Expansion in the Thai Public Bureaucracy Under Sarit Regime: Decisive Security and Development Era 1958 – 1973

Abstract

This study is a modest attempt trying to define and illustrate the pattern of the Thai public bureaucracy’s expansion behavior during the Sarit Regime. Under the period of ‘development era’ (1958 – 1973), Thailand was continually ruled by the military leaders which was later viewed by many scholars as the height of ‘Bureaucratic Polity’. Under Sarit Regime with his State Security and National Development Council, there appeared several new agendas and policies of the government which consequently defined the new roleห of the state. Development programs and other state activities led to the expansion of the Thai bureaucracy both in term of quality and quantity. New ministries, new departments and ad hoc agencies were established for engaging and implementing the new functions. Based on this observation, the behavior of the Thai bureaucracy during this period immensely impacts and shapes the key characters of the Thai bureaucracy as we have known today. This study tries to explore and understand the nature of this expansion period. By adopting the New Institutionalism perspective, it will address several research questions by describing the roles of several key actors and their interactions as well as the institutional contexts that might possibly affected and shaped the Thai state mechanisms. The results of this study reveals that the pattern of expansion behavior was a product of interactions among key political and administrative actors which tried to established their own domains. The new departments and agencies were the autonomous empires of these actors which had to be protected. And this behavior happened not only in the administrative mechanisms but also within the realm of the military. It means that the increasing new state functions which led to the expansion behavior were hugely shared by the military. Civilian activities such as infrastructure, community and rural development, and others were also done by the military. Even if there was an explanation that the bureaucratic polity in Thailand began in 1932 but many key characters of it’s just clearly emerged during the Sarit Regime.