Introduction

The community sector, civil society organisations (CSOs), non-profits and non-government organisations (NGOs) (hereafter the sector) in Thailand are considered relatively vibrant and active among Asian societies (Weiss, 2015). The sector has affected and been influenced by the government and its policy making and implementation, thereby becoming an essential part of the contemporary policy process. According to the National Statistical Office (2019), there are 84,099 non-profit organisations which constitute the sector in Thailand. They are operating across policy fields and taking various roles ranging from being a watchdog and a policy advocate of certain policy issues to a partner in public governance and policy execution. Since the formulation of the National Economic and Social Development Plan (NESDP), the principal guide for national development, in the 1960s, the sector has gradually been given attention by the government (for details on the policy analysis by the National Economic and Social Development Board, see Chapter Three on policy analysis in the central government). Yet, the sector has not grown much until the late 1980s when government policies became more liberalised and the 1990s where the sector has been favoured to become an active participant in national policy settings. In this sense, the sector is ineluctably conditioned by the sociopolitical milieu (see Manorom, 2020). The trajectory of the sector is closely related to the development of the state. To be precise, the sector ‘operates within the normative confines of the state, is shaped by state policies and discourses, and often finds itself directly incorporated into state policy process’ (Gilley, 2014: 45). This chapter critically examines important aspects of the sector in relation to policy analysis throughout the whole policy process, including key developments of the sector, major roles of the sector, and prominent approaches and methodologies employed by the sector in influencing national and local policy analysis.

The initial development of the sector

Traditionally, the sector was not interested in engaging with policy works in institutional settings. It had mainly invested in philanthropic and community works in local areas (see Nitayarumphong and Mulada, 2001). Nevertheless, the landscape of the sector began to change in the 1960s when the first NESDP was implemented by the government.