New Local Community and Civic Public Administration in Thailand
Abstract
This study deals with history, customs, and conventional wisdom of Thai local community development starting from informal local community development to the combination of formal and informal local development that brings about the successful local public service development alongside with the local democracy development. The local culture or community culture and the community history are the fundamentals of Thai local community development that contributes to the new modern Thai local community.
The findings revealed that the development of Thai local community to be the new modern Thai local community can occur in the local community or area that formulated the relationship between people through kinship system, history and traditional culture that were highly glorified by the community members. Moreover, to successfully develop public service which includes the development of quality of life and democracy by which community members should be able to govern themselves, the community members should implement plans based on the principle of civic public administration, starting from using the professionalism of the citizens, entrepreneurship, establishment of an organization or a structure that can become the medium between individuals and government agencies inside and outside the area, following by building a balanced formal and informal development network, and taking an advantage of digital technology effectively in order to create modern local communities. Furthermore, the public sector or local sector should promote professional citizenship. They should acknowledge and study the development with the informal local authority in order to prosper self-sufficient local communities, community interdependence, self-respect, and nationalism. Simultaneously, it is important to apply deliberative democracy to the development of consociational democracy for the genuinely well-balanced administration in the future.
