Covert Control Research Articles

The Thai Bureaucracy

The Thai bureaucracy, viewed as a subsystem of Thailand's selfcontained political system, variously manifests cultural uniqueness. Insulated from external pressures as a result of the absorption of major societal interests within the government, the bureaucracy's orientation and preoccupations are conspicuously introverted. Political influence, personalities, and prerogative provide the immediate frames of reference of administrative officialdom. Career strategies, working doctrines, and standards of conduct in the civil service are flexibly calibrated to the particularistic norms of ranking superiors. Authority relationships, structured mainly by impermanent personal clique groupings, are tenuous and unstable. But efforts to institutionalize formal sanctions and channels of accountability founder on a cultural predilection for informal and covert control devices.' Edgar L. Shor is assistant professor in the Department of Government, Indiana University.