Evidence-Based Policy within Thailand’s Reform Initiatives (2010-2013): Re-examination of limitations and biases

นโยบายบนฐานข้อมูลเชิงประจักษ์ในกระบวนการปฏิรูปประเทศไทย (พ.ศ. 2553 – 2556): การทวนสอบข้อจำกัดและอคติ

Abstract

The rising popularization of evidence-based policy in the United Kingdom since 1999 has changed the way of policy making from the ideological led-based to evidence based. As Thailand launched its country reform initiative in 2009, the evidence-based policy approach was endorsed within the reform process. Theoretically, two kinds of biases could be found within the policy process. While the ‘technical bias’ politicizes the scientific process, the ‘issue bias’ depoliticizes the policy process. The purpose of this article is to explore the challenges and opportunities of the evidence-based policy in the reform process of Thailand. Thailand’s reform policy approach will be inspected and discussed regarding its limitation and biases. Both technical and issue biases are founded within the reform policy process. Although the reform initiative is expected to be the reconciliation platform for the country political conflict, its technical bias, which defined success as policy recommendation, has neglected political process as policy dialogue platform. The exclusion of political inequality advocators has caused the uneven policy formation process, which included only social and economic inequality advocators. Hence, the proposed policy recommendations could not link with the main social need. Additionally, the policy issues proposed by specific advocators are not related with overall policy problems. As the review process was the main policy research methodology, unavailable data of most marginalized population and absent of main strategic issues are overlooked. Both technical and issue biases have caused exclusion of many population groups, especially the red shirt people, from the reform policy process. Even if limitations and biases in policy process could not be avoided, conducting policy process with awareness of these could make the difference.