This dissertation is a qualitative examination of how the anti-dam movements, with so many disadvantages, are able to pursue their goals in a hybrid democratic political system in Thailand. This dissertation tries to prove that the extra-bureaucratic influence, which emerges from the anti-dam movements are gaining their foothold in the dam politics of Thailand and become a major cause in increase in pluralism in the fragmented authoritarian regime of Thailand. There are two major arguments in the dissertation: Firstly, FA framework, which has already been proved applicable to China by Lieberthal and Oksenberg in 1988 and by Metha in 2008 is also applicable to Thailand. Second argument is that the success of anti-dam movement should not be judged simply by the ability to cancel the project. If we only consider the ability to cancel the project, we may either overestimate or underestimate the ability of anti-dam movement. However, it does not mean that the ability to cancel the dam project does not count at all or should be excluded completely because it still proves the short-term success, which means that the project is cancelled as that moment. In sum, the ¡§success¡¨ of the anti-dam movement mentioned in this dissertation is the ability to transform the state¡¦s decision-making process for the dam project into the direction of more pluralism and less of authoritarianism so that individuals and groups both inside and outside the traditional arenas of policymaking have increasing role in the policy process. Thus the ability to cancel the dam project is an additional indicator not the main one. This view is illustrated through the four case studies: Bhumibol Dam, Nam Choan Dam, Pak Mun Dam, and Kaeng Sua Ten Dam.

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Before 1978, Chinese dam policies were tallied with the political movement ¡§Big Leap¡¨, people all obeyed the order no matter they were under the situation of lacked of instruments. Sanmenxia can be a special sample. ZhouEnlai¡¦s chrisma made people did their best on dam projects. This could be said that dam construction policies were methods to show the authority of the leader and the state. And further, under the system of people¡¦s commune and SOEs, the state can totally control the society. After executing the opening reform policy in 1978, social organizations were in bud in China. Since 1994, environmental non-government organizations (ENGO) dramatically grew up and played an important role in anti-dam movements, in addition the international non-government organizations joined the movement, and then the two kinds of organizations became transnational advocacy networks. However, the transnational advocacy networks successfully stopped the projects of Nu River and Hutiaoxia. In this study, the documentary analysis is the key research methodology and the dam construction is the case to illustrate the purpose of constructing dam in China. Furthermore, this thesis would make a description of the reasons of anti-dam movements, the emergence of NGOs and ENGOs, and the cooperation with INGOs to confer the transforming State-Society relations in China.

In recent times, increasing instances of population displacement from many large dam construction projects have led to increase in anti-dam protest movements. But some of these protest movements are more successfully mobilized than others. The differences in success are largely due to the kind of political system they are based in. Studies show that formation and mobilization patterns of the protest movements are largely determined by the nature of state and its political system. However, there is lack of comparative study in this regard especially in the field of anti-dam protest movement. This thesis aims to fill that knowledge gap by comparing the anti-dam protest mobilization in Sardar Sarovar Dam, India and Three Gorges Dam, China. The Study finds that political structures have significant impact on anti-dam protest mobilization and citizens of democracy enjoy more freedom in anti-dam protest mobilization than those in authoritarian polity.