HSS: Mission-Driven Bureaucrats: Thai Local Officials and the Tension between Performance and Promotion

This talk will discuss the research design and preliminary findings from work examining the link between motivation, management practice, and performance of Thai local officials, district-level representatives of central Government ministries.  In these high-discretion jobs de facto authority is held by the field bureaucrats, who are heterogeneously motivated and thus differentially balance career concerns and welfare orientation. I will discuss preliminary findings on these bureaucrats’ interactions with each other, each bureaucrat’s central ministry, and local community authorities in achieving welfare outcomes.  This project is part of a series of linked projects on “Mission-Driven Bureaucrats”, and I will also discuss the motivation for this broader suite of projects and how the current work in Thailand will contribute to the broader enterprise.