ABSTRACT
Many of us (Thai citizens) believe that decentralization is wasteful and non-productive. On the other hand, the Constitution of 1997 clearly marked decentralization as an important policy of the state. In 2001, following the constitution, the national government devolved a huge amount of public money to local authorities making the local governments together hold an amount of at least 20 per cent of that held by the national government. The increase was more than two times than seen in previous years. Few years later, it was widely commended by politicians, bureaucrats as well as the media that local authorities cannot handle public money properly and they observed that the decentralization policy in Thailand was non-productive. Shortly after the inception of the new decentralization era, the incumbent government under Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra launched his recentralised policy platforms, known as ‘CEO Management Style’. Some central ministries, such as Education, Transportation, among others, tried to delay the decentralization policies. The movement against decentralization called for an empirical enquiry on its consequences.
