[Anthropgrad] RMAP Student Seminar Tuesday 18 November: front line forest regulators in Thailand

[Andrew Walker]

Environmental Governance in Northern Thailand: the role of "front line" regulatory authorities and the interface between state regulators and local resource users
Peter O'Donnell, PhD Student

Tuesday 18 November, Seminar Room B, HC Coombs Building


Abstract:
Existing scholarship on environmental governance in Northern Thailand mainly focuses on either community based resource management, or state regulatory systems.  While this is important research for understanding the current situation, there is a significant gap in current scholarship.  There has been surprisingly little research done on the interface between state regulators and local resource users.  This is a crucially important issue in environmental governance in Thailand.  By analysing this aspect of the picture I seek to address this gap and at the same time to understand what the role of "front line" regulatory authorities is in Thailand.

I argue that state regulators are taking a more strategic and interactive approach to regulation with villagers than is sometimes reflected in the existing literature.  Thai government salaries are low, and its regulators often work in isolated environments.  To overcome these difficulties and still provide effective regulation, authorities make use of other local power structures to achieve political goals and remove opposition by using local institutions to enforce policy - what Foucault would call governmentality.  I will use regulatory and compliance theory to aid my analysis of the structures in place which influence the implementation and enforcement of policy, and to analyse the role of "front line" regulatory authorities in Thailand.  While there is an extraordinary amount of power entrusted to regulators, they are not left alone to implement and enforce policy.  Nor are they always the dominant players in the environmental governance game.
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