1648 年西發里亞條約簽訂後，「領土律令」成為主權國家的一項基本原理。 可是，像泰國這樣的東南亞國家，在劃定政治空間以後，卻未能完全地控制邊界。在邊界地帶，中央政府的政治權力相當虛弱，而且，容易遭遇挑戰。冷戰時期，泰國政府因認知到共產主義威脅，而將邊界地帶的高山民族納入國家統合的議程中。為有效地對邊界地帶的高山民族進行統治，且主張統治的正當性，泰國官方創造出一套關於高山民族的論述體系，使得「山民」成為泰國北部高山民族的一種身分織別的負面標籤。泰國政府持續地把焦點放在「山民問題」的解決，使得這種負面的刻板印象深植在泰國社會中。然而，隨著共產主義威脅的消褪，泰國政治邁向民主化發展，跨境區域經濟合作的興起，這些轉變對國家和高山民族的關係有何影響呢?本文認為，像泰國這樣的開發中國家， 因為市民社會尚未完全成熟，高山民族參與政治活動的機會仍遭受嚴重限制，即使官方展現出朝向多元文化主義發展的趨勢，因為支配國家的主體族群，仍掌握論述創造、政策制定及立法等相關權力，從而在國家和高山民族的關條上，依然占據著優勢的地位。

Since 1648, territorial imperative has become a basic principle of the modern sovereign nation-state system. With the emergence of modern nation-states in peninsular Southeast Asia in the post-colonial era， however, those states' writ still fails to extend to the borderland. During the Cold War period, the central government of Thailand perceived Communism as a threat to Southeast Asia, thus necessary to integrate the highlanders into a territorially bounded nation. For effective ruling， the term chao khao (hill tribe peoples ) was used by the Thai government to refer to the minority ethnic groups in Northern Thailand. Within the discourse of chao khao, there are several negative and stereotypical images towards minority ethnic groups, such as “forest destroyers",“migrants of the mountains",“opium producers", etc. Can the state exert control over the borderlands as globalization prevails since the early 1980s? This article examines the changing relations between the state and the minority ethnic groups in Thailand. We argue that even though the Thai government has recognized the politics of diversity, the state still has dominated the state- minority ethnic groups relations because the state authorized its power over discourse-constructing, policy-making, and law-making.