Exit, Voice, and the Depletion of Open Access Resources: The Political Bases of Property Rights in Thailand

Abstract

The authors argue that the depletion of the open land frontier in Thailand has not led to the development of a strong central state, even though it has led to demands for innovations in the formal-legal order governing access to land. Institutional factors preventing the state from providing formal rule enforcement for the population combined with the lack of a landed aristocracy have maintained the discrepancy between legal rules and customary practices that prevailed when an open land frontier allowed people to avoid conflict by moving away. Since the mid-1980s, when the Royal Forestry Department drafted a new policy to promote commercial tree plantations, conflicts over forest reserves have increased, centering on the commercial tree plantations, on squatters who refuse to leave the reserves, and on the preservation and management of so-called community forests.