Community-based development for sustainable local economies: comparative governance lessons from urban, semi-urban, and rural communities in Thailand

Abstract

This study investigates how community-based governance arrangements support local economic problem-solving across three Thai communities in urban, semi-urban, and rural settings: Pracha Uthit, Na Phue, and Mae Lana. Although recent literature on community-based development, participatory governance, collaborative governance, and community-based tourism emphasizes participation, social capital, and multi-actor collaboration as important enabling conditions, less attention has been paid to how these factors are translated into concrete economic strategies through different local governance arrangements and external support networks. To address this gap, we employed a qualitative comparative case study design based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation, and document analysis. The findings show that participation alone does not explain community economic problem-solving. Instead, local development pathways were shaped by the interaction among local leadership, social capital, resource mobilization, institutional support, accountability arrangements, and external support networks. Pracha Uthit illustrates an employment-oriented urban pathway, Na Phue demonstrates an agriculture-based and committee-driven pathway, and Mae Lana shows a tourism-based cultural–environmental pathway. Our evidence primarily demonstrates reported outcomes, perceived improvements, and observed governance mechanisms rather than statistically measured economic impacts. The study contributes to comparative governance and community-based development literature by showing that similar development principles can generate different pathways when embedded in distinct local contexts. It also shows that external support networks can help address governance gaps left by limited local government capacity, but may introduce administrative burdens, dependency risks, and mismatched priorities. Policies for sustainable local economies should therefore avoid uniform development models and instead support locally grounded, participatory, accountable, and institutionally coordinated approaches.