Abstract:
To analyze the role of public participation in the operation of the Tambon Administrative Organization according to the Constitutional Law of the Kingdom of Thailand (B.E. 2540), to discuss the structure of expenditure allocation of the Tambon Administrative Organization including infrastructure budget, economic budget and social welfare budget, and to analyze factors influencing expenditure allocation. The data include the expenditure during B.E. 2540-2543. The cross section data of 30 the 1st level Tambon Administrative Organization were used. The results indicated a low level of participation from citizen in the operation of the Tambon Administrative Organization even with supporting legislation mechanics. The causes of such issue due to management pessimism, intervention from influence groups, information disclosure, as well as the citizen's own ignorance to participate. For the expenditure structure during B.E. 2540-2543, the study showed that the budget of infrastructure tended to be dramatically lessen, but economic budget tended to increase continuously while social welfare budget was unclear. The results from the econometric model showed that all variables (tax, population, income, grant) have not influenced on B.E. 2540ʼs infrastructure budgeting policies significantly. But in B.E. 2543, taxes and income variable influence the budget on infrastructure significantly. While none of the variables seemed to have any influence on the economic budget both in B.E. 2540 and B.E. 2543. For the budget on social welfare function, taxes and income have determined on the B.E. 2540 social welfare budget, however, only tax variables appeared to have influences on B.E. 2543 policies.