Politics in the Process of Establishing Local Development Plan: Case Study of the Lan Tak Fah Subdistrict Administrative Organization, Nakornchaisri, Nakornpathom, Thailand

This research study aims at studying the politics in the process of establishing a local development plan of the Lan Tak Fah Subdistrict Administrative Organization, Nakornchaisri, Nakornpathom, Thailand by qualitative methodology, including documentary and field research. One of the findings is although Thailand’s local administration is established under the principle of decentralization, where local peoples’ needs will be most directly addressed, the process of establishing the development plan of the Lan Tak Fah Subdistrict Administrative Organization, from strategy selection to implementation, is in fact based on the government’s strategies and guidelines. They cover not only the central government’s strategies/guidelines, that is (1) National Economic and Social Development Plan (No. 11) 2012-2016 and (2) the government’s policy, but also the regional government’s ones, that is (1) the provincial development strategy, (2) the community plan, and (3) policy framework, direction, and development guideline of local administrative organizations and Nakornpathom Province. The opportunities open for the Subdistrict peoples’ needs to be expressed were merely (1) review of problems and needs from the past years and (2) expressions of further needs in the present year in the form of projects. Moreover, other factors, including publicities, community meetings, especially in making decisions to select projects, and budget allocation, are significant causes of the local development planning process to become a tool for the Subdistrict Administrative Organization to make peoples only the “margin of development.” The entire process, therefore, made the Subdistrict’s peoples become disinterested in and inattentive from such process. In the end, there is a tendency that peoples will continuously less participate in the process of local development planning. Accordingly, the important recommendation for reform should not limit only to changes in local administrations but also modifications in the central and regional governments’ administrations, as appropriate.