Conflict, Legitimacy and Government Reform: Equitable Allocation of ...

180 KPI Congress XI
media. In the provision of these services, LAO still have minor roles, does
not engage in service provision or is still at an early stage of development.
Thus, service provision will be a challenging task of LAOs in the future.
This article has the following assumptions.
First, there is a possibility that there will be new developments of
local administrative organization in Thailand with respect to creation of
equity in the society. To this end, equity must be clearly defined and
what the people are lacking must be identified by considering readiness
of LAO’s financial and fiscal resources. It is anticipated that these new
developments will progress gradually, that is, creating “innovation” of the
provision of quality of life services in leading local organizations. After
these services have been proven popular among the general public, they
would be replicated in other LAOs. However, “massive changes” may
occur, provided that the government lends its support.
Second, regarding the reform of local public services to mitigate
partiality, LAOs do not have to undertake such reform alone. Support
from the government or collaboration with other sectors such as the
business sector that desires to demonstrate its corporate social
responsibility (CSR) as well as inter-disciplinary approaches will ensure
the success of this project, rather than acting alone.
Third, conditions of the success of new public services with respect
to education-health-welfare and so forth rest on new knowledge,
requiring that LAO officers need to adjust themselves. This is because
quality of life of the people is a sensitive topic and such problems are
individualistic. Therefore, remedial approaches must be suitable for each
individual and solutions should not be one size fits all.
The content of this article consists of five parts. Part 2 discusses
about equity-related principles and theories and their application to the
contexts of Thai locality, starting from a review of numerous examples of
“inequity.” For instance
a) Children/teenagers in a poor family lacking opportunities to
attain a higher level of education (vocational level or higher