Rethinking Vietnamese Politics: Will theReal State Please Stand up?

Dr Martin GainsboroughLecturer in Development Politics

Department of Politics10 Priory RoadClifton, Bristol

BS8 1TU

On leave of absence until end of June 2006Address for correspondence until then

c/o United Nations Development Programme25-29 Phan Boi Chau

HanoiVietnam

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Vietnam Update at

the Australia National University, Canberra on August 11-12, 2005. I am

grateful for the useful comments I received there, and from my colleagues

at the UNDP.

Rethinking Vietnamese Politics: Will the Real State Please Stand up?

Abstract:

The article raises questions about the common reference points used to understand

contemporary Vietnamese politics, arguing that there is data available which casts

doubt on the tendency to view Vietnam as an embryonic ‘developmental’ state and to

conceptualise Vietnamese politics in the reform era in terms of change. Instead, the

article argues that there is much that has not changed despite twenty years of so-called

reform and suggests that Vietnam’s politics often makes more sense through the prism

of writing on Africa rather than notions of developmentalism. The article makes

some preliminary observations regarding the global and Vietnamese power relations

which discourage us from seeing Vietnamese politics in this way.

Keywords: Vietnam; politics; developmental state; reform; Africa

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Introduction

This article seeks to ask some fundamental questions about how we study Vietnamese

politics and in turn casts doubt on some of the conclusions we commonly draw. In

particular, I am uneasy about the way in which we have tended to conceptualise

change over the last two decades (i.e. since doi moi or renovation) and also about how

widely we cast our net in terms of the relevant reference points we utilise to make

sense of contemporary politics in Vietnam.

Ever since I was first introduced to the ideas of Thomas Kuhn as a graduate student, I

have been excited by his argument that within a scientific community dominant

conceptual frameworks, which Kuhn calls paradigms, are made up of unquestioned

assumptions (Kuhn 1970). Particularly interesting for the political scientist is the

suggestion that paradigms are ‘powerful’, and that because of this they can remain

influential long after ‘data’ has appeared which casts doubt on their claims.1 It is my

assertion that a situation like this surrounds the study of Vietnamese politics today

although clearly paradigms are a feature of every field of study.

But who are the keepers of these paradigms? Of course, it varies from situation to

situation. However, in today’s world, it usually includes some combination of

globally dominant political and business interests, such as the international financial

institutions or global capital, or the gatekeepers of what is given airtime by the

dominant media outlets or what gets published in certain journals (which in terms of

1 For a recent application of Kuhn’s ideas to the way in which North Korea is widely

viewed see Smith 2000.

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interests may all amount to the same thing). The precise mix of who or what sustains

a particular paradigm is ultimately dependent on who finds the ideas associated with it

useful.

If data is available which casts doubt on a paradigm, we do well to ask ourselves why

its ideas persist. A full answer to this question is beyond the scope of this article.

However, a few possibilities may suffice. I suspect laziness plays its part. That is, it

is often simpler – and certainly less time-consuming – to re-siphon the received

wisdom rather than challenge it although an answer to why this is the case soon leads

us back to questions of power, as discussed in the previous paragraph.

A country’s geographical location may also play a part in the persistence of a

particular paradigm. The proximity of Vietnam to East Asia’s so-called ‘miracle’

economies, for instance, leads many analysts to consider ways in which Vietnam may

be understood through the prism of an emerging ‘developmental’ state, with questions

asked about how its institutions and decision-making compare with first and second

generation ‘tiger’ economies, which saw economic takeoff from the 1950s and 1960s.

However, to draw such a comparison may simply be wishful thinking on the part of

those interests associated with global capital – dangle the carrot – or it may be part of

a more concerted strategy by these same interests to force open markets – apply the

stick. The latter is given credence by the fact that the developmental state model held

up for emulation is often a far cry from what sensible scholarship suggests was the

reality in Korea or Taiwan at the point of economic take-off, namely corruption and

4

clientelism existing alongside developmentalism (Leftwich 1995: 407). Thus, the

‘model’ is less a model and more a stick with which to beat Vietnam.

To suggest in this context that Vietnam’s politics may in fact have less in common

with the developmental state as commonly depicted and more in common with

politics in Africa, for example, is a travesty. It offends the Vietnamese government,

who ironically despite being on the receiving end of the stick, would much rather be

compared to an up-and-coming ‘tiger’ economy as a way of cementing their hold on

power and attracting investment. At the same time, it offends the international

financial institutions and international capital because those people who represent

these interests rely heavily either for their careers or for the success of their

investments on the portrayal of Vietnam in a positive light, or as at least moving in

the ‘right’ direction.2

In this context of power, and amid so much smoke and mirrors, it may indeed be

worth considering whether our understanding of Vietnamese politics might be

enhanced by scrutiny of observations more commonly made about Africa – as I do

here.

Before, I proceed further a few caveats are in order. First, I am not saying that

Vietnamese politics or the Vietnamese state is like African politics or the ‘African’

state. I happen to think there is a lot we can learn from scholarly accounts of African

2 This is not to say that the international financial institutions or the representatives of

international capital never criticise but it is to highlight the way in which what they

say may be influenced by things other than reality, such as careers, the need to ‘shift’

aid budgets, and business interests.

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politics for the study of Vietnamese politics. However, I am also aware that there are

significant reasons why we should expect politics in Vietnam to be different from

politics in most African states (e.g. Different pre-colonial and colonial experiences).

What I am seeking to do is raise the question: ‘Who says Vietnam’s politics has

nothing in common with African politics and how can we be sure that it does not?’

That is who decides such things and, to echo Kuhn again, to what extent is the

decision rationally or sociologically constructed?

Secondly, I am the first to admit that the ideas expressed in this article are relatively

new ideas – new for me, that is. It is intended as a think piece. I have not yet done a

full review of the scholarly literature on Vietnamese politics in light of the thesis

being advanced here. Instead, what I have sought to do is reflect the dominant way in

which Vietnamese politics is talked about often in academic circles but also in the

bilateral and multilateral donor community. Therefore, I am not suggesting that all

Vietnam scholars who work on Vietnamese politics say all the things I am

highlighting all of the time. What I have done is highlighted ways of thinking about

Vietnam which I believe are influential. As will become clear, the common

denominator is the tendency to conceive of Vietnamese politics in terms of change.

Two other preliminary points are in order before I proceed further. First, the title of

the article indicates that I am at least partly motivated by a desire to think afresh about

how we conceptualise “the state” in Vietnam. However, there are legitimate

questions to be asked about whether one can actually conceptualise “the state” (Perry

1994: 705 and 707). After all, “the state” is comprised of a myriad of different

6

institutions at a variety of levels. It is also constantly evolving. So, can we

meaningfully generalise about “the state”?

Secondly, there is a legitimate question to be asked about whether a focus on the state

is justified. After all, Vietnam has seen a proliferation of societal organisations over

the last decade or so (Kerkvliet et al 2003). Could we not argue that it is here that the

locus of change lies? And, should we not focus our attention on societal change if we

are to understand Vietnamese politics today?

I do not want to get too side-tracked by these questions at this stage although they are

undoubtedly important. Suffice it to say that in this article I am ultimately aiming to

take a ‘step back’ (i.e. Talk about ‘the state’ at a certain level of abstraction).

However, in our research methodology we need to remain acutely aware of the state’s

diversity, and seek to embrace this if we are to stand a chance of laying firm

foundations on which to generalise – a kind of “anthropology of the state” therefore.3

In terms of the article’s focus on the state, I would be willing to stick my neck out and

say that I think it is a legitimate focus because the state is still the dominant force in

Vietnamese politics and societal organisations remain weak although we could clearly

debate this.4 More importantly, I would say that I am actually as interested in

3 I am grateful to Scott Fritzen at the National University of Singapore for referring to

my work in this way.

4 In a book on Pacific-Asia, Daniel Bell and Kanishka Jayasuriya argue for this when

they say “The impetus for political reform arises not from the autonomous assertion

of independent interests by social classes but from conflict within the state; political

reform is about the management of intra-elite conflict rather than about the

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‘society’, or the ‘private sphere’, as ‘the state’ or the ‘public sphere’ and that a central

part of what I am trying to do in this article is to probe the meaning of public and

private as they both exist within the state. This point will be developed in much more

detail later in the article.

I will now to make some preliminary remarks about how, in my view, Vietnamese

politics is commonly discussed.

Mainstream assessments of politics in Vietnam

Recognising that there is more to political reform in Vietnam than multiparty politics

(which the Vietnamese Communist Party explicitly ruled out at the Seventh Party

Congress in 1991), a respectable but mainstream discussion of Vietnamese politics

might begin by referring to observations which date back to the early 1990s such as

“the destalinisation of everyday life” (Williams 1992) or that “people increasingly

leading their lives without reference to the [Communist] party” (David Marr quoted in

Thayer 1992). These observations seek to capture a sense of the loosening up of

social relations which began to take root in Vietnam from the late 1980s but more

concretely in the early 1990s. Examples might include the relaxation of restrictions

on contact with foreigners or listening to foreign radio broadcasts, or the lifting of the

fundamental restructuring of state-society relationships. Therefore, political

liberalisation [in Pacific-Asia] is manifested in the changing architecture of the state

with civil society remaining both limited and circumscribed.” (Bell 1995: 14).

(Emphasis added)

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need for travel permits to travel outside the main cities, developments which those of

us who have been visiting Vietnam since the very early 1990s or before will recall.

The observation that people are increasingly leading their lives without reference to

the party seeks to capture the idea that as people began to engage in household or

private business, take up opportunities for employment with foreign companies, study

abroad, or form new organisations which had not existed prior to reform, economic

and social advancement began to become possible independent of the party-state. In

Ho Chi Minh City, I encountered a case a few years ago where a person with a

government job declined an invitation to join the party, principally because she

thought the endless meetings would be a hassle and a waste of time. Her partner was

doing well in private business. They had money to educate their children and travel

abroad. What could the party offer them? By contrast, it is hard to imagine someone

declining party membership in 1980, for example. On the other hand, there are limits

to this kind of analysis since for most high-level jobs, party membership is effectively

required.

In seeking to conceptualise political change in Vietnam since the late 1980s and early

1990s, observers often make reference to the changing role of the National Assembly:

‘becoming a more important institution in the country’s political life, ‘no longer the

rubber-stamp institution it once was’, and subjecting government ministers to intense

questioning during its sittings. There are caveats to the idea of an enhanced role for

the National Assembly, of course, which all sensible scholars are aware of (Thayer

1992, 1995 and 2005). Moreover, even though the National Assembly has overseen

the passage of vast quantities of legislation over the last two decades, most observers

9

would be circumspect about proclaiming that Vietnam is now subject to the rule of

law (Gillespie 2001).

Besides the National Assembly, the destalinisation of everyday life, and the party no

longer being quite so central to people’s lives, a review of political change in Vietnam

over the last two decades might also mention – not unreasonably – moves towards

decentralisation of decision-making not only to local government and state business

but also to Vietnam’s citizens. This is implicit in discussions of grass-roots

democracy, for instance (Minh Nhut Duong 2004; Zingerli 2004). However, to what

extent decentralisation is granted or taken is a moot point.

In the sphere of foreign relations, any respectable review of political change in

Vietnam would also likely emphasise the fact that Vietnam is generally more at ease

with the outside world. Of course, there are still areas of tension – with the United

States and with China possibly – but the international pariah status which followed

Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978 has long gone (Dosch and Ta Minh Tuan

2004). Vietnam has ‘opened up’. It is integrating into the global economy. The drive

to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is just the latest manifestation of this.

And yet even this kind of account of Vietnamese politics misses important details. A

more rounded review of political change in Vietnam needs to incorporate other

developments as well. While we might talk about the ‘destalinisation of everyday

life’, we are also aware that the ‘forces of control’ continue to be active.5 To this day,

5 The phrase the ‘forces of control’ was used by the former Australian ambassador to

Vietnam, Susan Boyd, in the approach to the Eighth Party Congress in 1996. I have

been unable to locate the reference.

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people in Vietnam are still careful what they say in public. Those who speak out

against the government are liable to lose their job, to suffer harassment, or be arrested

or jailed, as any human rights report will tell us. Family members may also be

targeted (Amnesty International 2005).

Whatever gloss the government seeks to put on the issue of religion, there is no

denying that there is discontent in Vietnam where religion is a factor. The clashes

between the security forces and the population in the Central Highlands in 2004

cannot simply be dismissed as the work of a handful of troublemakers even if it is

more than just religion which lies behind the problems (i.e. Other factors such as

land, migration, coffee, and outside interference, are also important) (UNHCR 2002;

Tan 2004). The flow of refugees from the Central Highlands into Cambodia –

including an increasing number ending up seeking political asylum in the UK –

clearly points to the fact that something is amiss there, even if the motives for leaving

Vietnam are diverse and some of the migrants are victims of trafficking (UNODC

2005; Vietnam News 2005).

Towards a deeper understanding of Vietnamese politics

In summary, therefore, Vietnamese politics today looks like something like this: the

destalinisation of everyday life but the forces of control still active; people

increasingly organising their lives without reference to the party but the state still a

force to be reckoned with; the National Assembly an up-and-coming new ‘seat of

power’ but still kept within fairly strict parameters by the party, and so on.

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However, although this analysis of Vietnamese politics captures something of the

changes that have taken place over the last two decades, it also leaves much out.

There is a danger with such analyses that we flit from emphasising that the glass is

half full (e.g. The National Assembly is a more powerful institution than it used to be)

to the glass is half empty (e.g. The party still exercises tight control over National

Assembly appointments). What we emphasise is likely to depend on personal

preference or the kind of audience we are talking to. Ultimately, this kind of analysis

– whether it be about the role of the National Assembly, the extent to which the

government harasses religious believers, or whether we should focus on the state or

society – fails, in my opinion, to go to the heart of what politics in Vietnam is actually

about.

There are two reasons for this. First, arguments about whether we should focus either

on ‘the state’ or ‘society’ are founded on a mistaken understanding of the relationship

between these two ‘realms’. Secondly, mainstream analyses tell us very little about

how power is actually exercised in Vietnam or, also importantly, how the state thinks.

Mainstream analyses of Vietnamese politics also offer little insight into how our

answers to these questions may have changed over time (e.g. Since reforms began).

In respect of these questions, it is conceivable that very little has changed over the last

twenty years.

Adam Fforde is clearly pushing in this direction when he writes:

“There is considerable reason to doubt whether there has been any

“fundamental change” in the formal and actual parameters of the

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Vietnamese political system. While the 2001 Constitution empowered

the National Assembly to “hold votes of no-confidence in the leaders it

elects”, there is no evidence that such formal power is real, because the

Party maintains close control over candidacies for the National

Assembly through the Vietnam Fatherland Front. Nor is it meaningful

to refer to Party decision-making on senior state appointments as

“elections” by the National Assembly. There is no record of such

popular exercise of power in either case.”

“Behind it façade, VCP politics remains resolutely Leninist. Thus,

while many Vietnamese and foreign analysts see aspects of “civil

society” emerging in new organizations, there is no sign that these

groups are viewed by the Party as positive contributors to social

development. Rather financial and political support is reserved for

designated mass organizations and groups they can coopt. There are,

however, occasional wildcat industrial strikes, suggesting that some

unofficial organization is occurring.” (Fforde 2005: 149-150)

The ‘developmental’ state?

One possible way to enrich our understanding of Vietnamese politics is to draw on the

academic literature on the ‘developmental’ state along with some of the revisionist

literature on corruption. In seeking to account for developmental success in East and

South East Asia, scholars have focused on the issue of ‘state capacity’ and the degree

to which the state is ‘autonomous’ from societal influences. The more ‘autonomous’

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the state is from society, so the argument goes, the better chance it has of focusing on

‘developmental’ goals, rather than more venal ones, as Vietnam’s predecessor ‘late

developers’ in Asia are said to have done so successfully (Leftwich 1995). Thus, to

advance our understanding of politics in Vietnam, we can ask questions about how the

Vietnamese state measures up against such yardsticks today.

Taking the debate a stage further, other scholars have noted that economic take-off in

Asia frequently occurred in the context of high levels of patrimonialism and

corruption despite the ‘myth’ of the ‘squeaky-clean’ developmental state which has

grown up in recent years.6 By patrimonialism, we simply mean the tendency for

public authority, and the advantages it offers, to be appropriated for private gain

(Medard 1982). Adrian Leftwich writes:

“In rapidly growing economies, sudden wealth generates huge

temptations, especially so, perhaps, in cultures where patron-client

relations are deeply embedded, and where the role of the state in

economic life is intense. Hence the politics of transition in some

developmental states have displayed extraordinary mixtures of

patrimonialism, centralisation, technocratic economic management,

coercion and corruption.” (Leftwich 1995: 407)

Seeking to refine the debate about corruption and development, one group of scholars

have argued that it is not so much the existence of corruption which matters for

development (not a popular argument in today’s climate!) but whether it centralised

6 For authors who have highlighted the more ‘murky’ aspects of the developmental

state see Booth 2001, Hutchcroft 2000, Kong 2004.

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in the hands of a cohesive political elite. Also important, this literature argues, is

whether state patrons have the upper hand in relation to societal clients, and whether

elites take a long-term or a short-term approach to corruption (Khan 1998, Rock and

Bonnett 2004). In talking between long and short-term approaches to corruption, a

distinction is being made between whether officials are engaging in ‘careful and

relatively modest’ predation or whether the approach to corruption is a ‘no-holds

barred’, ‘steal as much as you can as fast as you can’ one. Answering these questions

offers another way in which we might deepen our understanding of Vietnamese

politics. Is corruption in Vietnam centralised in the hands of a cohesive elite? Do

state patrons have the upper hand in relation to societal clients? And, are elites taking

a long or a short-term approach to corruption in Vietnam? To date, these questions

have scarcely been posed let alone answered.

However, while these questions look interesting – and there may be merit in trying to

answer some of them in an adapted format – such an approach to looking at

Vietnamese politics may be problematic. Despite all the efforts in the academic

literature to offer a more rounded characterisation of the developmental state, which

acknowledges the presence of patrimonialism and corruption during the period of

economic takeoff, such an approach at times seems to rely on too sharp a

juxtaposition between state and society and public and private. Supriya Chowdhury

writes:

“The literature on state autonomy has typically argued that the

developmental state’s weakness is accounted for by the relatively

greater power of societal forces. The postulation of conflict between

15

the state’s purposes and partisan societal forces has been unable to

shed much light on the enduring nature of the state-society duality…

[W]e need to modify at a broadly theoretical level the kind of macro-

perspective, typical in comparative developmental studies, which

adopts the physical boundaries of the state and its self-given

developmental idiom, as the discipline’s own conceptual boundaries.”

(Chowdhury 1999: 1089) (Emphasised my own)

That is, just because the state says we should see it in a particular way does not mean

it is actually like that. The problems with the questions posed by Khan and others

become apparent as soon as we try and answer them with reference to Vietnam. Who

exactly are the ‘state patrons’ and the ‘societal clients’ in Vietnam when much of its

business sector is dominated by state business or businesses which are run by people

who hold public office or are closely connected to the state? Writing on China in a

way which is clearly evocative for Vietnam, Dorothy Solinger speaks of “a stratum of

people exclusively pursuing business who are inextricably entangled with cadredom

and an official class increasingly corroded by commercialism.” (Solinger 1992:

123-124). So, who are the state patrons and the societal clients? And if, for example,

we are thinking of the delivery in Vietnam of the kind of industrial policy described in

the developmental state literature and apparently delivered to great effect in countries

like Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, do we not have a theoretical problem insofar as

the officials who are meant to be delivering that policy are also the business people?

Also writing on China, Jean Oi says that it is not always easy to distinguish between

the regulators and the regulated because the latter are the “former colleagues and

friends and relatives of the regulators (Oi 1989: 232).

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We seem to have reached something of an impasse in our quest for a more robust

framework for understanding Vietnamese politics. Where might we go next?

‘Manners of acting and thinking’ in the state

I said earlier in the article that although my focus is ostensibly on the state what I am

in fact seeking to do is probe the meaning of ‘public’ and ‘private’ as they both exist

within the state. What I am saying is that we cannot assume that the state is

synonymous with the public realm but neither can we assume that the private realm is

absent from the state. Instead, we need to work out the extent and nature of their

existence within the state empirically. This approach enables us to overcome the

pitfall of emphasising too sharp a duality between concepts such as state and society,

and public and private, as discussed above. Peter Steinberger points us in the right

direction when he writes:

“It would perhaps be better to think of public and private as denoting

not primarily – perhaps not at all – separate realms of endeavour but

different ways of being in the world, different ‘manners of acting’. To

act in a private manner is simply different in character from acting in a

public manner.”

In trying to make sense of the behaviour of officials in Vietnam, this insight is very

helpful. Drawing on Steinberger, we can say that while officials hold “public office”,

they act in variety of ways under the auspices of that office: sometimes publicly,

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sometimes privately. (The latter is popularly referred to as corruption!) As

Steinberger says, we are not talking about “separate realms of endeavour” but simply

different “manners of acting”. To this, I would also add ‘manners of thinking’. That

is, how deeply ingrained is the notion of a ‘public’ realm in Vietnam and how do

officials rationalise their different ‘manners of acting’ in ideational terms?

The relative balance between these different manners of acting and thinking will vary

from one state to another.7 The balance is also likely to vary within the same state at

different points in time (e.g. Vietnam in 1945, 1975, 1986, 2005) and in the same state

at the same time (i.e. Between central and local government, and between different

local authorities and institutions). It is this variation in manners of acting and

thinking all under the auspices of ‘the state’ which needs to be mapped empirically.

Earlier in the article, I also emphasised that when looking at ‘the state’, I wanted to

adopt a methodology which is sensitive to the diverse nature of what constitutes ‘the

state’ but nevertheless considers the nature of ‘the state’ at one level removed. An

important way in which we can do this is in relation to how ‘the state’ thinks. The

notion that ‘the state’ might think – i.e. Have a mind of its own – may not make

immediate sense. However, writing on the Indonesian state under Suharto, Benedict

Anderson offers guidance into how this might be the case when he says:

“The nation-state is thus a curious amalgam of legitimate fictions and

concrete illegitimacies. The conflation [between nation and state] is all

the easier because the ‘state’ is a notoriously slippery entity for

7 I always think Vietnam and Singapore and Vietnam and Cambodia always make

good comparisons.

18

political theory and political sociology. It is too easy to collapse it

either into a legal fiction or a collectivity of persons (“the

bureaucracy”). The fact is that the state has to be understood as an

institution, of the same species as the Church, the university, and the

modern corporation. Like them, it ingests and excretes personnel in a

continuous, steady process, often over long periods of time. It is

characteristic of such institutions that “they” have precise rules for

entry – at least age, often sex, education, etc. – and no less important,

for exit – most notably, mandatory retirement…And, like its sister

institutions, the state not only has its own memory but harbors self-

preserving and self-aggrandizing impulses, which at any given moment

are “expressed” through its living members, but cannot be reduced to

their passing personal ambitions.” (Anderson 1983: 477-478)

Like me, Anderson appears not to take the existence of the state’s public realm for

granted. Rather he talks about the state’s “legitimate fiction”, which I understand to

be its widely assumed association with the public realm, and its “concrete

illegitimacies”, which I associate with what Steinberger would call the state’s private

manner of acting.

Turning to how the state ‘thinks’, Anderson talks about it having “self-preserving and

self aggrandizing tendencies” which are “expressed” through its officials but “cannot

be reduced to their passing personal ambitions”. This too strikes a chord with my

understanding of the state in Vietnam. Despite the prevalence of private “manners of

acting” within the Vietnamese state, one senses that the state’s ‘self-preserving, self

19

aggrandizing’ tendencies, which cannot be reduced to the ambitions of individual

officials, are quite strong. However, once again, it is the job of empirical research to

establish just how well-developed and articulated such tendencies are. As with

manners of acting, they are likely to vary within and between states over time.

To drive home the argument so far, I will now try and contextualise the emerging

framework with reference to some concrete examples which draw on my fieldwork.

Will the real Vietnamese state stand up?

Part of the problem we have when we try and assess the nature of the state or politics

in Vietnam today, is what we say depends in large part on where we look. If we sit in

the capital city, read national newspapers, attend high-level meetings and talk to

officials, the state as a ‘legitimate’ public sphere, with relatively strong self-

preserving and self-aggrandizing tendencies, comes across quite strongly. However,

if we travel to the provinces, sit on the street and talk to people informally, the state’s

private “manner of acting” appears more dominant and the self-preserving tendency –

the collective voice which cannot be reduced to the passing personal ambitions of

individual officials – appears weaker. Thus, when I return from provincial field trips

in Vietnam, I find myself questioning whether it is meaningful to talk in terms of

Vietnam’s “foreign policy” or its “national interest”, or asking whether Vietnamese

“government” participation in international fora may in fact serve some ‘private’

function for officials (e.g. While in Geneva an official visits some potential

customers for their import-export business). Pose those same questions in high-level

international meetings in Hanoi grouping Vietnamese officials and the donor

20

community and people would think you were crazy (or subversive). Vantage point is

everything.

However, the key question which stems from this is which is the real Vietnamese

state, or as the title of this article asks ‘Will the real state please stand up?’ Recalling

my earlier characterisation of much contemporary discussion of Vietnamese politics

as one which shifts between ‘the glass is half empty’ and ‘the glass is half full’, it is

hard to say that either perspective is actually wrong. However, my criticism would be

that such perspectives generally fail to ask the right questions – questions on which a

fuller understanding of Vietnamese politics depends. It is my assertion that this

alternative approach to studying Vietnamese politics is urgently needed because it

enables us to puncture some of the state’s “fictions” and highlight its private “manner

of acting”. Almost by definition, these aspects of the state are usually hidden but their

exposure is crucial to understanding the state’s true nature. At the same time, we

need to be aware that the state’s ‘self-preserving and self-aggrandizing tendencies’ are

always at work even beyond the capital city. A rounded characterisation of

Vietnamese politics needs to incorporate all this.

There is one further dimension to our characterisation of Vietnamese politics, which I

believe is important.

The state in an era of globalisation

To understand Vietnamese politics better we also need to pay close attention to

Vietnam’s external environment and particularly the impact this has on the state.

21

Here, the call is to move away from a tendency to view developments in Vietnam ‘in

isolation’ and consider how the state is being changed by international pressure and

ideas. Scholars have referred to this process as “hybridisation”. This seeks to capture

the way in which a state is never simply ‘impacted upon’ by external ideas but rather

that these ideas almost instantly ‘metamorphose’ on contact with the local

environment (Tickner 2003). In referring to the external environment, I am thinking

of the so-called forces of globalisation, understood partly as an ideology and partly as

something real (Cameron and Palan 2004). In terms of the substantive part of

globalisation, I am thinking in terms of Vietnam’s integration in the world economy,

its forthcoming membership of the WTO, its relations with international donors and

financial institutions. I am also thinking in terms of the internet, in- and out-bound

tourism, opportunities to study abroad, external thinking and pressures in areas such

as politics and religion – essentially all the things which come together to form the

external environment in which the Vietnamese state sits.

Much of the academic literature on globalisation and the state has tended to veer

between two extremes – that in the face of globalisation the state is in retreat or

conversely that it is being strengthened (Ohmae 1995; Weiss 1998). Based on my

own research on Vietnam the idea that the state is retreating has always appeared too

simplistic but equally given that the ‘forces of globalisation’ are powerful, the notion

that the state is emerging strengthened appears counter-intuitive although more

plausible. A more fruitful approach is one which puts aside ideas of state

strengthening and weakening and instead argues that the state is being ‘reconfigured’

(Held 2000: 7-9). This is not to sidestep the question but allows us to contemplate the

possibility that the state is emerging both stronger and weaker – depending on the

22

context – while also encouraging us to consider ways in which the very act of what it

is to be ‘a state’ may be changing.

Someone who has pursued these ideas at length is Beatrice Hibou. Looking at the

state in Africa, Hibou writes:

“But if one tries to get away from those outdated and limited

references, it is not so certain that we are witnessing a trend towards

retreat, or reduced interventionism. Today the state is certainly going

through a metamorphosis, especially because of the internationalisation

of economies and changes in productive structures. But before going

as far as [Susan] Strange and saying that the state is now something

ordinary, no longer exceptional and no longer the source of supreme

authority, an attempt should be made to grasp the precise means of

intervention and economic influence that the state employs today.”

(Hibou 1999: 2)

Hibou goes on to talk about the state in Africa in a way which in many respects is

applicable to the state in Vietnam even though we would also want to draw some

quite major distinctions between the state in Vietnam and most African states. Hibou

makes three important points. First, she says that we need to get behind the

appearance of economic liberalisation and reduced state intervention to look at new

ways in which state power is being exercised. In this way, privatisation – or

equitisation in the Vietnamese case – should not be seen as the withdrawal of the state

but rather a shift to “private indirect government” by the political elite, which is

23

finding new ways of enriching itself and exercising power even in the face of external

pressure to introduce reforms. Looking at smuggling, drug trafficking and

prostitution – all things which are part of the Vietnamese landscape – Hibou says that

such activities in no way lead to the “impotence of the state or the political more

generally”. Continuing, she writes:

“Even if certain aspects of state power are in decline in some instances,

the central power [which could be central or local power] has

contributed to the development of those activities, by its tolerance

towards illegal activity and by the active involvement of some of its

members [in such activities as smuggling, drug trafficking and

prostitution]. ” (Hibou 1999: 12) (Information in square brackets my

own)

The applicability of this insight to Vietnam is striking.

Secondly, Hibou cautions against seeing situations which outsiders would commonly

regard as illustration of state ineffectiveness as such, saying seeming ineffectiveness is

frequently superficial. She cites the example of the Tunisian tax system, saying that

despite the apparent tolerance of tax evasion and difficulties in “modernising” the tax

system, it is mistaken to view the state’s capacity for control as having been eroded.

Instead, she notes the way in which civil servants commonly fulfil two roles in the

state bureaucracy – “one public but not very active, the other private and often highly

lucrative.” (Hibou 1999: 7)

24

Thirdly, Hibou says that arbitrariness and fluidity of distinctions between legal and

illegal, public and private, are also not necessarily indications of state weakness but

rather “constitute a mode of governing in themselves” (Hibou 1999: 13):

“…contracts or agreements, whether formal or informal, made between

the state and private actors are far from being permanent or even long-

lasting. On the contrary, they are deliberately unstable, even volatile,

and secret and up for renegotiation all the time…This instability is not

the result of poor management or other inadequacies. Nor is it the

expression of external dependency. It is rather at the heart of politics:

creating and maintaining conditions for the exercise of power.” (Hibou

1999: 15-16)

“The lack of a precise boundary between what is punished and what is

allowed, between what is authorised, tolerated and condemned,

between licit and illicit, and the games surrounding conflicts of

principles – all this creates the space for political intervention and the

exercise of arbitrary power at all times, and also leads to permanent

negotiations among actors.” (Hibou 1999: 16)

Towards a new research agenda on Vietnamese politics

Having added the last piece to our jigsaw, we are now ready to crystallise our findings

into a new ‘conceptual framework’ or research agenda for thinking about politics in

Vietnam. In doing so, we come up with seven ‘critical’ questions.

25

1. What is the relative balance between public and private-regarding activities under

the auspices of the state in Vietnam today?

2. How strong is the notion of the public realm among officials in Vietnam?

3. To what extent is corruption in Vietnam centralised in the hands of a limited

section of the elite?

4. Are officials adopting a long-term or a short term approach to corruption in

Vietnam?

5. To what extent does the notion of ‘private indirect government’ make sense in

Vietnam?

6. Where the state appears ineffective, to what extent is this a facade?

7. To what extent is a lack of clarity about ‘the rules’ in Vietnam less the result of

state weakness and more a ‘mode of governing’ in itself?

I will now offer some preliminary answers to these questions drawing on my own

field work. Where possible, I will offer a sense of how our answers to these questions

might vary over time.

Public, private and corruption

26

What is the relative balance between public and private-regarding activities under

the auspices of the state in Vietnam today?

The first point to note is that it is rare for public office in Vietnam today not to have a

private-regarding dimension. Historians will be able to tell us that there is nothing

new about this, including prior to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The very fact

that public positions today often come with a price tag highlights the way in which

office holders are prepared to ‘invest’ money to secure a post on the assumption that

over time they will be able to recoup the initial outlay. The colloquial Vietnamese

phrase about public office ‘co an khong hay chi cai ghe thoi?’ (Is it just a seat or can

you profit from it?), which I encountered in a piece of narrative writing, captures

nicely the way in which public office is regarded as a potential source of personal

enrichment – both monetary and non-monetary – over and about what the government

pays you.8

In terms of the extent of so-called ‘corruption’ in Vietnam today, there appears to be a

perception both among Vietnamese and foreigners that corruption has worsened in

recent years. However, leaving aside the fact that the reform era in Vietnam has

resulted in increased opportunities for corruption, it is by no means clear to this author

that corruption is greater now compared with 1995, 2000 or 2003 – apart from a ‘gut

feeling’ in some quarters. Increased focus on corruption either by the donor

community or the government does not mean corruption has actually increased: that

is, there are a whole range of domestic and international political factors which in

8 See also Painter 2004.

27

influence the perception of corruption.9 At the same time, it is a misnomer to view

the era of central planning as one devoid of corruption even if the sums of money

involved were probably smaller and people had to be much more careful about

conspicuous consumption than they do now.

How strong is the notion of the public realm among officials in Vietnam?

Despite the prevalence of private-regarding activities on the part of officials, there is a

sense in which the idea of the public sphere is quite well-developed in Vietnam. In

this respect, a contrast could be draw with many African states where the impression

one gets is often of a state which is simply absent or where the population is doing its

utmost to ‘disengage’ from it (Naomi Chazan quoted in Young 2004: 37-38). Even

compared to Cambodia the character of the state in Vietnam is palpably different. In

Cambodia a few years ago, I was able to wander into government offices and have

meetings with quite high-level officials without formal introduction letters. However,

even though the Cambodian state seems more ‘disorganised’ than Vietnam, it is not

without teeth.10

9 See Gillespie and Okruhlik 1991 and Marquette 2004. For Transparency

International’s defence of its Corruption Perception Index see

http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004_faq.en.html

10 For a nuanced account which looks at the Cambodian state under Hun Sen see

Gottesman 2002.

28

With reference to any public institution in Vietnam, it is possible to identify a set of

bureaucratic functions or practices which broadly speaking do occur. This came

across clearly in interviews I conducted in 2004 with Vietnamese institutions involved

in budget management at the provincial and district level (finance department, tax

department and state treasury). The officials at these institutions were all able to

describe – at least for the benefit of the interviewer – a set of bureaucratic practices

and procedures in which they engaged. Even if to some extent they were being

dressed up for the sake of the foreigner, I have little doubt that the various meetings

they alluded to did take place, the annual budgetary cycle they spoke about was real,

and that a paper trail existed complete with all the relevant signatures and stamps.

On the other hand, reading between the lines of what was said, one sensed that the

way in which decisions were actually made was often driven less by formal

bureaucratic hierarchy and more by personal or clientelist relations. In addition, the

interview process shed little light on how much time and energy officials put into their

public-regarding duties as opposed to their more lucrative private-regarding ones to

draw on Hibou’s typology. My suspicion is that the former was not always their main

concern.

In contrast to some states, one also gets the impression that Vietnamese officials have

a reasonably clear idea of how they should ‘behave’ as officials. This does not rule

out the possibility of using their public office for private gain – in fact this is widely

regarded as normal – but officials do not like to be seen as ‘bad officials’. This

demands at least some minimal attendance to their formal duties, especially if this

involves delivering some kind of service to the people. It also militates against their

29

going after bribes too rapaciously. Such an attitude to public office comes across

clearly in David Koh’s work on ward officials in Hanoi where there seems to be a

fairly clearly sense on the part of both officials and those under their jurisdiction of

what constitutes a ‘good official’ understood, it would appear, in terms of a Confucian

notions of virtue (duc). Where implementing state policy is perceived to conflict with

this, citizens are quick to tell officials, and – in the close proximity of ward living –

officials find it hard to act in ways which cast doubt on their integrity (Koh 2004:

337-369)

To what extent is corruption centralised in Vietnam in the hands of a limited section

of the elite?

Generally speaking, the impression one gets is that most people are engaged to some

extent in what might be regarded as corruption.11 This can take the form of individual

corruption (e.g. A policeman takes money off a motorbike driver in order to turn a

blind eye to a traffic offence) and institutional corruption (e.g. Where a whole

department or institution is systematically raising funds in the course of their duties

with the money being pooled in a collective purse and often being recorded in an off-

budget account book).12 The more difficult question about corruption is whether the

‘big stuff’ is controlled by a smaller section of the elite, with everyone else just

getting the ‘pickings’. It may be that the some of the variation in provincial economic

11 For literature which discusses the difficulty of defining corruption in culturally

diverse settings but which is keen to not simply lapse into relativism see Kurer 2005;

Philp 1997; Williams 1999

12 One scholar of China has referred to the latter as ‘organisational corruption’. See

Xiaobo Lu 2000.

30

performance across Vietnam reflects the fact that in some provinces corruption is

concentrated in the hands of a limited sub-set of the elite. However, generally

speaking, the impression one gets is that corruption is not especially centralised in

Vietnam. Any idea that the Politburo has tabs on who is doing what in terms of

corruption is almost certainly mistaken. The developmental implications of

corruption being relatively decentralised in Vietnam are reportedly not good.

Are officials adopting a long-term or a short term approach to corruption in

Vietnam?

If the above analysis is correct, Vietnam’s saving grace in developmental terms may

be that officials there are generally adopting a long-term rather than a short-term

approach to corruption (i.e. Modest predation as opposed to a ‘steal as much as you

can as fast as you can’ approach). Experience shows that those who steal too much

are likely to come unstuck as some of the corruption cases in Ho Chi Minh City in the

late 1990s seemed to imply although there are many reasons why certain corruption

cases are brought to book (Gainsborough 2003; Gillespie and Okruhlik 1991).

That corruption in Vietnam is not of Mobutu or Marcos proportions reflects, I think,

the fact that Vietnamese state is possessed of relatively viable institutions which can –

and do – impose discipline when it is judged that the situation demands it. This too

points to relatively well-developed “self-preserving and self aggrandizing tendencies”

on the part of the state, as highlighted by Anderson. That is, too flagrant abuse of

public office runs the risk of undermining the state’s “legitimate fiction” – again to

echo Anderson – which is the assertion, for the benefit of the masses, that public and

31

private are distinct and separate. The fact that the period of tenure of office for public

officials is relatively stable and long-term in Vietnam – with officials generally being

changed on a five-year cycle – also lends itself to their adopting a long-term approach

to corruption.13

How power is exercised in Vietnam

To what extent does the notion of ‘private indirect government’ make sense in

Vietnam?

Vietnam appears self-consciously not to have gone down the path of countries like

Mozambique and Cameroon where basic state functions, such a customs and indirect

taxation, have been ‘handed over’ – at least superficially – to private companies

(Hibou 2004: 4-7). However, Vietnam has been selling off state enterprises in the

form of equitisation even if the impression is of a rather controlled process, certainly

compared to Russia. Nevertheless, Hibou’s notion of ‘private indirect government’ is

still plausible in respect of the Vietnamese case. In interviews I conducted with

equitised firms in 2003, one rarely gained a sense that equitisation should be equated

with a loss of state power. Instead, relations between the equitised firm and the state

13 There is some research on China which suggests that in the reform era provincial

officials are less inclined to want to go to the centre compared with previously

because of the increased, stable and long-term opportunities for personal enrichment

in the localities (Nevitt 1996). If correct, this would also imply a more long-term

approach to corruption. However, the extent to which this applies in Vietnam has yet

to be established empirically.

32

continued to be close, with the state maintaining considerable inspection and control

rights.

Research on public administration and salary reform in Vietnam suggests that

whatever lip service might be paid to keeping traditional bureaucratic functions in the

hands of “the state” something very different and much more akin to Hibou’s ‘private

indirect government is happening. Martin Painter writes:

“…the ‘problem’ of pay reform in Vietnam as defined by Vietnamese

policy makers is not to find remedies for a faltering bureaucratic

rationalisation project (as many western observers and advisers would

have it). Instead of perfecting a classical Weberian style of

bureaucracy in accord with conventional models of development and

modernisation, the trajectory of reform seems to be embracing a model

of deregulated, decentralised and market-driven forms of state

management of a kind few advanced western states are prepared to

envisage even in the era of neo-liberalism.” (Painter 2004: 19)

“There is no shortage of anecdotal evidence of a multitude of forms of

personal (or more commonly collective) privatisation of the asset of

holding a public office…The result is a view on the part of public

employees of the public office as in part a private asset, in addition to

being a repository of public service duties and obligations. In sum, the

office has not been kept separate from the person.” (Painter 2004: 13)

33

“…de facto decentralization has been given an official stamp; off-

budget activities have been acknowledged as a part of the solution; and

an ‘entrepreneurial’ deregulated setting for pay rewards has been given

official sanction, in the hope that the resulting gains all round will

mask the inequities.” (Painter 2004: 19)

This sound precisely like the kind of ‘private indirect government’ Hibou has

identified in Africa and it points to a new way in which power is being exercised in

Vietnam in the era of reform and globalisation.

Where the state appears ineffective in Vietnam, to what extent is this a facade?

Hibou says that the apparent ineffectiveness of state institutions in Africa should not

necessarily be taken at face value. This also seems applicable to Vietnam. While

outsiders may judge Vietnamese practices ineffective, it is more often a case of where

officials choose to put their energies along with the Vietnamese tendency to adopt

after ‘local’ solutions to problems even in the face of external advice, rather than a

lack of capacity as such. If we return to the example of Vietnam’s budgetary position,

while the formal position may look weak, the actual budgetary position may in fact be

quite strong, drawing as it does on a whole range of illicit or informal sources. At a

lunch I had with officials in a relatively poor northern province the arrival of large

quantities of 15-year old whiskey, prompted my research assistant to comment later

“How is it that they are so poor and yet they entertain us like kings?” There was no

doubt in my mind that my research assistant knew the answer.

34

Furthermore, taking the case of the state enterprise sector, one doubts very much that

the poor performance of state enterprises in otherwise ‘dynamic’ provinces is really

the result of an inability on the part of officials to turn these companies around

(although some of the firms may be like ‘giants stuck in concrete’ or a hangover from

the old central planning days). More likely, these enterprises continue to perform

‘badly’ because officials have shifted their attention to more lucrative areas, such as

foreign-invested industry or non-state business in a manner in which the state

industrial sector is effectively ‘hollowed out’. Certainly, in a province like Binh

Duong, the contrast between the performance of foreign-invested industry and

industry under local state management is striking but both areas have provincial

officials in the management.14

Finally, there are distinct advantages for some institutions to project an image of

weakness – or lack of capacity – since in a climate when donors need to ‘shift’

budgets, this is a way of increasing their chances of attracting money.15

To what extent is a lack of clarity about ‘the rules’ less the result of state weakness

and more a ‘mode of governing’ in itself?

Hibou is also right, I suspect, when she says she says that a lack of transparency and

the absence of clear boundaries between what is permitted and what is not, is not

necessarily an indication of state weakness but instead “constitute[s] a mode of

14 For literature on the ‘hollowing out’ of state business in China see Ding 2000 and

McNally 2002.

15 On the need for donors to ‘shift’ budgets see Hanlon 2004.

35

governing in itself” by creating opportunities for political intervention and the

exercise of arbitrary power. While this may not be what is going on all of the time, I

would argue that it makes sense of a large part of Vietnamese politics. In Ho Chi

Minh City, when people were prosecuted for corruption in the late 1990s it was

common to hear people say, almost incredulously, that they ‘haven’t done anything

different from anyone else’. It was also a widely held view that those in the dock

were being prosecuted in a context where ‘the rules’ were not clear (Gainsborough

2003). Equally, people engaging in smuggling or running a brothel never quite know

whether the bribe that was successfully paid last month will be insufficient the next,

or when they are going to be on the receiving end of a clamp down or a police raid.

While this may be unnerving for those on the receiving end of state power, for those

in power, the advantages in terms of the hold it gives them over people are clear.

Conclusion – thinking like the state

Mainstream writing on politics in Vietnam tends to offer an account which

emphasises change, albeit nuanced change. Clearly there have been changes – we

have highlighted the emergence of ‘private indirect government’, for example.

However, in many other respects, there is continuity. In terms of how the state thinks

about politics, it is far from certain that there has been very much change at all over

the last two decades or, I suspect, considerably longer. Elite political culture remains

one in which the very notion of an oppositional sphere, or a domain outside of the

state, remains anathema – an affront even. Adam Fforde captures this when he says

there is “no sign” that civil society groups are viewed by the party as “positive

contributors to social development” (Fforde 2005: 150).

36

The idea that a domain outside the state is still formally anathema in elite political

culture also comes across in the rather paternalistic (and to us circular) way that the

party talks about its relationship with the people: that is, at key political events, one

tends to hear something like ‘because the party is close to the people and knows the

will of the people, it will only act in the interests of the people’ (Nha nuoc cua nhan

dan, do nhan dan va vi nhan dan) (Gainsborough 2005).

In an interview with Time Magazine, the current party general-secretary, Nong Duc

Manh, was asked soon after he was elected to the post whether he could imagine a

time when Vietnam might have more than one political party. Without a hint of irony

or any sense that he might be holding a hostage to fortune, he replied “never”.16

While any self-respecting politician in Vietnam who values his job arguably cannot

reply in any other way, Manh’s answer reflects more than this. That is, the idea of an

oppositional sphere simply does not fit with the philosophical underpinnings in which

the Communist Party of Vietnam is rooted and still draws. To suggest otherwise is

insulting because it is to question the party’s commitment to the people.

Given Vietnam’s extensive engagement with the outside world over the last twenty

years, it is testament to the deep-rooted nature of such ideas that they have remained

largely unchanged. A new generation of leaders in Vietnam may see things

differently perhaps but more likely is that such philosophical underpinnings will

continue to impose limits on the kind of political change the state is willing to

contemplate.

16 The interview was also carried by Vietnam News, January 29, 2002.

37

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