Privatization, democratic reforms, and micro-governance change in a transition economy: Condominium homeowner associations in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Abstract

This article addresses a dearth in the literature on condominium apartment CIDs in transition economies, focusing on change in grassroots urban governance both at the apartment building level and the neighborhood. The authors attempt to explain why apartment building CIDs, a long established phenomenon in many developed and developing countries, is emerging for the first time in Vietnam. The authors use a relational perspective, emphasizing the evolutionary and contextual factors determining the realization of Webster’s characterization of homeowner associations as ‘collective consumption clubs’, which manages micro attributes at a specific residential scale. The paper argues that the development and spread of condominium apartment CIDs in Vietnam resulted from the major policy shifts of housing privatization and democratization at the grassroots. These broad policy changes are important constitutive elements for institutional functionality of condominium CIDs to become viable and effective. Further, they describe how the private collective (i.e. homeowner association) in charge of apartment building management co-exists and complements neighborhood governance under the local government, creating differentiated grassroots governance, which is a radical shift from a pure state administration at both the neighborhood and apartment building levels, dominant during the pre- Doi Moi era. These issues are illuminated and analyzed through the use of both qualitative and quantitative primary data and review of public documents, and empirically described through the use of a case study of a condominium apartment CID in Ho Chi Minh City.