INVESTMENT AND TITHING IN THAI VILLAGES: A BEHAVIORAL STUDY OF RURAL MODERNIZATION by CHARLES ALAN MURRAY A.B., Harvard University 1965 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Political Science at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY May, 1974 Signature of Author .. ..... Depart'ment o Political Science May 10, 1974 Certified by ........ Thesis Supervisor Accepted by ......... Chairman, Departmental Committee on Graduate Students Archives OCT 10 1974 ABSTRACT INVESTMENT AND TITHING IN THAI VILLAGES: A BEHAVIORAL STUDY OF RURAL MODERNIZATION Charles Alan Murray Submitted to the Department of Political Science on 10 May 1974 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Political Science This study analyzes the responses of forty-one Thai villages to moderniza- tion. The village is the unit of analysis. Behaviors or the physical outcomes of behaviors are used as the indicators of response. The objective is to explain why Thai villages vary so widely in the content and quality of daily life. The two major constructs of the study are how much the people in a village have modernized, and how well the village is coping with modernization in terms of maintaining basic governmental functions. The first of these constructs is operationally defined as "investment" -- evidence that villagers in a given community are making efforts to improve their lives by voluntarily risking what they already possess. This is argued to be a behavioral reflection of two psychological hallmarks of personal modernity in peasants: an expanding standard of what is attainable, and acculturation to change as a manageable and generally benificient phenomenon. The second major construct is operationally defined as "tithing" -- evidence of voluntary, continuous, and widespread villager behaviors in support of public goods. Tithing behaviors are argued to reflect the functional capacity of a village to solve its day-to-day problems of governance. The data indicate that investment behaviors in these villages are being caused by broad-band, unchanneled exposure to modernizing influences; e.g., infrastructure development and increased physical accessibility to the outside world. Channeled exposure to modernization (the community develop- ment approach) did not play an important role. The data also suggest the likilihood of a curvilinear relationship between unchanneled exposure and investment. The relationship between modernization and a village's functional capacity is complex. It is a .multivariate, multi-stage process that had only begun in some villages of the sample and was far advanced in others. It is pre- sented in terms of two competing sets of dynamics. Unchanneled exposure to modernization and investment combine to produce three effects inimicable to functional capacity: increased socioeconomic heterogeneity within the village, increased costs associated with support of public goods, and increased homogeneity of interests within the leader- -2- ship group. The net effect is that at the moment when the village is exper- iencing greater internal stresses than ever before, it is contemporaneously less likely than ever before to possess leaders who are able or willing to cope with those stresses. In contrast, channeled exposure to modernization (through community develop- ment inputs and training inputs) was positively associated with the level of functional capacity. These inputs are argued to have the effect of en- riching the content of village leadership positions and consequently increas- ing their competitiveness with the attractions of private investment. The educational value of the channeled inputs is discounted. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for development strategy. It is argued that both the priorities and the proper methods for a rural development strategy depend crucially on where the villages of a society fit along an economic continuum ranging from scarcity to sufficiency. The greater the sufficiency in the traditional case, the higher the priority that should be given to noneconomic goals and the greater the autonomy that can be entrusted to local institutions. And in general, it is suggested that the village's future as a unit of self-governance has been widely underestimated. A greater structural role for the village may be a desirable alternative to reflexive central- ization of authority during modernization. Thesis supervisor: Lucian W. Pye Title: Professor of Political Science, M.I.T. -3- TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements...................................................8 INTRODUCTION: A VILLAGE PERSPECTIVE ON MODERNIZATION,......... ........... 9 A. The Village as the Unit of Analysis................. ....... 11 ... B. "How Much" and "How Well" in Village Modernization.. .. 15 ... I. THE RESEARCH DESIGN...............................................19 A. The Sample....................................................21 B. The Field Research............................................27 C. Data Analysis.................................................35 II. A BEHAVIORAL MEASURE OF PERSONAL MODERNITY: INVESTMENT...........43 A. The Peasant Outlook: Delimited Aspirations......... ........ 46 B. The Modern Transition: Acculturation to Change..... 56 ........ C. The Behavioral Measure: Investment................. .......... 59 III. THE SOURCES OF INVESTMENT.........................................71 A. The Nature of the Changes.....................................71 B. The Causes of Investment......................................75 IV. A BEHAVIORAL MEASURE OF THE FUNCTIONAL VILLAGE: TITHING.......... 97 A. The Nature of a Functional Village.......... ........ 97 B. The Behavioral Trace: Tithing.............. ....... 106 C. The Validity of the Tithing Index........... ....... 112 V. MODERNIZATION AND TITHING........................................118 A. Unchanneled Exposure, Investment, and the Functional Village.............................................. ........ 122 B. Channeled Exposure and the Functional Village........ ........ 164 CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR A RURAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY.............183 Appendix A. The Evolution of the Investment Construct.......... .193 Appendix B. List of the Data Points in the Interview Schedule.. .196 Appendix C. Scoring Procedures for the Variables............... .202 Appendix D. Correlation Matrix of the Quantified Variables..... .210 Bibliography.....................................................211 Biographiical Note................................................222 -4- List of Tables 1.1 Means of representative variables, from the 129-village and 41-village samples. 1.2 Leader interview sample, by position. 1.3 Summary of the quantitative variables used in the study. 2.1 Indicators used in the investment index (INVESTMENT). 2.2 Variation among the 41 villages on the investment indicators. 2.3 Intercorrelations of the INVESTMENT items and item- index correlations corrected for part-whole spuriousness. 3.1 Intercorrelations of the exogenous resource variables. 3.2 Correlations of INVESTMENT with the exogenous resource variables. 4.1 Indicators used in the tithing index (TITHING). 4.2 Variation among the 41 villages on the tithing indicators. 4.3 Intercorrelations of the TITHING items and item-index correlations corrected for part-whole spuriousness. 5.1 Inter-index correlations for INVESTMENT and TITHING. 5.2 Correlations of economic disparity (DISPARITY) with the exogenous resource variables and investment behavior. 5.3 Correlations of substandard and superior village housing (POORHOUSE and RICHHOUSE) with the antecedent variables in the modernization sequence. 5.4 Correlations of the slum outlook (SLUM) with the ante- cedent variables in the modernization sequence 5.5 Correlations of non-farming leaders (NOFARM) and mean leader investment income (NEWINC) with the antecedent variables in the modernization sequence. 5.6 Correlations of a leadership economic elite (ELITE) and magnitude of the economic gap between leaders and led (GAP) with the antecedent variables in the modernization sequence. -5- 5.7 Correlations of village functional capacity (TITHING) with the antecedent variables in the modernization sequence 5.8 Mean TITHING scores for different combinations of channeled and unchanneled exposure to modernization. 5.9 Correlations of TITHING and variables related to modern- ization with leader age (AGE) and years in office (EXPO). List of Figures 1.1 Location of the field work. 1.2 Distance-from-district distribution in the 272-village and 41-village samples. 1.3 Size distribution in the 129-village and 41-village samples. 2.1 Distribution of mean INVESTMENT scores among the 41 villages. 3.1 Interpretation of a hypothetical plot of predicted against observed values of INVESTMENT. 3.2 Predicted against observed values: INVESTMENT regressed on ACCESS, SOCFAC, and ECOPS. 3.3 Observed values of INVESTMENT plotted against the error term of INVESTMENT regressed on ACCESS, SOCFAC, and ECOPS. 3.4 New shops opened per 100 villages per year, corrected for population growth. 4.1 Distribution of the TITHING scores among the 41 villages. 5.1 Causal map of the links between unchanneled exposure and investment. 5.2 Path model of the operationalized variables from the map in figure 5.1. 5.3 Causal map of the links between modernization and increases in economic disparities within the village. 5.4 Path model of the operationalized variables from the map in figure 5.3. -6- 5.5 Causal