Centralized Power and the Voiceless Communication: Analyzing Structural Factors in the Land Bridge Project (Chumphon-Ranong)

Abstract

This academic article aimed to analyze the structural factors influencing the effectiveness of policy communication, as well as the factors influencing policy acceptance and resistance within the Land Bridge Project (Chumphon-Ranong), a large-scale strategic megaproject of the Thai government. Utilizing a qualitative synthesis of literature and a contextual political analysis conducted between 2023 and 2024. The findings revealed that under Thailand’s "centralized power” structure, policy communication fundamentally reduced the public’s role to be mere passive recipients via a top-down approach. Consequently, local community voices were marginalized into a state of "voiceless communication" due to a critical lack of inclusive decision-making channels and equitable policy negotiation spaces. The analysis identified three primary structural barriers:  1) The Power Dimension: Centralized decision-making that disregarded local eco-cultural contexts, which was identified as the most critical and urgent barrier as it served as the root cause of systemic mistrust; 2) The Technical and Legal Dimension: A crisis of trust in Environmental and Health Impact Assessments (EIA/EHIA) perceived merely as technical instruments to legitimize state actions; and 3) The Ideological Dimension: The clash between the discourse of macroeconomic prosperity and the traditional livelihoods of fishery and agricultural communities. Ultimately, the study suggested that public resistance stemmed not from a lack of information, but rather from the state’s failure to align its data with structural justice. Therefore, this article proposed that fostering acceptance in megaprojects necessitated a shift from "communication for control" toward the creation of "deliberative spaces”. Such a transition was essential to facilitate genuine decentralization and participation, thereby bridging the conflict gap and ensuring the long-term sustainability of public policy.