The political system’s organizational structure and staff reduction process in Vietnam at present

Abstract

The political system of Vietnam follows the former Soviet style, which includes the following elements from central to local level: Party, State, Fatherland Front and mass organizations. This type of organizational structure has shown increasing limitations in the current context of an open economy and global integration. These need to be reformed and improved. While there are enormous challenges in this reform process, there are encouraging changes. Therefore, it is essential to renovate fundamental understanding on political system structure and induce the strong political will of the whole political system, particularly within the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). Based on the theoretical model of political will developed by Post et al. (2010), this study aims to test the assumption that the political system organizational restructuring and staff reduction process will be successful with strong political will and public support. The findings show that the on-going political system organizational process and staff reduction in Vietnam seems to be in line with the assumption. There are impressive initial achievements. These include: (i) elimination of three steering committees, seven directorates etc.; around 200 bureaus, departments etc., and 65 provincial departments; (ii) reduction of 50 directorate-level leading positions, more than 300 bureau and department-level leading positions, about 200 provincial department-level leading positions and about 10,000 division/office-level managers. Challenges are inertia within the system, hesitation and conflicts of interest among decision makers. Therefore, strong political will from the top level, common understanding and effort from all Party members and support from people, as well as effective solutions in the coming years, are all required.