2025 Volume 25 Issue 1 Pages 5-24
This article describes and analyzes how “The Project on the Development of a Community Based Integrated Health Care and Social Welfare Services Model for Older Persons” (also known as the “Smart and Strong Project”) has been initiated in Thailand, and what factors contributed to the construction of networking among Thai local governments under the rapidly aging Thai society. Since this project was formally set up in August 2022 as a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Partnership Program for three consecutive years, the number of participating Thai local governments has been steadily increasing from the original 9 members to 26 members by August 2023, and 39 members by November 2024. This project is also characterized by its distinct networking style, comprising Thai local governments, Thai higher educational institutions, Japanese local governments, Japanese NPOs, and Japanese universities. This study was based on local governments’ responses to questionnaires sent through e-mail in June 2024 by the authors. Consequently, this study has several interesting observations and implications for networking and policy diffusion. First, many local governments in this project were motivated to participate in informal ways, such as approaches from the Bueng Yito municipality or the municipal mayor, Thai higher educational institutions, Japanese NPOs etc. Second, the participating Thai local governments were mostly urban local governments (25 of 26), with half of them from the Central Region of Thailand. Rural local governments were not included much in this project, and there are very few local governments in the Northeast Region. This bias may suggest the characteristics of networking and policy diffusion among local governments in Thailand, namely structural differences between urban and rural local governments and regional biases in networking. Third, the most popular topics for participating in local governments were management of daycare centers, rehabilitation centers, and dementia treatment. These preferences may explain the regional and status biases of the Thai local governments participating in this project.
