The effects of rules on local political decision-making processes: How can rules facilitate participation?

In examining the participatory procedures in Thailand more closely, it became apparent that the actual participation of local communities can be hindered by both endogenous and exogenous institutions, which are mutually interlinked (Aoki 2007). Following Laswell’s pledge for contextuality (1971, p. 3), decisions are always part of a larger social process and require to integrate the endogenous cultural factors, too. In Thailand, the endogenous factors such as cultural values and communication habits toward higher ranking officials are driven by collectivism, high-power distance and the cultural norm of Krengjai.¹ In that context, Nuttavuthisit et al. (2014) raise the question in how far formal rule-setting can help to achieve people’s participation in local government despite the hindering culture of compliance to superiors. We would argue, however, that even if the endogenous factors were in line with what is needed for successful engagement, participation could still be hindered by the rules, according to which the actual decision-making process in local public administration and government is organized. But, independent of the endogenous factors that affect participatory success, exogenous factors can allow significant scope for intervention (Lowndes et al. 2006). Such exogenous factors include the rules-in-form and rules-in-use² within the administrative bodies that define the interaction with the local population. Rules are understood as being socially designed and being one key element in understanding participants’ behaviors and interaction. To understand where the obstacles to villager participation might be reduced, it will be necessary to clearly identify these rules within the administrative bodies.

Such rules need to be analyzed for their distributional consequences as well. In that regard, there has been substantial criticism about the concept of participation. Some scholars argue that participatory approaches have often failed to achieve meaningful societal change owing to a failure to reflect issues of elite capture and politics (Bardhan 2002). Lortanavanit (2009, p. 176) concludes for Thailand that rural communities do not have enough weight to push through development projects that are better in line with their needs. Chaowarat (2010, p. 106, 109) likewise criticizes that the current process of decision-making in local development in Thailand is a one-way flow of information without genuine discussion or negotiation between local government and communities. To counteract this development, the understanding of rules is important, as administrative rules for interaction with the local population have to be constructed in a way that restricts the power holders from getting hold of the process and gaining disproportional benefits. Yet rules are often treated as a black box and how they matter has not been extensively studied (Araral 2014).

In contrast to the majority of studies in participation research, we are not studying the performance of participation efforts and the impact of stakeholder participation on policy making. Rather, we proceed from a ranking of well and badly performing regional administrative bodies in Thailand in terms of participation. We want to scrutinize the different formal and informal rules in local policy arenas, particularly in view of development planning processes, according to the achieved level of participation. We want to know the determinants of the actual level of stakeholder engagement that are influenced by precise rule-setting of an action arena.

We selected Thailand as a case study because it provides a clear evidence of how within the last two decades the decentralization process has brought a substantial change in the local administration with respect to delegating governance to local administrative bodies (Nagai et al. 2008, p. 29). The Thai case, even more, allows investigating the implications of rule making as a result of decentralization in a substantial detail. The success of decentralization is closely interlinked with the question whether or not decentralization gives space for villagers’ participation in local government (Larson and Ribot 2004). Thus, we understand that decentralization and participation ought to gain momentum when promoted simultaneously. Nonetheless, participation in decentralization is a major administrative challenge, as will be shown. It does not take place in an institutional vacuum. It happens in a sociocultural environment as well as in a context of inherited rules and procedures. Within an ambitious decentralization program of government structures in the early 1990s, the Thai government has created the Tambon Administrative Organizations (TAOs) which represent the lowest administrative bodies and likewise the arenas in which deliberative stakeholder participation ought to take place (Dufhues et al. 2015). The TAOs are supposed to increase the role of the rural population at the community level and empower them in decision-making. In this context, various tasks of the central administration such as budget and personnel management have been transferred to the TAOs (Kanjina 2008; Krueathep 2004). The TAOs serve as our research units, or more specifically, the “development plan making” activities institutionalized within these organizations constitute the basis of our analysis.³ The rules introduced since decentralization within the TAOs will be classified according to the IAD framework’s typology of rules (Ostrom 1998, pp. 68–73). This analytical classification allows us to disentangle the detailed rules-in-use within the local planning process of community projects in Thai TAOs and to judge on the deliberative democratic qualities of the decision-making process. Already in 1971, Lasswell (1971, p. 2) hints to the idea that the norms of conduct are partly determined and made effective outside the machinery of legislation, administration and adjudication, which, once again, stresses the need to study the actual rules-in-use.

This leads us to our more abstract research question: What is the possible impact of certain rules in a decision-making process on the actually achieved level of participation?

We hypothesize that in the more successful TAOs the rules are structured and set up in a way to take the immanent constraints within administrative organizations (such as bureaucratic inertia and path dependency) into account and to be better compatible with the endogenous factors of the society. Thus, we aim to reach conclusions on preconditions, i.e., necessary up-front rule changes that would allow for better participation within the process of local development planning.

The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, developed by Elinor Ostrom and scholars associated with the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University, contains a nested set of variables that scientists can use in efforts to understand human interactions and outcomes across diverse settings. In line with the broad prevalence of this framework in natural resource management (Ostrom 1998, p. 82), its application for participatory research is steadily growing (Denters and Klok 2003; Monnikhof et al. 2003; Koontz 2005; Smajgl et al. 2009; Lowndes et al. 2006; Van Damme and Brans 2012).⁴ Speer (2012) even stresses its potential to study participatory processes. The framework is known for its ability to address the challenges of collective and deliberative decision-making. In one of his approaches to policy sciences, Lasswell (1971) uses “an action arena” or “the situations in which interaction occurs” (1971, p. 25) in the center of his framework to point out that the actual situations are part of the equipment essentials to a policy scientist. In his model of social processes, same as in the IAD framework, Lasswell (1971, p. 24, 44) for instance conceptualizes participants, specializing here participation in decision-making, that take on various positions.

One of the main strengths of the IAD framework is its explicit attention to rules and rule-ordered relationships (Koontz 2005; Ostrom 2014). Thus, we use the framework to pay attention to the structure of the various rules-in-use that have an impact on our action situation, which is the planning process administered within the TAOs for new community development projects at the Tambon level. Applying the IAD framework does not necessarily mean an extensive analysis of all variable sets. Although we are very much aware of the context dependence—whether participation can be realized or not, the intention of this paper is to focus and elaborate on the impact of rules.

The center of the framework builds the action arena, a social space in which individuals interact, exchange goods and services, solve problems, dominate one another, or argue (Ostrom 1998, p. 82). The framework considers three sets of variables influencing the outcome of collective decision-making: (1) biophysical conditions, (2) attributes of the community and (3) rules-in-use that create incentives and constraints for certain actions (Ostrom 2005, 2010). The rules shape action situations and people’s behavior differently depending on what behavior they permit, the specific institutional decision-making procedures used to devise them and how they are implemented or enforced (Ostrom 2010). All three sets of external variables impact on an action situation to generate patterns of interactions and outcomes that are evaluated by participants and shape the next action situation (Ostrom et al. 1994, p. 37; Ostrom 2010). Participants as defined in our action situation can hold various positions such as TAO staff, various committee members, village key persons and ordinary villagers (Fig. 1). The action situation filled with actual participants, their positions and the corresponding action, is what we refer to as a particular action arena. We define the action situation as the development planning process of local communities (Fig. 1).

Looking more precisely into the building blocks of institutions, rules have to be differentiated from strategies and norms (Ostrom 2014). Following the Grammar of Institutions outlined by Crawford and Ostrom (1995, pp. 584–586) and aiming at a common and more precise language for institutional analysis, individual’s internalized moral values and social mechanism of enforcement to determine why individuals do or do not follow an institution and thus specify a norm. Participants do acquire most norms in the context of the community, in which the individual interacts frequently, based on an internal value assigned to the norm-conforming action. Rules are similar to norms but rules carry an additional assigned sanction (or-else parameter) if forbidden actions are taken and observed by a monitor (Ostrom 2014). Conceptually, some kind of monitoring and sanctions must exist, yet often this is not known to the people involved. In contrast to Ostrom (2014), where she coded and described the change from a norm-based system to a rule-based system, we are not interested here in the evolution of rules, but rather in their existence and impact on participants in an action situation.

Many strategies, norms and rules are not formulated in an easy-to-detect way or often just exist implicitly (Ostrom 2005: 139). Knowing how difficult it is to detect particularly the or-else parameter empirically (Schlüter and Theesfeld 2010), we will rather give priority to the difference which actions are obliged, permitted or forbidden. Thus, we should be able to assign a deontic logic, i.e., may, must or must not to the formal and informal institutional statements which we outline in the following.

Further, it is important to note that the distinction between rules and norms does not correspond with the distinction between formal and informal institutions. Our cases reveal a high share of informal rules, where the sanctions are not outlined in written form, or a punishment for breaking the rules is not set up clearly. Particularly, the distinction between informal community-level rules and norms is empirically difficult to specify (Schlüter and Theesfeld 2010). To cope with that, we follow Ostrom (2014), comprising both (rules and norms) as rules-in-use. Ostrom (2014) suggests, in order to do effective field work and as the best way to determine the rules-in-use, to let participants outline how they would explain the actions and processes to fellow villagers. Thus, what we name in the remainder of the text rules-in-use would be in the narrow sense of the Grammar either a norm or a rule.

Rules can be classified into seven broad types (see box at the left side of Fig. 1) which define in general: who is eligible to make decisions in some arena, which actions are allowed or constrained, which aggregation rules will be used, which procedures must be followed, which information must or must not be provided and which payoffs will be assigned to individuals dependent on their actions (Ostrom 2008; Schlüter and Theesfeld 2010; Crawford and Ostrom 1995). Ostrom et al. (1994, pp. 41–42) proposes a horizontal classification related to the aims of the rules. Transferring these aims from natural resource appropriation to a collective and deliberative participatory process in development community planning, we classified the rules accordingly⁵:When studying the rich diversity of specific rules, it is helpful to turn back to the IAD framework and particularly to the action situation itself. Each of the seven types of rules affects an individual working part of an action situation (Fig. 2). This helps to distinguish between the various rules.

It is useful to distinguish three levels of rules that affect the actions taken and the development projects selected: operational rules, collective-choice rules and constitutional-choice rules (Ostrom 2005, pp. 58–59). Operational rules are nested in collective-choice rules and constitutional-choice rules. In this context, the operational rules affect the day-to-day decisions made by villagers and TAO officials concerning when, where and how to decide on development projects for the villages, what information to exchange or withheld, whom to invite to a meeting and how to structure the meeting. Collective-choice rules indirectly affect operational choices. The collective-choice rules are the rules that are used by village leaders or by higher ranking TAO officials, or external authorities to determine who has what role in making policies, e.g., the Guidelines for Development Planning (Ministry of Interior 2005, 2011). The use of the IAD framework provides important insights how these two levels interact (Smajgl et al. 2009, p. 3). To define the collective-choice rules, it is important to understand TAOs’ work as influenced by the Community Development Department under the Ministry of Interior. Constitutional-choice rules in turn affect the set of operational rules through their effects in determining who is eligible to craft the set of collective-choice rules. The constitutional-choice rules might be important in analyzing the political economy of creating the decentralized development plans in Thailand (Dufhues et al. 2015) or the dimension of how the social and political unrest of recent times influences administrative and political processes.⁶

In the present research, we will primarily concentrate on the operational rules, i.e., the daily rules-in-use: (a) within 26 selected villages that prepare a community development plan and (b) within the procedures of four TAOs to finalize the Tambon development plan including budgetary guidelines.

Our research took place in the province of Khon Kaen in Northeast Thailand. As mentioned earlier, we focussed on the TAOs, the most widespread decentralized administrative bodies, and thus the arenas where the deliberation and participation ought to take place.⁷ In 2009, there were 5767 TAOs in Thailand (Department of Local Administration 2010). There were 158 TAOs in Khon Kaen province, on average eight to ten TAOs per district. We worked in the Nom Pong, the Sri-Chompoo and the Manchachiri Districts.

The Khon Kaen Provincial Department of Local Administration assesses the administrative and management capabilities of each TAO on an annual basis. One part of the evaluation is to identify in how far public participation of villagers in local planning is promoted. A committee from the Department of Local Administration reviews the TAO documents, reports and conducts interviews.⁸ While over 80% of the TAOs received the full score in 2010, two were rated with the lowest score (Department of Local Administration 2010).

The TAO assessment was important for the selection of our four TAOs for the case study. We chose the two worst-scored TAOs (names not disclosed but known to authors). From the top TAOs, we selected two particularly well-performing TAOs, the choice was substantiated by an award the TAOs received for more participation. We did so in order to be less dependent on the provincial ranking for our case study selection. We selected the TAO Suan Mon, which won the award of “Promoting Public Participation” from the King Prajadhipok’s Institute in 2001, and the award of “Good Governance” from the Office of Decentralization to Local Government Organization Committee in 2003, 2005–2007, 2009 and 2011. The TAO Nong Pan also won this award several times on 2006–2009 and 2011. At the first stage of our sampling procedure, this conscious selection, instead of a random selection, provided us with anticipated most contrasting cases. Thus, the first two TAOs are supposed to be less participatory in their involvement of villagers into their planning processes (subsequently named less participative TAOs) in contrast to the latter two, which are supposed to be more participatory (subsequently named more participative TAOs). Some basic characteristics of the four TAOs are shown in Table 1.

The livelihoods in all four Tambons are very similar and mainly based on smallholder agriculture with a focus on paddy rice and sugarcane production. Moreover, many households receive remittances from relatives in Bangkok or abroad. In terms of infrastructure connection, the TAO B. stands out from the other three in its remoteness. But the other less participatory Tambon K. is closest to the provincial capital. The local tax collection serves as an indicator for the local economy and underlines the similarity in all four Tambons.⁹

We assume that the way in which the operational rules are set differently in the four TAOs under investigation has an influence on the success of the participation process and the level of local engagement in political decision-making (Pretty 1994). At first sight, this may sound obvious, still, it shows that, assuming that the endogenous cultural factors are alike in all groups, the exogenous factors—here the rules—determine the difference in success.

“Obtaining information about rules-in-use and their deontic statements (must, must not, or may) requires spending time at a site and learning how to ask nonthreatening, context-specific questions about rule configurations,” Ostrom (1999, p. 53). Coding forms¹⁰ for the IAD framework to analyze natural resource management had to be reframed for this context of villagers’ participation in public administration and local political decision-making. Obviously, the topic was not about appropriators withdrawing a resource unit, but rather stakeholders taking decisions on development projects. For the operational rules, we rely on inside views from the participants, explaining their understanding of processes and implicit rules that guide decisions. To conduct the analysis, we observed community meetings and conducted 60 semi-structured interviews with the staff members of the four selected TAOs in 2011. In total, these four TAOs serve 53 villages. Second, we conducted a survey with 50 village leaders using a standardized questionnaire. This corresponds to one village leader per village, except three villages which we could not reach. Questions related to the boundary rules were, for example: “Who in the village participates and who not and why?”, “Do you usually participate, if not why not?”, “Why did people not participate?”, “Are some people actively excluded (who and why)?”, “Who decides who can participate?”, “Are you satisfied with these rules?”, “Are other people in the village not satisfied with these rules?”

In 2012, to validate the information gained from position holders, we ran an additional household survey with 104 ordinary villagers, which were randomly selected in 26 out of the 53 villages belonging to the respective TAOs. The survey contained questions in relation to rule implementation. Regarding the boundary rules, questions were for instance: “Who can join the community development plan meeting?”, “Do you usually attend the community plan meeting, and if not, why not?”, “Are there any people in the village who never take part in the community plan meeting, and if yes, what kind of people and why do they not take part?”

As far as possible, we asked for a clarification if the actors may, must or must not conduct a certain action and for explanation of the sanctions in case of non-compliance. Yet, if people were not aware of the actual rule-setting, we needed to draw conclusions on the obligation, prohibition or permission status of the rule-in-use, based on the usual routines the majority of people described. Further, it turned out that most of the rules we discovered were informal and not written down. Those informal rules-in-use can only be detected if asked to explain a process to a fellow. It is even more difficult to infer on non-material sanctions assigned to this statement, which can derive, e.g., from individual’s internalized moral values, like “I do not feel good, if I do not participate in the village meeting.” Thus, there is a very fine line between a norm and a rule in a narrow sense.

All answers have been checked for differences between the affiliation to the less and more participative TAOs. If not stated otherwise, all reported answers are statistically significant at least at the 0.05 level.

The action situation is the central element in the IAD framework. It provides the institutional context that actual participants in an action arena have to face (Ostrom 2010). For analytical purposes and to carefully consider the various participants’ interactions, we divided the local development planning process into two phases: Phase 1—“Surveying villagers’ needs”—results in the community development plan as an output and represents the first action situation. Phase 2—“Compiling villagers’ needs”—represents the second action situation, where needs are integrated into the Tambon development plan prepared within the respective TAO, and finally built together with the budget the guideline for implementing different projects within this plan. We identified two action situations in this way because the institutional context changes and the possible positions to be held by participants are different. Figure 3 presents a summary of the two phases of Tambon development planning and the various collective units.

In the following, we will present the rules defining an action situation along the lines of the seven types of rules (Ostrom 2005, 2010) and as applied to participation in development community planning as outlined in “Rules in participatory procedures” section.