Corruption in Thailand’s Local Authority : Case Study of City Municipality

Abstract

            The purposes of this research were to study 1) the factors and conditions that led to the corruption in city municipality, 2) the patterns of corruption in the city municipality, and 3) the guidelines for controlling the corruption in city municipality. This study is a qualitative research with 16 key informants participating in in-depth interviews. Firstly, the research showed that there were many factors, especially personal behaviors and gap in the law, that leading to the corruption in city municipality. Apart from that, the political issues in local government were also currently considered as major reasons that increasing the severity of corruption in city municipality. From this view, the key factors, including the tight cooperation between local politicians and civil servants, the inefficiency of internal and external audits, social values of Thai patronage system, and especially the weakness of civil society. Secondly, the patterns of corruption in city municipality were found to be in various forms, starting from corruption in procurement, licensing, personnel management and financial and accounting fraud, all of which depended on different factors and conditions. At present, the pattern of fraud has been more complicated because of involvement with political factors, and this resulted in a form of policy corruption and conflict of interest in local politicians. Finally, the approaches for controlling the corruption should be identified by basing on the legal and institutional frameworks and encompassing the dimensions of preventing, suppressing, making a social consciousness, and mobilizing a managerial scheme of good governance. All of these were the key issues for building the sustainable solutions for controlling the corruption.