. In Working on the development projects we have to follow the instructions and direc- tions given by our superior, otherwise we 10. 180 would be in trouble. Even though some of the instructions cannot be applied locally we better follow them. Village workers are afraid of working in the communist infiltrated areas. Some village workers have been threatened by the commun- nists and some have been captured. CD officials who work in the field have less chance to get promoted when compared to those who work in the central office. When- ever the civil service examination takes place we cannot compete with them. The District CD official has to travel to al- most all villages to inspect the projects but they receive only five days a month average allowance; the rest of the cost has to be his own responsibility. When village workers are transferred from other provinces, for the first two or three months they have trouble in receiving monthly salary, because of the complicated procedure in trans- ferring the salary. Some village workers are afraid of not getting promotion when they fail to convince the vil- lage people to implement the assigned projects. So the village workers try to work the projects with some familiar local leaders. Village workers have to be told what to do and how to do the assigned projects. They lack initiative and creative thinking. The village workers do not really understand the purpose and ultimate goal of the projects so they cannot convince and explain them to the village people. The training of village leaders requires ex- perienced and well trained village workers. The fourth class village workers are too young to handle the role of trainers. The instructions and guidelines for village group formation designed by the responsible division are too complicated, and the villagers and the village workers are not able to follow the instructions. 11. 12. 13. 181 Village workers who come from other parts of the country have difficulty in communi- cating with the Malay-speaking villagers in the three southern provinces. Many CD area coverage are no longer charac- terized as rural communities, but the operat- ing projects retain the same approach. The across-the-board approach of the develop- ment project causes the village workers to fail to implement the projects. Many development projects have continued to change the operational approach. The village workers have a hard time to keep up with all the changes made by the central offices. The Condition of Competition and Coordination 1. The CD public utilities development projects have to ask villagers to contribute either labor or materials or money to supplement the project. Other departments like the Local Administration, and the Accelerated Rural Development office, do not have the same re- quirement. It is hard to obtain other departments' de- velopment funds, for instance, the Local Ad- ministrative section has more funds but the section works on its projects by different approach. The Agricultural Extension section has to or- ganize a Farmer Group according to the De- partment's order. When the agricultural of- ficer went to call a meeting in the village, the CD organized occupational group joined the new farmer group because they can buy cheaper fertilizer. The provincial Health Officer had agreed to contribute equipment and provide midwife training for a village self-help sanitation center. After the officer proposed the pro- ject to Bangkok, it was turned down. Many CD projects have to ask other functional officials to give technical advice. The func- tional officials have their own project and cannot go out to the village with us. 182 Some functional officials are very coopera- tive; we work closely together on an informal basis. But once they transferred to other provinces, we have to establish new friend- ships with newcomers and it takes time. The cooperative working relationship was inter- rupted. When a leader from the office is transferred to some other posts, we often experience a set-back. New leadership has a different ad- ministrative pattern, and some even reject the existing development projects. There are too many seminars and in-service training programs that must be attended during the past years, some organized by the Regional Center, some by the Center, some by the central office, and still some by the other functional departments. We just run out of time to work on the assigned projects. Every responsible division has different forms of field project progress reports, if they could be integrated into a common accepted form, it would save the field workers time to fill them out. The Physical, Social and Economic Constraints 1. Marketing for farm products has been the most hectic problem confronted by the field workers and the farmers themselves. They are afraid of trying any new crops or raising new kinds of livestock, for past experience led to losses of thousands of Baht. New crops promoted have no guaranteed price and market. Price has been very low this year; the mer- chants in town did not come in the village so often because the road is bad and several rob- bery incidents were threatening. To organize the occupational group needs fi- nancial support, most of the farmers are poor, and they have to sell their products as soon as possible and cannot wait and keep them to sell in a group. Some have been indebted to the merchants, and must sell the products to them. Self-help cannot work in this kind of project. 183 Youngsters are moving out to work in the factories in the provincial towns and some went to work as hired labor on the planta- tions. We cannot organize any youth group or woman development group, but the Depart- ment just did not understand the real situa- tion. Parents do not appreciate what we train their children in new farm techniques for they do not want their children to become farmers. When we train them in repairing water pumps, motorcycles, radios, and barbers, they cannot find jobs in the village. The land is not fertile and irrigation is based on rainfall. These two problems can- not be solved by self-help. We have worked the village roads on a self- help basis for several years. During the dry season the road is alright, but when the mon- soon season comes the 1aterite is washed out. We have to buy more laterite and fix it again. The Local Participative Constraints 1. It is very difficult to ask the villagers to donate their land for public road construction; land is expensive, and they ask for compensa- tion. People in this village are willing to pay money to hire labor to work on the public utilities projects. They do not have time to partici- pate in manual work. Parents did not see the benefit of letting their youngsters join the youth group. The activities of the youth group do not help them increase family income. Members of the occupational groups declined a few months after the training was completed. One of the main reasons is because the members asked for financial aid from us but we could not provide it. Members of the Village Development Committee had a hard time to follow all the instructions and guidelines given by the Department. 184 6. According to the manual, the Village De- velopment Committee should hold a monthly meeting. In practice they do not have time and besides they do not have anything to discuss in the meeting. 7. The Child Development Center is located too far away from the other villages. Children in the village where the Center is located are not numerous enough to keep the center in action. Other nearby villages are having difficulties in bringing their children to the Center. 8. Village Development Committee's members begin to complain that they should be paid for their services, because the CD Department has paid a monthly honorarium to the Village Volunteer Leaders. The classification of five major categories of con- straints and operational problems is presented mainly for analysis purposes. In fact, many problems appearing in dif- ferent categories are interrelated. Thus, the five major categories are not mutually exclusive. One kind of con- straint may create a series of vicious-cycle problems. The description of problems under each category represent a mix in time and space. Different groups of officials ex— pressed their views of problems on several occasions, either in the seminars or in the staff meetings. In some cases, a particular project or location was mentioned while present- ing the problems, but most of them were presented as general phenomena without referring to a particular project. Constraints and Problems in Development Projects When we turn to investigate the constraints and prob- lems in the project evaluation reports individually, no 185 significant difference among problems was found in the semi- nars and those appearing in the individual reports. One minor difference is that the evaluation reports contain more specific problems and they were listed in priority of dif- ferent problems according to individual project. For in- stance, the evaluation of the rural youth development pro- ject (CDP, 1969b) found that the most serious problem in organizing youth groups after the training, was the youth had no time to participate in the group activities because they had to work in towns. The other problems were: lack of supporting funds; parents do not give support to their boys; the village workers do not understand the objective of the project; youth leaders have to help their parents; competition with other agencies which promote the same kind of youth projects with greater support; Village Development Committee did not support the project; and the regulations of youth groups were too complicated to follow. The evaluation report on the woman's development pro- ject (CDP, l970b) conducted in 15 provinces during 1968 to 1969 found that the parents of the trainees did not support the projects. This ranks as the first serious problem. The other problems were: the village workers were not competent to be trainers; lack of equipment; competent trainers from Bangkok stayed only a few days; and the delay of approval caused other problems. The evaluation report on the rural occupational group training project (CDP, 1972c) conducted during 1971 found 186 that the delay of project approval caused a severe set- back during the implementation period, especially the train- ing had to be postponed until the rainy season, farmers were busy.. The training session was too short, and lack of local technicians were problems found in this project. Another evaluation report on the occupational groups (CDP, l97lc) conducted in four different provinces with 89 group members reveals that problems in livelihood-making, as confronted by group members, were: lack of funds and equipment for farming; delay in receiving assistance in pest and disease control from government; low price on farm prod- ucts; and lack of irrigation system and fertilizer, respec- tively. A study conducted in 1974 by interviewing 430 trained rural youth leaders (Kiennilsiri, 1976) who came from four different provinces found that lack of funds was also the first problem, followed by problems of low prices for farm products, inadequate farm tools and equipment, inadequacy of water for farming, lack of more new breeding livestock, and lack of new technology. Table 9 presents problems found in several major develop- ment projects of one southern district. The confronted prob- lems were listed under each project. Though the number of Tambon (7 villages in each Tambon) which had problems was not striking when compared to the number of Tambon in which the study was conducted. The important finding is that all Tambon were having operational problems in one or two development 187 TABLE 9 CONSTRAINTS AND OPERATIONAL PROBLEMS FOUND IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS, AMPHOE RA-EAH, NARATHIVAS. (MULTIPLE RESPONSE PERMITTED) Projects and Descriptions Number of Tambon Public Facilities Development Project Village people refused to donate land for public road construction. 2 Village people refuse to cooperate with the public facilities development project. 2 Village people lack money to participate in the public work construction. 1 Lack of coordination from functional officials. 1 Occupational Development Project Village people did not see the benefit of the project. 2 Village people lack of capital to invest in the newly- introduced technology and new crops. 2 Lack of local technicians to assist the project. 1 Woman Development Project Lack of particular trained village workers to followup the project after training. 4 Number of women group declined because they got married and some had moved out to other villages. 2 No actual experiment during the training, trainees had no actual practice in dressmaking. 2 Short of training equipment and facilities. 1 Bad coordination with other functional officials. 1 Rural Youth Development Project Difficult to find qualified youth to participate in the train- ing project, youth have activities in the local religious school. 2 Youth leaders did not understand the purpose of joining the youth group. 1 Lack of support funds to generate the ongoing youth group activities. 1 Local Leaders Development Project After the intensive training, the village leaders did not under- stand their role and functions. 2 Village leaders cannot read and write, but they have to fill out forms and record the meeting minutes. 1 Village worker has seven villages to take care of and look after all the development projects, they had no time to followup the local leaders after the training. 1 Note: Answered by 11 village workers who work in 11 Tambon, or 69 villages with population of 70,019. Source: CDP, 1971b:9l-92. 188 projects. The problems were precisely the same as the find- ings of the unpublished documents. For instance, villagers refused to donate land for public use; village people did not see the benefit of the occupational development project; lack of well trained village workers; and difficulty finding qualified youth to participate in the project. Among the seven major development projects, two of them have never been individually evaluated--the public facilities development project and the child deve10pment project. Some partial evaluation reports appear in several other overall studies (CDP, 1969b, CDP, l970a; and CDP, l97lb). The findings pertinent to these two projects have been included in the list of the descriptive type of prob- lems. Another development project with less problems confront- ed and constraints is the village volunteer leaders project. The project itself was evaluated for a different objective, and no questions concerning operational problems were asked (CDP, 1972a). According to the evaluation report, the project pro- duced more positive than negative results. The CD Department planned to extend the project, for the report found that the volunteer leaders performed their role effectively in pro- moting village development. In the future, the village volunteer leaders can serve as village workers if special training is given. In fact, the Department has already trained two batches of village volunteer leaders and sent them back to their village to work as assistants to the 189 village workers. If the village volunteer leader was quali- fied, the government village worker in that village will be withdrawn. No available information was on hand for further comment and analysis of the present development. The Causal Factors and Resolutions Given all the analytical evidence that has been pre- sented up to this point, it is appropriate to draw some im- plications and make a determination of what are the causal factors of the repetitive constraints and operational prob- lems reported to exist in the development projects. One way of looking at the causal factors is by tracing the problems confronted directly and discovering their causes. This kind of analysis is mostly found in the official seminar reports and the official evaluation reports. The following are some instances found in various documents. The problem of delay and inadequate resources is caused by the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the offi- cials in performing their functions, the shortage of person- nel, and the reduction of the proposed annual budget. The problems of competency and morale of officials is due to the minimum training given to the concerned officials, the inertia of the officials, the lack of responsibility, and the lack of a delegated spirit among the officials. The problem of coordination is mainly caused by the lack of com- munication, the lack of understanding, and the lack of man- agement and planning skills. The physical, social and 190 economic constraints are mainly caused by the natural, social and cultural barriers, the domination of middlemen, and the lack of local organizations. The local participation con- straints are caused by the ignorance, the inertia, the pov- erty, and the long-rooted traditional values of the village people. Many of the causal factors described above are to some extent rational, and there is no reason to reject them. The further question to ask is that if these are causal factors, then, what kind of resolutions have been attempted? My in- vestigation shows that several attempts have been made to eliminate the causes. I will mention just two interesting attempts. One is to acquire more national budget and more personnel, and the other is to organize more training and seminars. Increased Budget and Personnel The official statistics (CDP, l97la and unpublished documents) show that the CD Department's annual budget has constantly increased from establishment in 1962 to the pres- ent year. In 1963 the Department received a total of 1,305,000 0. 5. dollars, and by 1976 the budget rose to 9,280,695 dollars. These figures represent an increase of more than seven times within 12 years. On the average there is an annual increase of more than .6 million a year. The number of personnel has increased from a total of 945 in 1963 to 3,865 in 1976, an increase of more than four 191 times within 12 years. On the average, the number of_offi- cials has increased almost 250 annually. Now let us look at the increase of CD area operations. In 1963 the CD programs covered 1,637 villages, and by 1976 the programs operated in 33,093 villages. The area of operation has increased more than 20 times within 12 years. On the average every year expansion amounted to more than 2,500 villages. These changes are summarized in Table 10. TABLE 10 A COMPARISON OF INCREASE IN BUDGET, PERSONNEL AND NUMBER OF CD VILLAGES (1963-1976) Year , Annual Budget Number of Number of U. S. Dollars Personnel Villages 1963 1,305,000 945 1,637 1976 9,280,695 3,865 33,093 Increased 7,975,695 2,920 31,456 Ratio 7.1 4.1 20.2 It is clear that the increase of personnel is the least among the three, almost half the increase in the budget and one-fifth the increase in number of villages. The increase of budget is less than the increase in number of villages, about one-third, without taking the inflation rate into account. Table 10, therefore, explains in part why there is a shortage of personnel and inadequate resources. The 192 next question to ask is why the increase of villages is so large when compared to the increase of resources. What determines the rapid increase of villages, especially when more villages must be covered with limited resources. For these two questions, I have not found any Solid evidence and further research is needed. Increased Training and Seminars The second attempt found in this study was the emphasis on training and seminar programs for CD personnel and con- cerned officials. Table 7 shows that from 1963 to 1970, 7,009 officials had attended either the seminars or training held by the CD Department. The budget for training on the average was 300,000 U. 8. dollars per annum. All the semi- nars and training programs were aimed at fostering better understanding of the departmental policies, objectives, and operational problems of the development projects by field officials. Evidence also shows that there were several in- terdepartmental seminars held by different agencies every year, both at the national and provincial levels. The main purpose of those seminars was to promote better coordination and cooperation on rural development projects among field officials. The findings concerning communication process in this chapter shows that the seminars and training have been helpful in information transmission both upward and downward. But the findings about the problem of coordina- tion and cooperation still exists. One observation about 193 the seminars and training programs, especially those held by the CD Department, is that there has been no seminar or workshop designed specially for members of the policy-making system itself. New Dimension on Causal Factors We now turn to examine a new dimension of the causal factors. .The new dimension focuses on the consequences of the interactional process between the three bureaucratic subsystems, especially the decision-making and the organiza- tional boundary maintenance process. To start with, the evidence strongly supports the following as major causes for the problems of delay and inadequate resources: approval procedure, the central control of resources, the authority to approve and disapprove the development projects, the changes of operational approach on the projects, and the in- troduction of new and unrelated projects. The problem of competency and morale of officials seems to be due not only to psychological and technical effects on an individual level, but also to structural ef- fects. To look back to the interactional process between the three subsystems, it is hard to expect the field of- ficials to carry out the centrally-designed projects effec- tively. Social development projects are not of a single fixed form that can be written in a manual like an automo- bile assembly job. There are numerous independent and interdependent variables, especially where people are con- cerned. Instructions and manuals formulated by the 194 responsible divisions serve only as general guidelines. Since orders and decisions always come from the top, the in- teractional pattern instituted the behavior pattern of field officials waiting and asking questions from their superiors. The field officials never have a chance to be a part of the initiation of development projects, except for the public facilities project in which the resources have to be allocat- ed by the central offices. In addition, the authority to promote, to transfer, and to appoint the officials to better positions is in the hands of the policy-making system. The field officials may just as well take it easy and wait for the top-to-bottom flow of instructions. Besides, to follow and wait for the top-to—bottom flow of directions, is a way to avoid making severe mistakes and works to maintain the status quo. For the problems of competition and coordination, one must compare the conceptual approach which is employed by the CD Department and the other functional departments. The community development concepts, such as self-help, group process, participation and coordination, and educational stimulation, have been followed rather strictly by the CD Department since 1962. The other functional departments which are doing similar kinds of rural development projects do not employ the same conceptual approach. The different conceptual approaches by different agencies have created a confusing and conflicting situation not only on the official's side but the village people's side as well. 195 From the review of Thai administrative structure in the early part of this study, the evidence confirms that all functional departments fall into the same structure of the CD Department. Therefore every department is an autono- mous agency. Each department has to maintain its organiza- tional boundary and the status quo. All the functional field officials have to be loyal to their own mother organi- zation for they are all centrally employed officials. The local people have absolutely no control over the functional officials. The Governor and the District officer, though they are immediate superiors of the functional officials, the ultimate control of resources and promotion are located in the central offices in Bangkok. This type of administra- tive structure has undoubtedly hampered the coordination ef- forts at the operational level. Coordination and competition is not only an interde- partmental problem, it is also found within the CD Depart- ment. The Department now has almost 4,000 people on the payroll which is considered one of the large organizations in the Ministry of Interior. Anthony Downs (1967:76) ex- plains the nature of large organizations which is identical to what the CD Department has experienced. All large organizations are not teams, but coalitions. A team is a group of persons work- ing together who have identical goals. A co- alition is a group of persons working together who have some but not all goals in common. They need not give their common goals the same rela- tive weight in their individual preference structures...because each official in a bureau 196 has a set of specific goals connected with his own self-interest. Therefore, the goals of every bureau member are different to at least some degree from those of every other member. The physical, social and economic constraints are en- during problems. No government is able to solve these prob- lems completely. When one examines the nature of CD develop- ment projects, it is true that most of the projects concen- trate on group training and group formation. The group train- ing is only one part of introducing new technology and new practices. Introduction of new technology and new practices without further support on funding and other necessary facili- ties has aroused a high expectation on the part of the vil- lagers. The self-help concept can be applied to certain kinds of development projects, such as building a small dam, a Small bridge, and digging a public well. But self—help cannot be used in several other development projects, es- pecially those economic oriented projects. Several studies show us that groups cannot be organized because the members lack of funds. It is impossible to expect the already low- income and subsistence farm families to organize themselves against the money lenders and the middlemen without outside support. To build up local organizations is not to rely on training and discussion of how to solve the confronted prob- lems. The decision of what to do and how to do it would not help much if the group does not control the resources. Besides, the major development projects are centrally de- signed, leaving little choice for the village committee. 197 Owen and Shaw (1972:19) wrote the following observations: When decisions are made centrally, they tend to be based on superficial observa- tion and what appears to be common sense from the point of view of the central bur- eaucracy. But this is not sufficient to solve problems at the local level. The last constraint is local participation. It would be difficult to expect the village people to participate with CD projects if they have been offered better incentives by other departments rather than self-help. The case of CD occupational group's members joining the newly established farmers' group is a good example--members could buy cheaper fertilizers from the farmers' group. As the evidence shows in the study, the real needs and assistance the farmers would like to have is funding, marketing, and irrigation. But the development projects are not addressing these needs. The traditional model of com- munity development which features self-help, organized co- operative behavior, and a view of the village as a unit of development may become less relevant to the actual situation. It may be that a new form of community development is re- quired to make the programs more relevant to the needs of the village people. CHAPTER V INTERACTION PATTERN OF THE BUREAUCRATIC AND RURAL SECTOR SYSTEMS AND ITS IMPACT ON RURAL PEOPLE The purpose of this chapter is first, to investigate the interaction pattern of the bureaucratic and rural sec- tor systems and secondly, to examine the impact of various development projects which have been implemented by the CD Department in the rural areas during the past ten years. Conclusions may be drawn from the analysis to see what some development "residuals" have been left with the rural people after more than a decade of community development. Although evidence may not be definitive at this stage, at least our initial findings, perhaps, may suggest propositions for fu- ture research. Above all, the results of this analysis will be used to justify whether to accept or reject the third hypothetical model which states that the impact of the Com- munity Development Program is limited by the vertical inter- action process between the bureaucratic system and the rural sector. The major sources used for analysis in this chapter are three different kinds of evaluation reports: (1) apart from referring to the evidence found in chapter 4, two out- side CD Department studies will be used as supportive sources to examine the interactional pattern of the bureaucratic 198 199 system and the rural sector; (2) seven individual develop- ment project reports; and (3) two overall impact assessment reports from the Northeastern and Southern provinces. Interaction Patterns In the early part of chapter 4, the findings show that all the development projects whether initiated by the local people or introduced by the officials, must be approved by different bureaucratic hierarchies. The rural sector simply possesses no ultimate decision power. What the rural sector has to do is to fill out a project request form and submit it to the office concerned. Allocation of resources and final decisions to give support or not depends entirely on the bureaucratic system. The rural sector has no authority to sanction or to influence the hierarchical structure in making decisions on the design of development projects. The findings reveal that all officials working on the develop- ment projects are centrally appointed and they are not sub- ject to the local people for promotion or punishment. It should be clear at this point that the interaction pattern of the bureaucratic system and the rural sector is built on a vertical relationship. To confirm the findings of the vertical interactional pat- tern of the bureaucratic system and the rural sector, I ex- amined two additional studies which were conducted by for- eign research teams. Although the objectives of the studies and the levels of analysis are different, parts of findings 200 are consistent with and support the findings of my study. In 1966, a USOM contract research team conducted a study of the impact of the Accelerated Rural Development Program in Thailand. One part of the study (USOM, 1966) portrayed the attitudes of the officials and villagers, which in part explained the interactional pattern of the bureaucratic system and the rural sector. This study found that the majority of the rural people and most of the gov- ernment officials still believe in the inherited and tra— ditional administrative patterns that place responsibility on government officials to initiate new concepts and intro- duce new programs. Therefore, the government officials feel that they are the ones to initiate new concepts, and the majority of the people will accept them. The same study con- cluded that in Thai administrative practice, generally, all policies and work plans are initiated and established at a higher echelon and channeled downward for compliance. There has been a reluctance in the Thai governmental hierarchy to accept the concept of stimulating initiative at the bottom for movement upward. Another study conducted by.Philco-Ford Corporation (1968), examined the rural people's interaction with Amphoe officials in four villages in Nakorn Phanom province. Two cases were reported that illustrate the process of getting resources from the bureaucratic system. The study described the two cases as follows. The CD officials in the Amphoe es- timated that average delay for budgets requested by the 201 village to start small projects of only 50-250 U. S. dollars for public facilities, such as road and well building, and canal digging, was three to five months, at best. Often, it was longer, if the project was requested toward the end of the year or if the paper work was not done according to the regulations, the Changwad or the central office in Bang- kok sent the request back to Amphoe. This caused more delay, another three months at least. The second case was a request for rice seeds and fer- tilizer which were requested by the Farmers' Group in the village. It took almost six months to receive the rice seeds and fertilizer. The worst part of it was that by the time the rice seeds and fertilizer arrived in the village, the rice plants were already fully grown. In this case, the de- lay of a few months means an effective delay of a year. The same study investigated several other development projects, and concluded that on the average the elapsed time between request from the village to the governmental offices and the arrival of the equipment and financial support was over four months. The rural people have no formal channel to accelerate the procedure, nor an indirect channel to in- fluence the government officials to speed up the process. The most the rural people can do is to wait until the time comes. The same study provides support for our findings con- cerning the interactional pattern of the bureaucratic sys- tem and the rural sector. The study (Philco-Ford, 1968: 202 121-126) found four categories of the characteristics of government projects. Each represents a response to needs, though not necessarily that of the villager. First, the response to the village felt-needs projects. This type of project represents direct government response to fill village needs, mostly physical projects, such as en- largement of the reservoir, improvement and construction of access roads to the highway, and the improvement and repair of the village schools and temple buildings. The initiative for such projects came directly from village leaders, not from the officials. Secondly, the response to apparent felt-needs projects. Most of the officials assume that there are a number of fa- cilities which almost any village "needs," whether the vil- lage asks for them or not. A usable road, wells and reser- voirs fall into this category. The distinction between the response for felt needs and the response to apparent needs rests in the fact that the officials select the village and the kind of facilities. Thirdly, the response to policy directives. Most of the development projects fall into this category. The pro- ject policies, the operational strategies, and the means whereby funds can be obtained are handed down from national agencies. The decision about where to undertake the project is up to the individual officials. The choice was seldom based on specific local needs, but instead based on circum- stantial evidence. The primary factor in selection of 203 villages for a given project was the accessibility of'a road from the village to the Amphoe office. A second factor was the official's estimate of the capability of the village headman and Tambon headman. Using good local leaders ensured some degree of cooperation. The judging of officials by us- ing these two kinds of circumstantial evidence, has the de- fect of excluding those remote villages which are probably most in need of help. The last category is show-case projects. Many projects are undertaken by the officials to prove it can be done in order to impress the villagers, and more important, the of- ficial's superiors. This type of project includes projects such as demonstration of different crops, providing village electricity, and the training of village people in particular skills. The danger of this kind of project is that it will become a demonstration without substance. It always looks sound and successful in the beginning stage, but in the long run there may be no substantial influence upon the rural sector as a whole. Further, the show-case project is always costly and selective in location, and especially when the transfer of the responsible official takes place, the pro- ject often fails. Summary of the Impact of Development Projects The WOman's Development Project. This project has been implemented since 1962. By 1969 the CD Department changed the training site for women's groups from the CD 204 regional centers to the Tambon Development Centers. From 1969 to 1971, 62 women's groups were trained in different Tambon Development Centers. The training lasted for three months, and there were 30 members in each group. The cur- riculum included home economics, with emphasis on food and nutrition, improvement of living quarters, group work and group process, supplementary home industries, and recreation- al activities. During the training, each group elected a chairman, secretary, treasurer, and librarian. The group organized all activities such as club meetings during the training period. After the training was completed, the group was ex- pected to continue monthly club meetings in the village. In the final stage, the CD Department expected the group to become a formal registered Woman's Club for Community Devel- opment at the Tambon level. Within five years, the CD De- partment expected that all the registered Clubs would send their representatives to participate in the Associated Country Women of the World in England. The study, conducted in 1972, interviewed 168 womens' group members in 18 provinces. The study found that only 17 percent of the respondents attended more than 3 times, 55 percent attended 2 to 3 times, and 28 percent never at- tended any monthly club meeting since their return. Several reasons why the respondents did not attend club meetings regularly were: they did not have time; no subject for 205 discussion or activity at the meeting; they did not see the benefit of the club meeting; and 25 percent of the group leaders got married and moved away from the village. In response to participation in group activities, 35 percent of the respondents had never participated in any group activity, as compared to 65 percent who had periodi- cally participated in traditional dances and preparation of new kinds of foods in social gatherings and the village an- nual festival. Almost all respondents had tried some new knowledge that they had learned from the training, such as improvement of living quarters, rearrangement of the kitchen, cooking new food, making a simple dress for family members, and work on some handicrafts. Ninety-eight percent of the respondents expressed a need for additional training, es- pecially in the field of handicrafts and dressmaking. They wanted to be trained as professionals so that they could make something for sale in the market. After 1972, this project was changed to train the women's groups at the village level. The training course was focused more on the married women. Child care and family planning were major subjects taught in the training sessions. No evaluation report is available after the change in this project in 1973. However, the development of registered Women's Club for Community Development has also been dropped after 1973. 206 Volunteer Leaders Development Project. This project started as a pilot project in two Northeastern provinces in 1969. About 100 volunteer leaders were selected by the Tambon Development Committees. The volunteer leaders attend- ed a three-week training at two Northeastern CD regional centers. The curriculum included agricultural skills, live- stock raising, management of development project, roles of volunteer leaders, and group process in community development. After the training the volunteer leaders went back to their villages to work as general managers at the Tambon Develop- ment Center as assistants to the village workers, and as co- ordinators to organize and look after the development pro- jects. The evaluation interviewed 43 volunteer leaders, 283 Tambon Development Committee members, and 46 village workers in 7 different districts of the two provinces in 1970, one year after the volunteer leaders had worked in the village. The study found that the volunteer leaders spent 44 percent of their time as assistants to the village workers, 35 per- cent on the development projects, and 21 percent as general manager at the Tambon Development Center. From the inter- view of TDC members and the village workers, 96 percent ad- mitted that the development projects (97 percent were public facilities project) in the village had accomplished more in quality and quantity since the volunteer leader had assumed duty in the village. The respondents also admired the hard 207 work done by the volunteer leaders on the development pro- jects. As to the question of withdrawing the village worker from the village and replacing him by the volunteer leader, the answers favored the withdrawa1--43 percent in contrast to 57 percent. The group not favoring withdrawal insisted that if the volunteer leaders would have received more train- ing in other skill subjects like the village worker, then it would be possible to withdraw the village worker. A question asked the volunteer leaders to rate the cooperation of the villagers while working on the develop- ment projects. The replies were: 10 percent excellent; 52 percent very good; and 38 percent good. When asked whether the volunteer leader should continue to receive a 200 Baht monthly honorarium, or should receive something other than money; ninety-seven percent said that the honorarium should be retained while 3 percent said that the volunteer leader should not receive money. The evaluation suggested that the volunteer leader pro- ject should be adopted as a nationwide program in every pro- vince, that after the volunteer leaders work for a year in the village they should receive in-service training, and that after two years the village worker should begin to pull out from the village where the volunteer leader would be capable of assuming his duties. In 1972, the project expand- ed to several provinces in the North and Central villages. By 1973 the concentration on Tambon Development ceased to 208 continue after the change of leadership in the CD Department. Thus, the volunteer leader development project has also changed its approach and structure in several aspects. In- sufficient information is available for further comment. Tambon Development Committee Training Project. This project is aimed at training local leaders to understand CD concepts, to know their roles and responsibilities as a community representative, and to encourage the leaders to work together. It also aims to discuss and share local needs and problems, to decide on appropriate actions to be taken in a community development process, and to work with people in planning projects and to cooperate for their own progress and for the community as a whole. The curriculum of the training program included the major role of Tambon Development Committee and how to per- form their functions effectively. During the five day train- ing, the Committee engaged in group discussion and simulation of actual work situations, which constitute a process of "learning by doing," of information gathering and problem solving by the Committee members themselves. From 1963 to 1970, a total of 42,944 Village Develop— ment Committee members were trained. The Tambon Development Committee training started in 1967, and by 1970 there were 7,491 Committee members who participated in the training project all over the country. The evaluation conducted in 1971, interviewed 32 Tambon Development Committees in 14 209 provinces. In order to compare the difference of trained and untrained TDC, ll untrained TDC were also interviewed during the study. The study found that there is a difference between the trained and untrained Committees in understanding the pro- cedure for proposing a development project, filling out pro- ject request forms, and obtaining the government services. As expected, most of the trained Committee members under- stood better than the untrained members. Interestingly enough, there was no difference between the two groups in terms of performance of duties. The findings show that the actual performance of TDC in development tasks depends not upon the knowledge received from the training but other fac- tors such as personal ability, and responsibility of the Committee members and the village worker. In regard to the ability in problem solving and group discussion, there was no significant difference between the two groups. The only difference was the management of TDC meetings in the matters of duties of chairman and secretary before and after the meeting. The trained Committee shows much better preparation before the meeting and keeps better records after the meeting. According to the CD regulations, all TDC should hold a meeting at least once a month to dis- cuss and followup the development projects. The study found that only 2 to 3 meetings were held in a year, reported by both the trained and untrained TDC. Many Committee members 210 expressed that they should be paid by the government if the government expects them to work fully, as appears in the CD regulations. The TDC training also includes subjects concerning budgeting and bookkeeping in development projects which the TDC is expected to be working on after the training. The study found that there was no actual opportunity for TDC to handle the project's budget and financial allocation while working on the development projects. Project resources and material assistance are ready made and sent down from the Amphoe office. The regulations do not permit the TDC to have direct involvement in project financing. Every step involving financial management has to be the responsibility of the officials. The study concluded that the performance of TDC very much depends on the village worker, even the contact of other functional officials relies on the village worker. Occupational Group Development Project. This project has been implemented since 1966 and by 1969 a total of 429 groups composed of 12,960 members had been trained. The training curriculum included agriculture, animal husbandry, and home industries. The budget spent for the training it- self was 65,172 U. S. dollars. The evaluation was conducted in two provinces with 23 trained occupational groups. Five out of the 23 groups were found to be active in 1970, and the rest (18 groups) were in- active. Within the active groups, four had just completed 211 the training a few months prior to the time the study took place. None of the active groups were able to register as a formal occupational group during the time of the study. The study found that the five day training did not upgrade the farmer's skills at all. Some of the respondents could not remember what they were taught during the training. The benefits gained by group members did not meet their ex- pectations and needs conceived when they first joined the groups. Each of the group members understood and were pre- occupied with the thought that with the participation in the government projects they would be supported and assisted on a continuing basis. When the member's expectations were not met, the groups dissolved after a short time. In regard to the skills and knowledge training in cul- tivation and prevention of diseases, although they were re- membered by the majority of group members, many had not ap- plied what they learned to their occupations because the planting process, as demonstrated by the trainers, seemed to be too complicated. The group members who had large areas of cultivated land with limited family labor saw that if they would have to follow what was taught by the trainers it would take them time and require a large amount of equip- ment while the yields harvested would be similar in quantity. Therefore, they were in favor of the old traditional methods which needed no employed labor force and equipment. Regarding their understanding of the functions of group committees, the majority of the committee members 212 possessed sound understanding of the duties and the functions of the committees. But, it was noted that a large number of the members did not want to be a part of a group committee, for in such position they had to take much responsibility which required ability and time. One major objective of the occupational group develop- ment project was to train the group members to be aware of the process of working with groups more productively. It was anticipated that the groups would be able to develop and begin to move toward stable business groups in the future. Marketing had been the first group activity in most of the active groups in the short run. In the long run, the groups were not in a position to prevent being underpriced, and hence bargained with the middlemen because each member's harvest of crops was ready for sale at different periods of the year. The group members admitted that selling as a group was not worth the cost of the investment. Therefore, they preferred to sell their products in an individual manner. Group members lacked money for investing and expanding pro- duction projects including a lack of credit sources. The financial assistance extended to them was only in a very small amount, and did not meet the needs of the group mem- bers. The Occupational Training Program for Rural Youth. This project started in 1969, and by 1970 there were 48 Tambon Development Centers that had completed different kinds of training, namely, agriculture, machinery repairing, 213 barbers, hairdressers, carpenters, and weaving. The duration of training ranged from two weeks to four weeks, depending on the type of training. The trainees were men and women from 15 to 40 years old, selected by the Tambon headman or Village headman. All trainees received a daily food allowance from the CD Department. Trainers were village workers, local functional officials, and knowledgeable town people. The evaluation was conducted in 10 provinces and inter- views were taken from 172 trainees, 119 Tambon Development Committee members, and 102 parents of the trainees. The study found that most young and unmarried people (age 15 to 24) prefer to be trained in some occupational skills other than agriculture. Trainees who took part in agriculture were married men and women. From the findings, the respondents admitted that the knowledge of new rice varieties and the use of fertilizer were very informative, but they had no chance to apply the knowledge due to the lack of water, fertilizer, and access to the new rice variety. Some well-to-do farmers had tried some cash crops, and a few started growing newly introduced cotton and received a good harvest. Many farmers started raising a new kind of poultry for eggs and meat, but a few weeks later, the spread of disease killed all the chicks. The training in mechanics, or in simple machine re- pairing, such as water pumps and motorcycles, was not satis- factory to the trainees because of the short training period. 214 They learned only in the classroom, and were given no real practice on machinery. The training for barbers stimulated a few young train- ees in cutting boys' hair in the village for l to 2 Baht per person. Many parents wanted their boys to have more training in this line, so that they can make barbering a supplementary source of income. Young girls who attended the hairdressing training had tried their knowledge with their family members, and found that they needed more training. Some well-to-do families sent their daughters to study hairdressing as a profession in the nearby towns. Carpenter training was found to be very useful, espe- cially to those who had some previous experience. Some trainees took up the job as carpenters in towns during the off-peak farming season. The weaving training course was very much welcomed by young girls. They learned how to use the new manual weav- ing machine and how to dye the cotton cloth properly. After training, the trainees expected the government to provide the weaving machines at a low price, but they received no word from the agency that promised them. Most of the trainees complained that the training should not be held during the planting season, and that the training program was too short. In 1972, the CD Department decided to stop the training at the Tambon level and concen- trated on this occupational group at the village level. 215 Following is a short comment by a former Director-General, which appeared in the last part of the evaluation report. The comment explained partly why the Department called off the Tambon training after 1972. The approach of this project is totally mis- taken, the conceptual implication was not right from the beginning. In the fiscal year of 1973 the project will have different approach. That is, (1) must select occupational leaders to receive short course training; (2) let the leaders organize an occupational group which the members must engage in the same line of occupation, and then provide the group with a long term training in the village; (3) there will be no food allowance, no daily per diem, for the training will be held in the member's home village, do not hire them to receive oc- cupational training; and (4) there will be no distinction in age group in training. The new approach designed by the Director-General was put into operation after 1973, and insufficient information is available for further analysis. The Youth Leader's TrainingpPrpject. The training pro- ject first started in one of the regional centers in the Northeastern province in 1968. The main objective of the project was to strengthen the quality of the rural youth leaders, ages from 15 to 19, who finished the primary school. After 45 days of intensive training, the youth leaders would be sent back to their villages to organize youth groups. The training included classroom lectures and field practice. The emphasis of the training was placed on agricultural tech- niques, recreational activities, leadership training, group dynamics, and group management. From 1968 to 1970, a total of 600 youth leaders were trained in different regional 216 centers. The project ceased in 1971, and in 1972 the youth leaders were trained in the Tambon Development Centers. The evaluation was designed to study the effectiveness of the training program, and to find out whether the youth leaders were able to organize youth groups upon return to their villages. The study was conducted in two different phases. The first interviewed 20 youth leaders in every training batch, immediately after the training was completed in the regional center. The second interviewed youth leaders, local leaders, and village workers in 26 provinces, one year after the training. For the effectiveness of the training, the study found that all respondents learned many new skills and knowledge in growing cash crops, group process, sports, and game play- ing. Many of the respondents said they would like to be trained more in professional skills other than agriculture. Twelve percent of the youth reported that they would not go back to their villages after training and preferred to find a job in town. The part of the training that most impressed every respondent was the educational tour in Bangkok at the end of the training. The second part of the study found that most of the youth leaders were very active when they first returned from the training. Some had organized a youth group to play soccer and other sports as an initial step to stimulate the village youth. Some groups engaged in growing watermelon, 217 mushrooms, peanuts, and poultry. However, after a period of four to six months the organized groups began to decline in activity. The study found that only one group in the south- ern province had continued its group activities. The group was ready to move up to form a cooperative society if they had been able to get some additional support from the of- ficials concerned. The lack of financial support was the major cause that the group dissolved. After 1972 the CD Department changed the development strategy on rural youth, and discontinued the training pro- gram in the regional centers. The Village Youth Center was a new phase of development approach in 1973. All village youth were invited to join the membership of the youth cen- ter. Special monthly training on various skills and communi- ty activities were held in the village. The new approach has been in operation for more than three years but lack of information precludes further comment. Occupational Training Center for Rural Youth. In 1969, the CD Department started its first permanent occupational training center for rural youth in one central province, and in 1973, one more center was set-up in another central prov- ince. The results of the training proved to be successful in terms of upgrading youth's skills. Therefore, from 1974 to 1975, four more centers were set up, one in the north, one in the south, and two in the northeast. Most of the train- ing emphasized agriculture as first priority. The training 218 lasted from 6 to 9 months. Rural youth (ages 15 to 25) were recruited from different provinces in the region. The evaluation was conducted by a graduate student (Kiennilsiri, 1976) who was also an official in the CD central office. The results of the study became her master's degree thesis. The specific objective of the thesis was to study the pattern of employment of youth labor in rural areas, and the economic and social changes among youth who attended courses at the two central training centers of the CD Depart- ment. The study covered 430 trainees who came from 124 vil- lages in 4 different provinces. The results of the study are as follows: Before joining the training program, 90 percent of the youth helped their parents in agricultural work and few had any particular occupational skills. After training, 48 per- cent took up a new occupation, leaving only 42 percent in agriculture. The non-agricultural work consisted of 25 per- cent general employment, 11 percent mechanical tasks, and 12 percent factory work. The study also found that there was labor mobility, in that 44 percent of the youths left their village temporarily or permanently, and only 56 per- cent remained at home. Sixty-nine percent of the youths after training re- ported using their knowledge to do jobs which increased pro- duction and income for the family. This same number also in- vested more resources from their own funds and borrowings 219 from local money lenders. The return of their investment was not encouraging because the market for their products mainly depended upon middlemen. The change was in the im- provement of production techniques and increasing output rather than in any significant increase in family income. Seventy-six percent of the parents and 62 percent of the youthsinterviewed reported that neighbors had a higher regard for the youth's knowledge and ability than before training. Both categories of respondents also appreciated the training experience as a source of prestige. Seventy- eight percent of the youthsasked for advice from the of- ficials of different departments. On the other hand, many youthscomplained that many government officials did not come to visit and give advice to the people. In regard to the setting up of various youth occupational groups in the vil- lages, it appears that only 55 percent of youths started to form groups, but none of them have become formal and ef- fective groups. The researcher concluded that the changes in labor employment and social and economic conditions among youths and their families have not attained the goals of the youth occupation program as planned by the CD Department, particu- larly, in its attempt to prevent labor movement from rural to urban areas. In fact, migration away from villages seems to have increased as a result of this program. 220 Summary of Development Impact by Amphoe A Study in Amphoe Nonghan, Udornthani In 1969 the Research and Evaluation Division of the CD Department was assigned responsibility for evaluating the impact of the CD program in Amphoe Nonghan in which the CD program has been operating for more than five years. The first phase of the study was carried out by a team of 35 CD field researchers over a period of three weeks. The survey encompassed a sample of 10 percent of the households in every village of the Amphoe. The second phase was a joint CD and the American Institutes for Research team study to measure the CD inputs and output impact. Four elements of the CD process were used as measurement of impact in this second phase. The results of the study can be summarized as follows: Changes in Living Conditions. An increase in village economic status was reported in eight of the sixteen villages studied. The improvement of roads, seems to have been the most important factor in facilitating the contact of village people with the provincial market economy. The construction of a main highway which bisects Amphoe Nonghan was a major factor in improving transportation access in most of the villages studied. For village roads, the study indicated that 46 percent of the CD development project assistance was allocated to road improvement. This heavy investment on roads has helped to connect many villages to the main high- way. 221 The study also found that other stimuli seem to have come from the increased demand of the provincial market area for livestock, poultry and vegetables. A second factor that brought economic improvement seems to have been increased productivity in rice farming. Use of chemical fertilizer was most frequently cited as the cause of the increased pro- duction. The village workers did not make much of a contri- bution in this extension role, since most of the villagers got information about fertilizers from travelling merchants. There has been an improvement in water supply in sev- eral villages, especially through construction of new con- crete public wells. The CD program deserves most of the credit for the construction of concrete wells. Fourteen out of the sixteen villages had public wells at the time of the studies. However, the study found that most of the vil- lagers do not like the taste of the water drawn from the concrete wells and they still use the wooden and earthen wells in preference to the concrete ones. The water from con- crete wells was used for livestock and irrigation of cash crops instead. The majority of the villagers still appear to go to witch doctors. The distance from the village to the nearest health center is a vital factor in the villager's choice of medical attention. Among the sixteen villages studied, four have resident health clinics within the village and all other villages are within three miles of a health center. The 222 village workers have not achieved great success in health education. The sanitary privies which were built in most villages are seldom used by the villagers because water is too scarce, particularly in the dry season. In brief, there have been substantial improvements over the past five years in the availability of public facilities in the villages. The number of health centers, Tambon Development Centers, playgrounds, and village halls, all increased during the period studied. Changes in Village Leadership. Improvement in the quality of village leadership was cited by 71 percent of the respondents, 26 percent said that there has been no change, and 3 percent said that leadership was actually weaker. Of the 71 percent who said that leadership was stronger, over half cited reasons related directly to the training and ac- tivities of the Village Development Committee. They admit- ted that the training has changed the attitudes of leaders in working more closely with the government officials. The study found that the frequency of Village Develop- ment Committee meetings varies between villages. Some Com- mittees met as often as monthly while others met once a year, if at all. All villages whose Committees met monthly show economic increases; and all villages whose Committees met twice a year or less remained the same or actually declined. The study also found a correlation between effectiveness of Village Development Committee and the role of the Committee 223 Chairman (village headman). There were six strong and ten weak or ineffective village headmen. Four of the six vil- lages which have a strong village headman also have a strong development committee. All four of these villages rank high on villager support of their leaders. Seven of the ten vil- lages with weak village headmen also have weak development committees. Change in Village Participation. The study found that a total of 54 CD-supported development projects (80 percent in public facilities construction) had been carried out in 12 villages during the past five years. Four of the remote and poor villages had no projects at all supported by the CD Department. The CD financial and material assistance during the five year period was 17,937 U. S. dollars, and the villagers contributed to the projects in terms of labor, land, and materials which were worth 24,292 U. 8. dollars. Village respondents were asked to describe changes in village participation and cooperation in community develop- ment projects over the past five years. Seventy percent responded better participation and cooperation, while 26 percent responded the same, and 4 percent worse participa- tion. Those who said the participation was better, because villagers are more interested in community activities, more frequent visits of government officials, and the availability of Village Development Committees to work as project coordi- nators. Respondents who saw no marked improvement in village cooperation felt that there were too few community projects, 224 that the village worker was paying less attention to the vil- lage than he had in the past, and that village committee mem- bers are too weak or inactive to stimulate villager coopera- tion. Changes in Contact with Officials. Contact between villagers and government officials varies markedly between villages,‘and is clearly related to the adequacy of road access. The most frequently visited villages by officials are situated near the road junction leading to other villages. The villages which rated "very low contact" are in remote lo- cations, and are small and rather poor. The contacts by officials have produced positive re- sults. Village leaders and villagers reported that they were pleased with the assistance and advice provided by the Offi- cials. They reported that villagers are no longer afraid of the officials, and thus will consult them when help is needed. Such positive remarks were most commonly made in reference to developmental officials such as CD workers, health officers, and the veterinarians. There are three principal conclusions in the evaluation report: 1. CD concentrated its efforts on the larger, more prosperous villages in Amphoe Nonghan, and made few inputs into the small, poor and less accessible villages; 2. Over the past five years, CD projects concentrated on physical improvement (roads, wells, Tambon Development 225 Center, etc.), and gave less attention to activities more directly related to improvements in village economic condi- tions; 3. Evidence confirms the fact that the world outside the village has become an increasingly significant factor in rural Thailand, exerting perhaps even greater influence than the changes within the village itself. A Study in Amphoe Ra-eah, Narathivas In 1971 the Research and Evaluation Division of the CD Department conducted a study of the impact of the CD program in Amphoe Ra-eah, Narathivas province. This Amphoe has been opened for CD coverage since 1961. The study was conducted in 36 villages, more than half of the total number of villages in this Amphoe. The result of the study can be summarized as follows. There are four Farmers'Groups in the 36 villages studied and two of them were organized by the assistance of the vil- lage workers. On the average, each group held two meetings a year during the past five years. During the study, all Farmers' Groups had no activities other than buying ferti- lizer and insecticides from the rice office in Amphoe Ra-eah. Selling rice was done by individual members. Despite the fact that the economy of most villages relies on the rubber plantation, CD has played a very small role in this economic activity. The rubber plantation development falls under an- other independent agency. 226 The findings report a positive correlation of economic well-being and the effectiveness of Village Development Com- mittees. If a village has a strong and effective Village Development Committee, the economic status of that village tends to be higher than the village which has a weak Village Development Committee. It is also true in this Amphoe that the stronger the Village Development Committee, the better cooperation among villagers is found. The construction of public facilities such as village roads, concrete wells, sanitation centers, and Tambon Develop- ment Centers appeared to concentrate in the.higher economic well-being villages. The concrete wells were the most popu- lar development projects found in all the villages studied. The number of wells increased 64 percent from 1961 to 1965. Bridge construction and village mosque repair ranked as the second most popular projects. From 1965 to 1970, the con- struction of public facilities moved to concentrate on sani- tation centers, children's playgrounds, and community halls. In general, the public facilities in 27 out of the 36 vil- lages studied improved markedly both in quality and quantity, leaving nine remote and poor villages with no financial sup- port from CD during the past ten years. Maintenance of public facilities received the most com- plaints from respondents. Many village roads and bridges constructed using simple techniques and village voluntary labor began to deteriorate. Some have been repeatedly re- paired year after year. Because of the two monsoon seasons 227 a year in the southern provinces, simple techniques and man- ual work cannot keep all the existing roads in good repair. Villagers expressed strongly the belief that the government should help them build stronger and year-round roads. Fourteen villages had villagers who participated in many types of CD training projects, such as youth leader's training, woman's group training, and occupational group training. Eight of the fourteen villages had tried to set up a woman's group, youth group, and occupational group after the trainees returned to their villages. All of the groups failed to continue after completing a few meetings. The last two woman's groups dissolved in 1969, and no evidence was found of a desire to form new groups. During the study, four village youth leaders who just returned from the train- ing actively set up a recreational youth group to play sports and games in their leisure time. The group leaders were afraid that the groups would not survive if the CD does not support it with sport equipment. The study found 7 Village Development Committees to rate high efficiency, four medium efficiency, and 25 low ef- ficiency in carrying out the village development projects. Many villagers in the low efficiency committees villages said that they did not know about the existence of a Village Development Committee in their villages. Village respondents cited several reasons why the Committee has low efficiency: the village worker is not active in getting financial as- sistance from the Amphoe office; the village worker seldom 228 visits the village; and the present village worker does not work as hard as the previous one. Five out of the low ef- ficiency committees did not have full membership at the time of study. Many members died long ago, and several moved away from the villages. No election had been held to fill the vacancy. Sanitation centers were found to be useful and prac- tical in the villages studied. Villagers prefer to go to the center for medical attention. Concrete wells and water- fall water supply are widely used by villagers. Two of the villages studied installed a pipeline from the fall to the village by their own efforts with partial support from the CD Department and the Health Department. The Village Develop- ment Committees take care of the cleaning of concrete water tank on the hill, and maintaining the condition of public faucets. Anticipated Impact and Unexpected Residual Anticipated Impact. When looking back to the objec- tives of community development programs and operational de- velopment projects of the Community DevelOpment Department, it is quite clear that the organizational goal and opera- tional approach have concentrated on three major categories to bring about changes in the rural sector. There are: changes in the physical environment; changes in technology; and changes in village formal organizations. From the find- ings of seven development projects and two case studies, it 229 is now appropriate to draw conclusions as to the impact on these three anticipated changes in the rural sector. The public facilities development project is a direct contribution to the improvement of village physical environ- ment. As the evidence shows, the larger part of development inputs have emphasized the construction and repairing of village roads, public wells, sanitation centers, village temples and mosques, community halls and other such projects. The accomplishment in regard to community amenities has un- doubtedly produced changes in many aspects of the villagers' life. In particular, the availability of access roads has facilitated travel, and the government officials and outside merchants can reach the village conveniently. The frequent contact with officials has resulted in a positive attitude of villagers toward officials. The construction of water supplies and sanitation centers has given better health care to some villages. These positive impacts are certainly part of the developmental consequences that should be credited to the CD program. The impact of technological changes can be analyzed from the results of training projects, All training projects were objectively designed to introduce new skills and prac- tices to villagers. To assess the training projects in quantitative terms, it is true that numerous villagers en- gaged in various types of training during the past decade. The statistics show (CDP, 1971a) that from 1963 to 1970, a total of 82,929 villagers were trained in agriculture, 230 livestock, mechanical skills, home economics, non-agricultural occupations, group work and group process, and recreational activities. From the analysis, although all the training symbolizes "headstart" type of projects, at least the train- ing curricula represent an initial transmission of new tech- nology that may in fact stimulate the interests and awareness of the long-neglected villagers. Many training projects il- lustrate the fact that most of the trainees admitted learn- ing new methods from attending the training, and that they would like to have more training in the particular field. The analysis also shows that the training in new methods is not sufficient to enable the trainees to improve their economic well-being as anticipated by the CD Depart- ment. However, the application of new knowledge, as shown in the analysis, has been hampered by several other factors, such as the inapplicability of the training programs and the lack of supporting funds. Among other factors, the vertical interaction pattern of the bureaucratic system and the rural sector has been one of the major determinants of mixed con- sequences. Finally, what about the changes in village formal or- ganizations? In the early stage, the CD Department was head- ing toward a development of local self-government at the village level. For some unclear reasons, the development of local self-government was dropped after 1970. Develop- ment projects which aim to bring about changes in other forms of organizations still persisted. As the evidence shows, all 231 the training projects are means to an end of organizing for- mal groups at the village level. The emphasis of group for- mation and group process has been insisted upon in every individualdevelopment project. The final goal of all pro- jects is that the trainees or leaders are expected to go back to their village and organize group efforts to work as a formal group in order to bring about changes in the village. Cross-sectional statistics (Decharin, 1973:357) show that since the establishment of the CD Department, a total of 24,090 different formal groups had been formed in vil- lages all over the country. In quantitative terms, the figures represent an enormous increase in village formal organizations, but in reality, as several evaluation reports reveal, there -are only a small number of formal groups that presently remain active. One of the remaining formal groups in most of the villages is the Village Development Committee and Tambon Development Committee. However, the role and functions of such committees is problematic. Since these committees have been given very minimum authority in decision- making and they depend heavily on the allocation of resources from the bureaucratic system, the future development of per- manent village organizations based on such committees seems doubtful. The formation of formal groups in the village is not limited to the operation of the CD Department alone. In fact, almost all the developmental agencies have created some kind of village organization according to their 232 responsibilities (Philco-Ford, 1968 and Rubin, 1974). The most common found village organizations are Tambon Council, Tambon Development Committee, Village Development Committee, Irrigation Association, Multi-purpose Cooperative Societies, Farmers'Group, Occupational Group, Youth Group, WOman's Group, 4H Club, Home Industry Group, Housewife Group, Health Committee, School Committee, and Temple Committee. In 1973, my own study found 119,000 different formal groups or vil- lage organizations which have been registered in the records of 10 separate functional departments (Decharin, 1973:357). With the limited number of village leaders (an average of 13 to 31 village leaders are found in one village: Rukwichit, 1971), all these formal groups are eventually served by the same group of leaders. After investigating the results and impact of formal group information approach in the community development case, a question arises as to whether the creation of various for- mal groups in the village under the present circumstances is a right and productive strategy to attain the goal of rural development. The Philco-Ford (l968:2) study commented on the question as follows: "The apparatus for development virtually never deals with an individual villager as such. Its rationale is based on community impact: mobilization of group ideas, group support, group planning and group labor. Even when a given project ultimately enhances an individual's earning power--as in the case of Farmers' Groups, for example--the process of implementation is through the group, not directly between the Amphoe and the villagers." 233 Unexpected Residuals Several unexpected residuals, which in part represent a negative impact of the development projects, have also been found in the analysis. For instance, the availability of access roads both within and without the village vir- tually creates new opportunities for villagers to find jobs in towns and cities. Many evaluation reports reveal mo- bility among villagers, especially the young labor force. Since mechanization has not been on the way to replace the out migrants, this trend leads to a shortage of farm labor, especially in several Northeastern and central provinces (CDP, l970f; CDP, l972b; CDP, l972d; and CDP, 1973c). Many CD training projects recruited trainees from villages to attend training sessions at the regional centers located in the major provincial towns. After a few weeks or a few months of association with a new lifestyle in the cen- ters, the trainees expressed a preference to stay and find jobs in the towns. As one study (Kiennilsiri, 1976) found, a total of 44 percent of CD trained youth leaders left their village to work in towns permanently. Other studies (CDP, l970e; CDP, l970f; and CDP, 1973c) found that many young girls who participated in a three- month long training in the provincial towns were frustrated by their future prospects in the villages. They saw no fu- ture in staying in the village after they returned from training. This was one reason some parents were reluctant 234 to send their daughters to participate in the training. The training of occupational groups inevitably creates a situation of high expectation among trainees. As the evi- dence reveals, most of the trainees understood and were pre- occupied with the belief that with participation in the train- ing projects they would continue to be supported and assisted by the government. When this expectation was not met after the training, frustration among trainees turned to a hostile attitude toward the government, as found in two studies (CDP, l972c and CDP, l972e). Dissatisfaction among village leaders with the unful- filled request for project assistance is found in several studies (CDP, 1970a; CDP, l970e; and CDP, l970f). The vil- lage leaders who experienced unsuccessful projects (bridges, temples, schools, and well construction) due to the unmet requests for financial assistance from the CD officials, has made the leaders increasingly skeptical of government per- formance and made them unwilling to cooperate in any govern- ment projects. The disparity of project distribution and the concen- tration of development strategy employed by the CD Depart- ment, has heightened a feeling of inequality among villagers who did not receive assistance. The concentration of pro- jects in well-to-do and easy-to-reach villages rather than in the remote and poor villages is found in several studies, especially the case study reports from the northeastern and southern provinces. However, this serious skeptical feel- ing has not been taken into consideration among policy makers. 235 One other interesting residual is the heavy dependency on the local leaders of the CD program. The study of youth leader development projects (CDP, 1969b and CDP, 1972e) found that over 80 percent of the youth selected by the village leaders to join the training projects were either family members or relatives of local leaders who made the selection. .This, in fact, indicates that the sons and. daughters of non-leaders have less chance to be selected. Observation and Conclusion From the findings of this chapter and some parts of the preceding chapters, it is evident that the interactional pattern of the bureaucratic system and the rural sector rests on a vertical relationship. The vertical interaction pattern basically has led to a strong control over the development projects in the rural sector. The decision-making and the boundary maintenance process within the bureaucratic system has undoubtedly reinforced the existing vertical pattern. Consequently, the rural sector becomes a receiver without bargaining power while the bureaucracy is a sole dominant donor. In the case of Thailand where the political system overlaps with bureaucracy (Riggs, 1966 and Myrdal, 1968), it would not be wrong to predict that the existing interac- tion pattern will remain unchanged for several decades un- less there is a radical revolutionary change in the politi- cal system, and that change must alter the contemporary 236 bureaucratic system. The minimal development impact and the unexpected residuals as found in this study obviously indicate some faulty assumptions in strategy and approach being used in the CD program. One challenge is to compel the decision- maker to take these findings into serious consideration. I have drawn a simple chart (Figure 8) to illustrate the community development process and its consequences. There are at least six major goals which are constantly stated in the Thai Community Development Program. Namely; higher income for rural people; promoting better health care; improving education; providing better public facili- ties, promoting village culture, and promoting local leader- ship. To achieve the stated goals, sevenmajor developmen- tal projects are designed to be carried out in the villages. They are occupational development, leadership development, volunteer leader development, youth development, woman's development, child development, and public facilities de- velopment projects. The development strategies employed to carry out the development projects are self-help, greater local partici- pation, coordination among functional officials, group process, and partial assistance in development projects from governmental agencies. The government inputs are train— ing programs, financial, materials, and technical assistance. 237 The development consequences found in this study in- clude expected impact and unexpected residuals. The ex- pected impacts were found to produce minimum results in technological and formal organizational changes when compared to changes in the physical environment. The unexpected resid- uals are found to include out-migration, high unfulfilled ex- pectations, frustration, inequality, and dissatisfaction among the rural populace. 238 oosmsommcoo mus was mmmooum ucmEmon>oo huflcsfisoo floss m musmflm Hmoflsnooa masfiumumz mocsm , mswcwmua musmsH amuswscuo>oo :ofiuommmHuMmmwo magnumomoa SuwamsomcH HsooH msfluoaonm on: so cowmwwwwwmwummsm mmfluflawomm Deanna ommaaa> ammuosoum . m a . umomma Hmwussao> moans mom sowumu asluoo usmEmon>mo oaflso . .H. m 0a a mm m massowmmu omuommxmso ucmEmon>mo 8E0: ill soawwmwpm mwwumsH usmfimo~m>mo £950» . moa>umm spammm uswEmon>mo magnumommq mfioosa Hmnmam ucmfimoam>mo assasummsooo . . momsmno ascowumNflsmmuo m mamoo possum woodman Hmoamhsm .fL muomnonm uses on>mo mmmcmao HousmoHosnoma poems“ wouommxm _ a mocmpmwmmm Hmwuum mmoooum msouo cofiumcflouooo cowummHOAuusm mamereemm amoumuum ucwsmoao>oo moosmsvmmsoo CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION Summary of the Findings The present unified Thai bureaucratic system, its abso- lute power structure, and the nature of hierarchical central- ization, virtually have been produced by the long history of the role of kingship in administration. Although there has been cultural and political flexibility sufficient to intro- duce some Western patterns, as observed during the absolute monarchy period, the traditional values and behavior patterns continue to predominate in the bureaucracy in the absence of other strong institutions. When examined in historical perspective, it is clear that community deve10pment is not new to Thailand when a broader definition is applied. However, a more sophisticated and systematic approach to community development program actu- ally began after World War II with the first assistance of UNESCO in the Fundamental Education Program, and followed by a period of almost two decades of assistance from USOM. The basic organizational structure has not been changed since the establishment of the Community Development Depart- ment in 1962. The philosophy and objectives have been changed slightly after the third Director-General assumed the office in late 1971. The major development projects remain more or 239 240 less the same, except for some changed names and emphasis in operation. The project implementation process has undergone no substantial change from the beginning until today. The only differences are in the areas of operation and strategy in development. To follow the operational hypotheses of the models in stage one, three donor systems have been examined. SEATO has had the least involvement and influence on the community deVelopment program in Thailand when compared to UNESCO and USOM. UNESCO was the pioneer donor system which began in 1953 with a setup of TUFEC in the Northeast Thailand. After seven years of operation, the program was terminated because of several intermingled reasons. When the interactional process is analyzed from a sys- tems approach perspective, it is true that UNESCO as a donor system came to help Thailand with predefined objectives as well as means to carry out the objectives through technical assistance and financial support. The newly introduced de- velopment program must follow the existing administrative structure. The newly defined role of the Fundamental Educa- tion field workers were not recognized by the existing bu- reaucratic system, partly because the Ministry of Education as a system has much lesser power to control the other min- istries. The powerful Ministry of Interior was, therefore, able to generate its experimental CD projects much faster with USOM during the 19608. 241 The boom of USOM assistance to CD during the 19603 was in part stimulated by the threat of communist insurgency. The establishment of the National CD program in 1960 was sub- stantially supported by USOM both financially and technically. USOM's assistance consisted of advisory service to develop- ment projects, participant training programs, and various kinds of commodities. Commodities are the largest item in terms of cost; advisory services, and the participant train- ing, rank next, respectively. For the participant training program, a total of 78 officials in the CD Department received from three months to the completion of a Master's Degree in training. Four-hundred- thirty-seven officials and village leaders received short-term observational tours by the end of the USOM assistance in 1972. Among the three types of assistance provided by USOM, advisory services was one of the more influential input to the Thai com- munity development program. The continuity of advisory ser- vices started in 1956 and continued to their termination in 1972 with a total of 28 American advisors. All the operating divisions in the Department had employed USOM advisors as con- sultants to work on the various development projects. The as- sociation of advisors with Thai CD officials in a period of almost two decades, certainly helped to lay some basics of the foundation of the Community Development Program. The interactional process between USOM and the CD Depart- ment found no unique overall pattern; rather, depending on the dimension one is analyzing, specific patterns emerge. For 242 instance, a vertical pattern is apparent when interaction was examined in terms of conceptual transmission, and a horizontal pattern was evident when activities were examined. In analyzing the interaction within the bureaucratic subsystems and its consequences, the present study found three kinds of decision-making processes--the participative, the ar- bitrary, and the autocratic decision-making process. The par- ticipative process occurred in the monthly departmental staff meetings and the quarterly regional center meetings. The ar- bitrary process occurred when the individual division director interacts with the top executives. The study found no signif- icant difference on issues that were discussed in these two kinds of decision-making processes. The autocratic process often comes as a form of "official order" from the top execu- tives of the Department. This type of decision does not con- cern crucial issues, major changes of policy, or operational approaches in the development projects. Rather the decisions usually deal with some malpractice in the development projects which the top executive encounters from various sources and which need some adjustment. In the decision-making process, especially the changes in policies and operational approaches on most of the develop- ment projects, no evidence was found that hard data or quanti- tative information was used to support decisions. The support- ing information used in the decision process is mainly drawn from personal experiences, especially in reference to things that have been seen and heard during field Visits. 243 The transmission of decisional information between the bureaucratic subsystems has two major forms, one written and the other unwritten. There are 13 kinds of written forms that have been used for transmitting information. Each kind has its own function, purpose, and use by different systems. The most common used are official letters, memoranda, meeting minutes, and radio-telegrams and teletype. In the unwritten- form linkage occurs in eight different types, and each is used differently. The most common forms are seminar and in- service training for officials concerned. In general, the decisional information and feedback in- formation are thoroughly transmitted within the bureaucratic subsystems. No complaints were found to the effect that there is a lack, or blockage of information flow as to the policy and strategy of the major development projects. On the con- trary, the evidence shows that the downward channels of in- formation are overloaded. The upward information has been very frankly stated in most of the seminar reports. It is especially true that the constraints and operational problems of deve10pment projects have been clearly specified in most of the documents. The organizational boundary maintenance is analyzed in terms of identity of power and status between the bureaucratic subsystems. The present study found that each system has its limitation of authority according to the role and function designated by government regulations. Since the members of each bureaucratic subsystem hold different official ranking 244 status, thus, the ranking system has in part contributed the highest status to the policy-making system. The implementa- tion and operating system has the lowest status. The study also found not only that differences in the official ranking status is recognized but also that the differences in control of decision and resources on the development projects by dif- ferent divisions is well accepted among officials. No sign of "objection" or "resistance" seems to have been made by of- ficials in the other two systems on the changes of operating strategy in development projects. This nonresistance phe- nomenon conforms to what Weber (1957:328) wrote: legal au- thority is based on a belief in the right of those in high office to have power over subordinates. The complaints or problems and constraints confronted in project operation was taken as a case in point to investi- gate the maintaining of the status quo in each system. When the policy-making system confronts the operational problems presented by the other two systems, three different choices can be made to maintain the status quo: first, is to by- pass the problems to outside concerned systems; second, is to put the blame on the other two systems; and third, the policy-making system may decide to change the operational approach of the existing projects in order to avoid the con— fronted problems. The administrating and supervising system has a similar way out of the policy-making system to maintain the status quo, except the outside systems and the degree of freedom to 245 change the operational strategy of the projects which this system has and refers to, is different. The implementation and operating system which is located at the bottom of the other two systems, uses different means in maintaining its status. First, the system has to maintain an informal re- lationship with the village people. Second, the system has to maintain a mutual reciprocal relationship with other func- tional officials. The general constraints and operational problems of the development projects are: (1) the delay and inadequacy of resources; (2) the competency and morale of officials; (3) the.condition of competition and coordination; (4) the physical, social and economic constraints; and (5) the local participative constraints. Of the confronted problems, most of the official documents discussed the following phenomena as causal factors: the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the officials in performing their functions, the shortage of personnel and budget, the inertia, the lack of responsibility, and the lack of a delegated spirit among officials, the lack of management and planning skill of administrators, the domi- nation of middlemen and lack of local organizations, and the ignorance, the poverty, and the long-rooted traditional values of the village people. At least two attempted resolutions were used by the bureaucracy to remedy the causal factors. One is to acquire more national budget and more personnel, and the other is to organize more training and seminars in order to upgrade the quality of the officials. 246 Interestingly, the number of CD personnel has increased more than four times, and the annual budget of the Department has increased more than seven times, within 12 years. However, the area of operation has increased more than 20 times within the same period. The unbalanced increment of area operations and budget, and personnel, has in part contributed to the con- straints and operational problems. A new dimension of the causal factors which focuses on the consequences of the interactional process within the bu- reaucratic subsystems were examined. The evidence strongly confirms that the problems of delay and inadequate resources were caused by the project approval procedure, the central control of resources, the central authority to change opera- tional approach on the projects, and the practice of con- tinually introducing new and unrelated projects. The prob- lem of competency and morale of officials seems to be due not only to psychological and technical effects on an indi- vidual level, but also to structural effects. Since orders and decisions always come from the top, the interactional pattern instituted the behavior pattern of field officials waiting for instruction from their superior. The authority to promote, to transfer, and to appoint is in the hands of the policy-making system. The field of- ficials are in fact subjected to the central office, not to the local people. Coordination among functional officials rests on a mutual reciprocal relationship. Every functional 247 official must be loyal to his own mother organization for they are all centrally employed officials. Besides, the dif- ferent conceptual approaches in development by different agencies have created a confusing and conflicting situation not only on the official's side but on the side of the vil- lage people as well. In the final stage of the hypothesized model--the inter- action pattern between the bureaucratic and rural sector sys- tems and its impact on rural people are examined. 'The find- ings confirm that all the development projects whether ini- tiated by the local people or introduced by the officials, must be approved by different bureaucratic hierarchies. The rural sector simply possesses no ultimate decision power. Allocation of resources and final decision to give support or not depends entirely on the bureaucratic system. The rural sector has no authority to sanction or to influence the hier- archical structure in making decisions on the design of de- velopment projects. It should be clear that the interaction pattern of the bureaucratic system and the rural sector is built on a vertical relationship. Consequently, the rural sector becomes a receiver without bargaining power while the bureaucracy is the sole donor. The development consequences found in this study may be classed as expected impacts and unexpected residuals. The expected impacts were found to produce minimum results in technological and formal organizational changes in the 248 rural sector when compared to changes in the physical environ- ment. The unexpected residuals are found to include out- migration, high unfulfilled expectations, frustration, in- equality, and dissatisfaction among the rural populace. The overall conclusion of this study can be briefly re- stated as follows: the interactional process between USOM and the CD Department exhibited no unified patterns, but rather depends on the dimension one is analyzing. In this study the Community Development Program has been influenced by a vertical interaction pattern in terms of conceptual transmission, and by a horizontal interaction pattern in terms of activities between USOM and the Community Develop- ment Department. The constraints and operational problems in the Community Development Program are in part the conse- quences derived from the vertical interaction pattern between the bureaucratic systems and the rural sector has produced minimum impacts in technological and formal organizational changes in the rural sector. Subsequently several unexpects ed residuals are found in situations of out-migration, high unfulfilled expectation, frustration, inequality, and dis- satisfaction. Implications and Recommendations From a general systems point of view, this study pro- vides.a thorough understanding of the nature and determinants of system interaction patterns in three major interrelated systems involved in rural development in Thailand. The result 249 of this analysis of the bureaucratic subsystems can assist in comprehensive and realistic policy formulation and in plan- ning to improve the system interaction patterns and strategy for rural development. A complete investigation of the im- pacts and operational constraints in current development pro- jects can help the policy makers plan for realistic future development projects, with more involvement from other bureau- cratic subsystems and from the rural sector in particular. Such information can also make a valuable contribution. to the developed countries and the international agencies in their understanding of complex bureaucratic system's inter- action patterns and constraints. Finally, an understanding of a holistic system-interaction model, as presented in this study, may consequently be applied to diagnose similar situa- tions in other developing countries. The implications and recommendations from several spe- cific cases in point should be viewed separately: .1. The assistance of UNESCO and USOM in the Community Development Program illustrates that the donor systems played a substantial role in technical and financial support in the beginning stage of the development programs. The evidence does not show a domination of development policies and strate- Agies that continued to be imposed by the donor systems. In fact, both donor systems had originally planned to phase out the assistance after a period of time. The termination of UNESCO's assistance was not really a major cause of the col- lapse of the TUFEC program; it was rather a combination of 250 several intermingled factors, especially the rival situations within Thai bureaucracy. In the case of USOM's termination, the CD program con- tinues to receive good support from different regimes. The change of policies and strategies in development projects was mainly the responsibility of Thai policy-makers. There is no evidence to show the domination or participation of the donor system in policy-making process, although some concep- tual approaches in development projects may have been implic—. itly influenced through the association of Thai officials and USOM's advisors. In this respect, it might not be wrong to recommend that Thai leaders should be aware that the techni- cal and financial aid from foreign agencies, however helpful it might be, can only be a temporary measure that will not solve serious, complex rural problems. In the long run it should be a burden for the Thai people themselves. The de- pendency on foreign assistance is not a healthy sign for the cultivation of indigenous resources. Though technical assistance may prove to be necessary in some development fields, technical assistance can no longer be regarded as simply a transfer of existing techniques from the donor system to the recipient system but must be under— stood as a more complex process involving the adaptation of techniques and methods that will be later instituted into the Thai social systems. Another important element which the Thai leaders should consider is the formulation of concepts and policies of rural 251 development that are based on Thailand's socio-economic reali- ties rather than on ideas inherited from the foreign system. Thailand has much to learn from her own experience and mis- takes in rural development during the past few decades. It is time for the Thai people to formulate their own theories and policies with reference to the country's conditions. Numerous Thai officials and university professors have been highly trained in their respective fields. The development theories and policies should not merely rely on foreign ex- perts, cultivation and utilization of existing professional resources is also important. 2. The failure to promote local organizations in the form of formal groups, minimum results in terms of the ex- pected impact and the growing unexpected residuals as found in this study--obviously indicate some faulty assumption in strategy and approach being used in the CD program. The con- tinued concentration on individual village level development- may not be appropriate strategy for the present circumstances. The world outside the village has become an increasingly sig- nificant factor in rural Thailand, exerting perhaps even greater influence than the changes within the village itself. The use of village as unit of development may not be realistic to bring about change. Subsistence societies are not isolated communities. Therefore, it is rather difficult for villages to be modernized individually. Rather, part of the moderniza- tion process has to be linked with the outside world socially, politically, and economically. 252 The conceptual approach employed in the CD program may have to be reconsidered in part, especially the concepts of self-help and group formation. It may no longer be suitable and pragmatic for Thai rural development. As this study shows, most of the development projects concentrated on group training and group formation. The group training is only one part of introducing new technology and new practice. Intro- duction of new technology and new practices without further support on funding and other necessary facilities has aroused a high expectation and frustration on the part of the vil- lagers. The self-help concept can be applied to certain kinds of development projects, such as building a small dam, a small bridge, and digging a public well. But self-help can- not be used in several other development projects, especially those economically oriented projects. This study shows us that groups cannot be organized because of the members lack of funds. It is impossible to expect the already low-income and subsistence farm families to organize themselves against the money lenders and the middlemen without outside support. To relyvon training and discussion_groups to solve local problems does not lead to building up local organizations. The decision of what to do and how to do it would not help much if the group does not control the resources. If the government would really like to build up strong local organizations as a basic foundation for rural deVelop- ment, then, the present local groups which are supported and 253 directed by different agencies have to be reconsidered. It would be more useful to have a unified local organization as representative of people's needs and interests. The local organization should be represented by all classes of rural people not only by rural elites. More important, the local organization should have legitimate power to obtain resources and make the best use of the available resources through lo- cal decisions not through an imposed direction from hierarchie cal bureaucracyz 3. The urgent need for Thai rural deve10pment, as sup- ported by this study, is in fact a new decision-making struc- ture, not just capital and development strategy alone. A successful rural development effort should not rely on the decision-making of the central elites in distributing re- sources to the rural sector. On the contrary, the_genuine decentralization of decision power to the lowest levels and respect for lower level desires in the allocation of resources are more important if the central elites really expect high efficiency in development in the rural sector. Given all the analytical and repetitive evidence that has been presented in this study, it seems evident that the repetitive constraints and operational problems of the de- velopment projects are in fact caused by the over-control of decisions and resource allocations. The vertical interaction patterns within the bureaucratic system generated a behavior pattern of field officials waiting for the decisions from the top. The problem of competency and morale of officials seems 254 to be due not only to psychological and technical effects on an individual level, but also to structural effects. Provid- ing training and seminars for concerned officials is not go- ing to help in upgrading the competency of the officials, because they have to go back and work within the existing structure. . Increased communication merely overload existing chan- nels, causes confusion and indecisiveness as found in this study. The problem clearly lies in the decision structure of the bureaucratic system, not the competency of officials or the lack of communication linkages. Some improvement can be made within the bureaucratic system. First, the central elites in the decision-making system should move away from their detailed control over local activities toward policy determination and general supervision. Secondly, the present functions in decision-making among three major bureaucratic subsystems have to be redefined according to their roles in rural development. 4. Community Development Program should further take serious consideration of demographic factors in the matter of development. Former development policy and strategy had totally ignored the importance of demographic processes. The present involvement in the family planning program is only one aspect of demography. The out-migration of the young labor force from rural to urban areas due to the youth training programs is one essential indication of the effect 255 of development on the rural social structure. As evidence shown elsewhere, most of the out-migrants' destination was Bangkok, this partly because Bangkok is the only major metro- politan area available in the country, and partly because of the unbalanced growth in other urban cities. 9 The rural-urban migration stream contributed in part to the rapid growth of Bangkok's population, from 1.1 million in 1947 to 4.5 million in 1975. Bangkok has now almost 60 percent of the total urban population in Thailand. Bangkok's population is almost 36 times the size of the next largest city in Thailand. There have been serious signs of growing problems in social services, unemployment, crimes, and environ- mental problems in Bangkok. It is not possible to stop the rural-urban migration, but a diversion to other destinations for rural migrants may be a good solution. This means the national deve10pment policy should aim to develop more re- gional urban cities in order to absorb rural migrants. Agro- industrial development in urban cities should be planned simultaneously hand in hand with rural development programs. 5. The system interaction process between the inter- related systems and its consequences for rural development, as found in this study, can serve as an immediate guideline for the Ministry of Interior to reinvestigate several develop- ment programs which are presently under technical and finan- cial assistance from foreign donor systems. The reinvestiga- tion should include the consistency and conformity in develop- ment policies and strategies among various donor systems. 256 The Ministry of Interior has more than ten major functional departments that have full responsibility in dealing with development projects in the rural sector. A unified policy and approach of the presently segmented development programs is needed in this powerful ministry. The unification of policy and approach within this ministerial level can be helpful in promoting coordination and cooperation in the administrating and operating systems. In addition to that, the ministry should have more control on individual departments in terms of development policy. The ministerial control in policy may prevent a frequent alteration in development approach and strategy generated by the departmental policy-making system. 6. With the present political situation in the region and a continued turn-over of political regimes, it is hard to expect any drastical change in the present Thai bureau- cratic structure. The domination of central control in de- cision-making and resources is undoubtedly to be continued for several more decades. One possible resolution to reduce the central power without much interruption of the present power structure would be to strengthen the role of the exist- ing regional centers. The regional centers have been set up in the country not only by the CD Department, but by several other functional departments as well. All the departmental centers should be integrated into a single unit to take full responsibility in rural development in that region. The re- organized center should be given independent authority in 257 decision-making and resource allocation in rural development programs. The central functional departments should deal with general policy and research. Operational research can be conducted as a collaboration effort with regional univer- sities. i In the future, all field officials should come under the control of the regional center. This includes authority to promote, to appoint and to transfer within the region. Although this study does not investigate the regional dif- ferences in Thailand and the growing importance of a regional approach, it is evidently supported elsewhere that under the present conditions Thailand needs to employ a regional develop- ment approach as one possible solution to the problem of gain- ing genuine local participation in the future. As I see it, regional approach would be a nonrevolution- ary change in development structure to resolve the long con- fronted central control problems. Power of decision and con- trol of resources would be distributed to the regional level instead of being monopolized in Bangkok. Of course, this is only an overview proposition, detail elaboration and specifica- tion of legitimate procedures is needed. Future Research Although the analysis of available documents has ful- filled its intended purpose, some pertinent questions regard- ing bureaucracy and rural development have been raised. While the questions emerging from this study will not be 258 answered, it may be useful to specify what some of the ques- tions are that need future research. 1. The study of the historical evolution of Thai bureau- cracy were done mostly in the 19503 and 19608, and primarily were derived from documentary research plus some observations made while a consultant or scholar resided in a selected Thai university. No in-depth organizational analysis has yet been written. Careful future research should be carried out in which one or more bureaucratic organizations are used as units of analysis and the historical influences are traced back in terms of structural changes in the organizations. Such a study should be very helpful in drawing a solid picture and in getting a deeper understanding of the Thai bureaucracy in an evolutionary perspective. 2. The study of USOM and the CD Department interaction patterns was an historical investigation during the 19603, and the analysis was limited by available documents. At present there are still numerous rural development programs that receive USOM and other foreign agency assistance. It would be appropriate to conduct a similar study of the pres- ent ongoing interaction patterns and influences between the‘ donor and the recipient system. The study should include' the analysis of whether foreign assistance for rural develop- ment is really needed. If it is needed, what kind of assist- ance will be most beneficial to the rural sector. Such res search would be valuable to compare with the present study, and would be useful for policy makers to determine future 259 policy in the role of foreign assistance to Thai rural develop- ment. 3. The evidence reveals that the change of top execu- tives at the departmental level has affected development strat- egy and made changes in development projects to some extent. It might be useful to study other functional departments to see whether this similar pattern would apply and in what cir- cumstances the top executive would make such changes. What legitimate power‘and freedom to make changes are available to the top executive? The study would be useful for future policy in personnel appointments, especially at the deCision- making level. 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