Difficult travels: Delta plans don't land in the Chao Phraya delta

Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand have large river deltas. The first three deltas have international commitments for so-called delta plans: large-scale national efforts to reshape deltas in light of future economic growth and climate change. Thailand's Chao Phraya delta has no such commitments. Why is this the case? This article proposes that Thailand's absence of a colonial past has retained a differently ordered institutional capacity and that Delta plans embed assumptions that fit poorly with a Thai worldview. The article relies on literature and adds original research collected on three separate field visits to Thailand.