On November 28, 2003, roughly 300 grassroots activists, people affected by large dams and representatives from NGOs gathered in a small village in Rasi Salai district in Northeast Thailand. They met for a five-day conference on large dams under the rallying cry of “Rivers for Life.â€As...

The ’social impacts’ of dams may be defined as 'impacts on the lives of individual people or groups or categories of people, or forms of social organisation'. Social impacts are distinct from environmental or economic impacts, though all of these are closely linked. This review...

Decentralizing authority to democratically elected local government is advised for reasons of efficiency and good governance, but equity may suffer if elites capture decision making at the local level. What safeguards can help promote equitable and participatory decentralization? This question...

The twin concepts of a federal arrangement – a structure for a multi-tiered form of government with clearly defined roles and responsibilities, as well as active citizenship are like the two strands of the DNA of good public governance. And we are in the early evolutionary stages of both...