Problems of Thai State Welfare Card in its Policy Formulation Process

Abstract

‘Welfare Card’ is a major poverty-targeting scheme, implemented in Thailand in 2017 while the National Council for Peace and Order was in office. Fiscal Policy Office, a leading public policy maker, claims that the scheme should help alleviate inequality issues in Thailand. However, there are questionable processes along the implementation. For instance, the selection process was done once since its inception, therefore, data of the poor is not up to date nor revised. Moreover, the program lacks both short and long-term evaluation and concise explanation how to achieve its main goal. Through policy formulation framework topped with supportive empirical literature, this article aims to suggest plausible political purposes of this scheme, namely forging and maintaining clientelistic relationship, rather than achieving stated economic goals of mitigating inequality issues.