Local Politics and Democracy in Thailand
Abstract This article aimed to explain the development of the Thai local politics and democracy which originated from the concept of the administration decentralization, and to promote the importance of democracy basic principles learning. In developed countries it is evident that the progress of politics and democracy experienced the processes of tolerance, majority rules and minority rights, conflict solving, negotiation, and benefits assimilation. The early stage of the initiation of the Thai local administration, under the District Administration Act of the year 1994 has also caused the conflicts and violence to life and properties, as well as crimes and corruptions of those involved with local politicians. However, the experience from the past two decades has led to the development of communities and local politicians resulting in the development of public utilities including roads, water supply, water sources, public spaces, public properties, and local economy. The centralized phenomena, including the number of votes in the elections, protests, and silence during the coup d’etat, reflected the failure and weaknesses of the national administration. Thus, the development of local administration can be considered as a good lesson in solving conflicts and violence in the nation's politics.
Reforming government public accountability: the case of Thailand

Purpose
Public accountability was formally imposed on the Thai Government in 1997 when the World Bank compelled public sector reforms as a condition for bailing the country from bankruptcy. Despite regulating to promote public accountability for 20 years, the public accountability of Thai Government is still criticized as poor. However, the specific areas of public accountability needing improvement have not been clearly identified in Thailand. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the Thai Government discharges its public accountability.


Design/methodology/approach
Prior literature supported annual reports as essential means by which public sector entities discharge their public accountability, and addressed the desirable aspects of reporting which permit the public’s monitoring of their government’s performance. That is: the account must be publicly accessible, timely, reliable and adequate. This paper evaluates the 2016 annual reports of the Thai Central Government departments against these aspects in tandem with the reporting regulations.


Findings
The results show that reliability and timeliness of annual report disclosures are the most problematic, followed by accessibility and adequacy. It was also found that the existing regulations provide only mild sanctions on government officers for their non-compliance. Further, statistical evidence suggests that larger departments report better on voluntary items than departments with smaller revenue.


Originality/value
These weaknesses of the reporting and regulations provide immediate suggestions for public policy regulators as to how to improve the Thai Government’s public accountability. These results are also expected to be useful to international lending institutions to be aware of particular issues when considering their foreign aid programs. Theoretically, the paper supports the necessity of public accountability mechanisms, in particular public sanctions, which need to be strong enough to motivate governments’ public accountability. It also highlights that public accountability aspects can be useful to measure or evaluating public sector reporting in emerging countries such as Thailand.

Advent of ideology in the Islamic Middle East
This is the point at which a modern kind of political ideology, in something approaching even the Shilsian sense of the term, first began to appear in the Islamic Middle East. This occurred with the emergence, almost entirely out of the civil bureaucracy, of what became known as the Young Ottoman movement. To appreciate the impact of this movement, we must consider not only how the Young Ottomans emerged, but also what they advocated, how they projected their ideas, and how significant a response their appeal evoked. This necessitates some reference to the broader context of political thought and action in the years extending from the formation of the movement in 1865 to the promulgation of the constitution in 1876.