Beyond the law: understanding the political dynamics of grassroots democracy in Vietnam

Abstract

Existing analytic approaches to the implementation of grassroots democracy (GRD) in Vietnam tend to look at this policy as a response by the Vietnamese party-state to address the crises of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV’s) legitimacy and governance. GRD is commonly viewed as a top-down policy of the CPV and has been formalized by a legal framework, making it compulsory nation-wide. As illustrated by a series of rural unrests in the 1990s, amid the economic reforms launched by the party in the late 1980s, the CPV recognized the need to increase its communication mechanisms at the interface between local authorities and the people at the grassroots. While valuable, existing approaches overlook the specificity and variance of local conditions, as well as the root causes of the unrest. On the other hand, the CPV’s approach in using GRD as a legal tool is based on its objective of restoring stability in rural areas, without losing control over the implementation process. These approaches, therefore, limit our understanding of why GRD is implemented successfully in one commune, but not in another even within the same province or between provinces. They tend to focus on what goes wrong (structural problems), rather what goes right (local resources). Additionally, they prioritize skepticism of the CPV’s adoption of GRD, disputing that it contains any ‘sincerity’ (thực tâm) as a political reform in the countryside. This further reinforces a common perception of Vietnam by Western scholars that the country is not a democracy (by liberal democratic theories’ standards) and that no democracy exists at any level. The gap left by existing approaches suggests an alternative approach is required to evaluate the ongoing implementation of Vietnamese GRD and its impacts on Vietnamese polity in general, and the CPV as the ruling party in particular. The research also reviews and articulates with research on how the Communist Party of China (CPC) has used GRD mechanisms (somewhat successfully) to rejuvenate its autocratic regime, while also facilitating what some scholars refer to as ‘smart authoritarianism’. The thesis thus investigates the conditions that support the implementation of GRD goals, which in turn has an impact on the the CPV’s legitimacy and capacity to govern in the countryside. The new approach proposed by this thesis is informed by major theories in the contemporary international discourse on democratization. The theories under review in this thesis include: modernization theory, human empowerment theory, and social capital theory. These theories propose the conditions that facilitate democracy emerging, functioning and surviving. Based on the conditions drawn from these theories, as well as considering the seminal aim of GRD, that is to address the root causes of rural unrest; this thesis constructs an analytic framework constituting independent variables. This enables not only an understanding of the dynamics of GRD in Vietnamese rural areas, but also of its impacts on the CPV’s legitimacy and governance at the grassroots, as well as on the local governance system. This framework is then used to analyze the implementation of GRD in three provinces – Thai Binh, Hưng Yen, and Đa Nẵng. These case-studies show that the implementation of GRD is highly contextual and produces varied results. The analysis further demonstrates that whatever the results are, the ongoing implementation of GRD is resulting in impacts on the party-state apparatus, statepeasantry relations, and cadre-peasant relations in the countryside. These findings are significant in supporting the thesis’s argument that GRD has created a mutually empowering mechanism for both the party-state and the peasantry. The CPV thus uses GRD as a mechanism to reduce tensions between the state and the peasantry, between party members and the peasants, and help facilitate stability in rural areas. This ultimately reinforces the CPV’s legitimacy and grip on power. On the other hand, GRD gives power to the peasantry to raise their voices, hold the local authorities accountable, as well as to express their demands. While peasant demands are not always met by the authorities, that is something that rarely happened before the emergence of GRD. It also shows that the change in state-peasantry relations – that is, the way the local authorities and party members communicate with the peasants, and respond to the peasant’s demands - goes hand-in-hand with the local governance reforms. Finally, the findings inform us that successful implementation of GRD does not necessarily weaken the party-state’s ability to govern society, but has the capacity to reduce structural-social tensions. Therefore in the future, the thesis opines that a democratic transformation of some form - without violence - is possible in Vietnam. The thesis hence contributes to ongoing debates about the durability of revolutionary regimes, and the literature on political regime types and political and social change in Southeast Asia.