Abstract:
This study aims to analyse the participatory democracy process and the performance of the Village/Communitys Potential Development project (SML project). The areas of study cover two villages of Lamphun Province: Ban Udom Pattana, Amphur Li and Ban San Sai, Amphur Ban Thi. The result shows that the participatory democracy of Ban Udom Pattana is more successful than Ban San Sai because of the following reasons: Firstly, administration of Ban Udom Pattana has been divided into several small zones. Each zone has the village head who always mobilizes villagers to participate in village activities. Therefore, the collaboration of villagers in Ban Udom Pattana is stronger and easier to launch the participatory democracy than in Ban San Sai. Secondly, most villagers of Ban Udom Pattana are working in agricultural sector. Their places of work are based around the village area. In contrast, most villagers of Ban San Sai are working in industrial sector outside village. This makes Ban San Sai villagers pay few attentions to village activities comparing with villagers of Ban Udom Pattana. Lastly, the decision process in choosing projects in Ban Udom Pattana is transparent and more self-governing because the working group is not previous leader group. On the other hand, the working group of Ban San Sai is led by the team of current village head. Furthermore, Ban San Sai is the hometown of a national representative who has strong connection with local leaders. With less participation of villagers, the objective of SML project about the creation of participatory democracy is ignored. The local leader team only implement project to spend money and to have a constructive report to give to the district office (Amphur). This study shows that the participatory democratisation process is unable to be set up from one project. The government should pay more attention to analyse potential of the villagers, the difference of problems in each area and should have project evaluation process to improve and search for the most appropriate method to create the participatory democratisation in the future.