Corruption, Governance and Development in Thailand

Corruption, Governance and Development in Thailand

Asad Sayeed

Introduction

Explanations of economic and social development have always been a complex and inexact exercise. Since the emergence of ‘Development’ as a separate sub-discipline in the social sciences in general and in economics in particular, a variety of theoretical formulations and empirical generalizations have dominated the literature explaining both developmental successes and failures (see Toye, 2003 for a comprehensive review on the history of thought on development issues since the second world war). Over the last decade and especially since the East Asian Crisis of 1997, a consensus of sorts has developed in mainstream development literature that the most important element separating successful developers from unsuccessful ones is the quality of governance in countries (see World Bank 1997, Kauffman and Kraay 2001).

While there is no one and accepted definition of governance, it can simply be defined as “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s social and economic resources for development.”(ADB, 1995). One important manifestation of the lack of effective governance is the prevalence of rent-seeking and corruption in economic management of countries. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of studies which demonstrate through cross country regressions the negative relationship between various indicators of socio-economic development and the prevalence of corruption and the lack of effective governance.(Mauro, 1995, 1996, Kauffman and Kraay, 2001, Kauffman et.al. 2002).

At first sight, Thailand’s developmental trajectory poses a conundrum to this consensus view in development discourse. Although somewhat stalled since the financial crisis of 1997, the table below shows that in terms of growth in per capita incomes, structural change and reduction in absolute poverty, Thailand has performed creditably over the last four decades. Yet...