Politico-Administrative Entanglements in Thailand

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject South Asian Studies, South-Eastern Asian Studies, grade: A, Thammasat University, Bangkok (Faculty of Political Science), course: Thai Politics, language: English, abstract: This essay aims to outline above-mentioned politico-administrative entanglements in Thailand to enhance the understanding of the current state of affairs. This means analysing one of Thailand’s mayor shortcomings: the mutual influence of the state bureaucracy and state politics on public policies. At first, a short briefing in historic public policy supremacies tries to deliver a background which will enable us to better understand the roots of the entanglements and the self-perception of both parties involved. In the next step, the mutual influences will be disentangled, focusing on the gradual politicization of the bureaucracy first; the methods to bureaucratize politics will follow suit. Both cases will be divided into their formal and informal formats. In addition to the Thai conclusions, a comparison to the German case will be drawn. By sketching the historic and current German politico-administrative linkages and comparing them to the Thai case, this paper aims to analyse what preconditions and processes have led to different and similar pattern between Thai and German politico-administrative interconnections.