A methodology for analysing the process of economic reform in Vietnam: The case of domestic trade

Abstract

Examination of the process of reform in domestic trade suggests that Vietnamese economic reforms are the result of an essentially political process dating back to the 1970s. Political change can be explained in terms of the interests and objectives of groups in society interacting with the economic context to produce political action. Also important is the changing cognition of different actors about how their objectives could be given expression in reality. Pressure for change came both from the expression of economic interests and from the sense of people working in areas such as the domestic trade apparatus that they were caught in an impasse in attempting to carry out their day‐to‐day functions. During the 1980s, as experiments with modifying the system were tried, the relative importance of different interests changed and ideological positions shifted in response. What began as an attempt to repair the central planning system developed, through this process, into a systemic critique which opened the way for more fundamental reforms.