DSpace at VNU: Political space in Vietnam: a view from the 'rice-roots

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Political space in Vietnam: a
view from the ‘rice-roots'
Andrew Wells-Dang

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Department of Political Science and International
Studies, University of Birmingham, UK
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The Pacific Review, Vol. 23 No. 1 March 2010: 93–112

Political space in Vietnam: a view from
the ‘rice-roots’

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Andrew Wells-Dang

Abstract Single-party, authoritarian states such as Vietnam are frequently
characterised as having ‘closed’ political opportunity structures and ‘un-free’
socio-political systems. The validity of this observation depends, however, on
the viewer’s frame of reference. Seen from the perspective of active citizens,
Vietnamese political structures offer increasingly greater space for collective action
than a state-centred institutional analysis would predict. Episodes of contentious
politics surrounding land disputes and public parks during 2007 provide evidence
of the changing dynamics of participation in politics. Actors involved in these
and similar campaigns are broadly optimistic about the future prospects for an
opening of political space within the existing system. These findings are contrasted
with international reports of violations of political rights and with the Vietnamese
government’s own efforts at legal reform. Although signals remain mixed, to some
extent Vietnam might be becoming a ‘rice-roots democracy’ in practice, while

remaining a single-party state. The voices and experiences of civil society actors
will continue to shape opportunities and risks in the expansion of political space.
Keywords

Political space; Vietnam; land rights; contentious politics; civil society.

Introduction
In spring 2007, two large privately-owned companies, one of them with
funding from Vietnamese who live in the former Soviet Union, were given
Andrew Wells-Dang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, UK, conducting research on domestic civil society networks in China and Vietnam. He is concurrently the director of an international nongovernmental organization in Vietnam, and is affiliated as a researcher with the University of
Social Sciences and Humanities at Vietnam National University and the University of Hong
Kong’s Centre of Asian Studies. He has published both academic and policy articles on East
and Southeast Asia in edited collections including Transborder Issues in the Greater Mekong
Sub-Region (Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand: Mekong Sub-region Social Research Center, 2008)
and Modernity and Re-Enchantment: Religion in Post-Revolutionary Vietnam (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007) as well as contributions to journals such as China
Review International, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy in Focus, and Asia Times.
Address: 1 ngo 7 Nguyen Hong, Hanoi, Vietnam. E-mail:
The Pacific Review
ISSN 0951-2748 print/ISSN 1470-1332 online C 2010 Taylor & Francis
/>DOI: 10.1080/09512740903398355


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approval by city authorities to develop a plan to transform Hanoi’s largest
urban park into a private, Disneyland-style theme park. The story was circulated widely in the local state-controlled press and criticised on the Internet. Local residents spoke out against the plans, which were portrayed as

corrupt and anti-poor. Influential citizens, including respected retired officials, editorialised against the agreement. Faced with an upsurge of public
outrage, the city government backed down in August 2007, putting the park
redevelopment plan on hold.
During the same period, local residents from at least five peri-urban areas
around Hanoi staged protests at the city People’s Committee or at central
government offices such as the Ministry of Justice and National Assembly.
The protesters called for an end to land-grabbing by speculators and fair
compensation for local land seized for development purposes. Police followed and negotiated with the protesters, ultimately forcing them to disband, but in most cases without using violence or making arrests. Similar
demonstrations took place in Ho Chi Minh City, some of them attended
by a proto-opposition group, Viet Tan, who attempted to link with the
protesters. While many of the protests were ineffectual, some did achieve
their objectives.
These ‘episodes of contentious politics’ (McAdam et al. 2001) illustrate
a variety of new political spaces opening in present-day Vietnam. Despite
ongoing Communist Party control, the media is taking a more active role
as public watchdog on cases of corruption, environmental damage and land
use. In particular, the Internet offers a new space for public discussion and
criticism that is less restricted than the print or broadcast media. Internet
use is one example of the greater potential for overseas Vietnamese to
add a transnational element to domestic political discourse. Within urban
Vietnam, well-connected and respected individuals, such as intellectuals,
artists and retired officials, feel greater freedom to speak out on public issues. Poor and rural Vietnamese, meanwhile, may attempt to raise their
voices through the Party-government system, but when these fail are increasingly resorting to public protest as a vehicle for expression.
A common international presentation of Vietnam, as well as neighbouring China and Laos, stresses far-reaching market economic reforms without
any corresponding political change (Freedom House 2008; Human Rights
Watch 2007). According to this view, any perceived openings in political
space are illusory or imagined as long as a single-party Communist regime is
in power. By contrast, other observers see evidence of a ‘fragile yet assertive
form of Vietnamese democratic practice’ in which ‘supposedly non-political
activities . . . become transgressive events’ (Thomas 2001: 311). In fact, not

all contention is necessarily anti-Party, and direct challenges to the singleparty system remain taboo. Within these limits, the formation of public collective action in Vietnam comprises an unexpected and under-appreciated
expansion of political space over the past decade: unexpected, given
preconceived ideas about political change in authoritarian systems, and


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under-appreciated, due to limitations in state-centred or macro-level ways
that many analysts conceptualise and attempt to measure political space.

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Approaches to defining political space: a review
As with related concepts such as ‘civil society’, ‘public sphere’, and ‘social
movements’, there is no single accepted definition of political space. A literal definition taken from political geography would simply be the physical
locations where political activity takes place. Public squares, memorials,
universities, and government buildings are all public spaces that may be
more or less open to political expression. A second category is virtual: the
media, academic discourse, and cyberspace. Thus, political spaces are plural
and can be examined individually or relationally in linkages to each other.
A danger inherent in the spatial definition is ‘the territorial trap’ of internalizing political boundaries, assuming that geographical or virtual political
spaces are associated with the territorial state (Ferguson and Jones 2002).
Legal boundaries do not always match with the mental maps that people
construct in their heads. This suggests an alternative definition of political
space as the sum of people’s perceptions of the range of political action and
expression that is open to them in a particular time and place. One such
construction is the ‘power cube’ proposed by John Gaventa (2007: 206), in
which space can be viewed as closed, invited, claimed and created. A civil

society might thus adopt a mix of strategies: to open (claim) closed spaces,
utilise invited spaces, and/or create spaces that are autonomous of government or corporate control.1
‘Expanding’ or ‘opening’ political space has obvious positive connotations, echoing the opening of the Iron Curtain, as well as China’s process of
‘reform and opening up’ (gaige kaifang) and Vietnam’s ‘renewal’ (doi moi).
Thus, ‘freedom is spatialized in metaphors of autonomy, as in lack of physical constraint to mobility’ (Dalby 2005). In a survey article on political space
in Southeast Asia, Kevin Hewison (1999: 224) defines expansion of political space as ‘replac[ing] authoritarianism with more representative political
regimes’. He contrasts Malaysia and Singapore as ‘illiberal’ or ‘Asian-style’
approaches to political space and democratisation that are dominated by
ruling parties, with what were at the time emerging democracies in Thailand and Indonesia. Vietnam, reasonably, is classified as a ‘post-socialist authoritarian regime’ with ‘very limited openings for opposition perspectives’
(1999: 224, 242). In this reading, political space is equated with (perceived)
moves towards democracy, a public sphere and civil society.
Human rights organisations such as Freedom House (2008) offer particular conceptions of the forms of political space that are required for a
population to be considered ‘free’. These spaces consist of elections, macrolevel politics, and legal systems, the key procedural arenas of liberal democracy. Individual rights are the foundation of such a system; a civil society is
only possible when free, autonomous individuals assemble voluntarily out


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of their own self-interest, forming an arena of social action separate from
the state and the market (Cohen and Arato 1992: ix). Democratisation theory implies directionality to political change, with countries either ‘ahead’
or ‘behind’ in the (inevitable?) transition to the end point of full democracy. East Asian political reality, especially in recent years, looks a good
deal more complex than that: in place of modernist views of development
along a linear trajectory, societies and agents within them are moving back
and forth among a variety of alternative, overlapping political spaces.
A further difficulty with the democratisation approach is the deduction
that little to no political space can exist in authoritarian systems, since political space is associated with democracy and opposition politics in the first

place. If these are the sole criteria, civil society and social movements cannot exist in Vietnam by definition, since the system is ‘un-free’; like human
rights, political space is something that ‘we’ in Western liberal democracies
have and ‘they’ do not (Goody 2002; Hann and Dunn 1996). This conception is consistent with a definition of social movements as set repertoires
of collective action that are historically and culturally restricted to West´ 2002; Tilly 2004) and cannot be sustained in nonern democracies (Colas
democratic contexts (Tilly and Tarrow 2006: 57). But while open spaces for
political expression may indeed be fewer or differently structured in authoritarian regimes, this does not preclude their existence. Political space is not
fully limited by the state nor always formally constituted in recognisable institutions. The political is also personal, and political space is nuanced and
structured variously for different groups and individuals. In the ‘state-insociety perspective’ of Joel Migdal and colleagues (1994, 2001), ‘societies
affect states as much or more than states affect societies’; even authoritarian states are embedded and inter-related to society writ large. Since states
themselves are social constructions (Finnemore 1996), they are thus contingent on other social actors, with blurry or fuzzy boundaries between state
and society, and relations that can be ‘mutually transforming’ (Kohli and
Shue 1994). This redefinition of state–society relations is essential for understanding the dynamics of plural and intertwined political spaces where
the state has historically been strong.
Social movement theorists have contributed the useful idea that groups
in society act based on the ‘opportunity structures’ existing in their political
environments. Political opportunity structures, according to Sidney Tarrow
(1998: 2), are ‘consistent dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for or constraints on people undertaking collective action’.
In simple terms, social movement theory postulates that political space will
expand when the opportunities favouring the activities of social movements
and networks exceed the constraints placed on them. This implies a complex set of relationships and interactions between social actors, and between
social actors and the state: from information sharing and strategizing to
forming alliances, cooperating, confronting, and negotiating outcomes. Political space is created not only as a result of social action but also through


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the process of citizens engaging the state, each other, and the market, along
a range of strategies from dialogue to advocacy to contention.

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Reunification Park: a case study of political space in practice
Hanoi’s Reunification Park (Cong vien Thong Nhat) is the largest green
space in the centre of the crowded Vietnamese capital. Built by volunteer
labour in the 1960s and once named after Lenin, the park is popular with
rich and poor alike who pay the equivalent of a few pence each to enter.
The park facilities, managed by a state-owned company, are poorly maintained, with shabby carnival rides and informal hawkers occupying much
of the open area at the park’s main entrance. Several better-constructed
play areas were constructed by multinational corporations in 2001, which
raised eyebrows in the international media given the site’s association with
Leninism (Hayton 2006). While it is not as well known to international visitors as the public spaces of Hoan Kiem Lake or Ba Dinh Square (Thomas
2001: 308), the park’s commemoration of Reunification has symbolic political overtones of national unity and the end of the Vietnam War.
In early 2007, following aborted attempts to renovate the park several
years earlier, the Hanoi People’s Committee gave a green light for two private companies, Tan Hoang Minh and Vincom, to prepare a plan to privatise the park and turn it into ‘a small-scale Disneyland’ (Phung Suong
2007).2 Details of the plan, including in-depth interviews with the company
directors, were published in newspapers, particularly those managed by various branches of the Youth Union; these papers (Tuoi Tre and Tien Phong,
along with Thanh Nien) are generally viewed as more independent than
other state-owned media. However, the largest number of articles appeared
on news websites such as VietNamNet and dantri.com.vn.3 Although the
corporations insisted that redevelopment would serve the interests of all
residents of Hanoi, this was belied by descriptions of a planned five-level
underground car park and shopping area, 3-D theatre and nightclub, as well
as the price tag of 1,500 billion dong – approximately £45 million (Dantri
2007).
As news of the corporations’ plans spread, public discussion about Reunification Park turned to dismay and outcry. A local architect, Hai Nguyen,
was the first to put his misgivings online in mid-April (Vietnam Studies
Group 2007). His polemic, ‘Let’s save the park! Let’s save our city!’ was
posted on a city issues website (). Other statements soon appeared on blogs and websites, including at least one set up especially for

the purpose (www.savehanoipark.com). The mainstream media, which had
reported news of the redevelopment plans and given a mouthpiece to corporate leaders, did not pick up on the groundswell of public concern until
later. By May, the English-language Viet Nam News referred to ‘cries of
protest’ from Hanoi residents in an article that presented a neutral but confused picture of the debate (Thu Huong 2007).


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The cause to stop the corporations’ plans was taken up by a network of
architects, retired government officials, journalists and bloggers. Some activists, but by no means all, had existing professional connections to the
Hanoi city government or other authorities. One prominent member of this
informal network was retired city planner Tran Thanh Van, formerly an
architect in the Ministry of Construction’s Institute of Rural and Urban
Planning who had led a previous anti-corruption campaign in the Thang
Long Water Park case in 2000. Ms Van’s postings on VietNamNet drew
widespread praise (and some criticism) from readers (VietNamNet 2007a,
2007b). Similarly, a leading biologist from a government research institute,
Ha Dinh Duc, sent an angry letter to the state president that was posted
online (VietNamNet 2007c).
Both professionals and ordinary people combined environmental and political appeals to stop the proposed redevelopment of Reunification Park.
Access to the park for poor people was a common theme of online postings, even if the bloggers themselves may not have been very poor. Concern about corporate involvement also surfaced repeatedly, but the largest
single concern was losing the little remaining public space in central Hanoi,
along with the trees which are ‘the lungs of the city’ (Trung Hieu 2007).
While the physical space of the park was not co-terminus with the political
space to discuss its fate – no actual protest activities took place within the
park itself – activists made a clear connection between these various spaces

and quality of life in the city. By claiming Reunification Park as public property, contenders also asserted their right to speak for and as citizens of the
Vietnamese polity.
By summer 2007, opposition to privatising the park had crystallised into
a public campaign. On 3 August, leading academics and architects organised a conference, sponsored by the non-governmental organisation (NGO)
HealthBridge (formerly PATH Canada), on the ‘System of Green Public
Space in Hanoi’, issuing a call to ‘save green space in Hanoi’ which was
posted on the Internet. Participants in the conference were interviewed
by the state-owned media, which began posting large quantities of public
comments about the controversy, split roughly 80 per cent to 20 per cent
against the corporations. On 17 August, the Hanoi city government suspended the redevelopment plans (Doan Loan 2007), giving the campaigners at least a temporary victory and putting privatisation indefinitely on
hold.
The Reunification Park campaign is a clear example of a civil society network, defined here as the joining together of organisations and individuals
to influence power around a shared conception of the common good. In
this case, individual activists played key roles, using their contacts in the
media and government to advocate for a change in the city’s decision. In
the process, they engendered a public debate that involved hundreds if not
thousands of Hanoians in reflection about the nature of development in
their city and the value of public space. This debate highlights the mixed


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role of the media in Vietnam (Heng 2004): ultimately state-controlled, yet
with certain freedom of movement, media both served city government and
corporate interests and also the purposes of activists at different times during the unfolding events. Activists engaged in what Kevin O’Brien (2004:
107) terms ‘boundary-spanning contention’, which ‘goes on partly within

the state and hinges on the participation of state actors.’ Such a campaign
‘is not prescribed or forbidden, but tolerated (even encouraged) by some
officials, and not tolerated by others’.
It is also worthwhile examining what the campaign was not. It was not primarily led by NGOs; these only entered the network towards the end of the
campaign. International actors played only a minor role in publicising the issue and funding the August 2007 conference. And none of the activists were
publicly anti-government or oppositional in their stances, though they were
at times harshly critical of corporate and city statements about the park.
Several outspoken critics were current or former government employees –
but, importantly, they were national government employees, not the city
government which was involved in the redevelopment plans. When these
critics spoke publicly about Reunification Park, they did so as residents of
Hanoi with links to a different (and higher) level of government than the
one directly responsible for administering the park. Hanoi-based activists
may have an advantage in this sense over other regions of Vietnam with less
access to central government and lower per-capita Party membership, but
the principle of engaging multiple levels of government holds nationwide.
The activists’ stance points to the plural, fuzzy and contested nature of interaction between civil society and various branches of the state and challenges
definitions of civil society as non-governmental and fully autonomous.
The Reunification Park campaign was the first such public effort in Vietnam to have been conducted in a primarily virtual format.4 Without the
political space provided by the Internet, organisation of the Reunification
Park network would have been much harder. Physical meetings would have
required more logistical preparation and funding, plus the risk of confrontation or restrictions from authorities or corporate representatives. Blogs allowed activists to post their concerns directly without passing through the
official media, while websites such as VietNamNet were able to post more
information with fewer filters than print media. As long as content was
not perceived as anti-government – and the privatisation opponents limited their critique to that single issue – the state did not attempt to censor
their expression. Thus, participants in the campaign strategically used opportunities in the available political space in order to spread their views and
reach their objectives.

Land protesters: between state and opposition
Most episodes of contentious politics in contemporary Vietnam are connected in some way with land issues, including ethnic minority land claims

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and demarcation of the Chinese border. During the revolutionary period,
both northern and, after 1975, southern farmers sought various ways of resisting collectivisation of their lands (Kerkvliet 1995). The significant local
uprisings in Thai Binh province in 1997 and in the Central Highlands in
2001 and 2004 revolved around taxation, corruption and land rights (Luong
2005; UN High Commissioner for Refugees 2002). Even industrial strikes,
which have increased dramatically in number over the past five years, are
connected to land issues, in that most strikes involve migrant workers who
face land pressures in their home villages (Wells-Dang 2005). In addition,
many industrial parks outside major cities are built on previously agricultural land that has been expropriated from its original users.
While no wide-ranging rural uprisings have taken place in the past several years, localised episodes of land protest have become a common feature of the Vietnamese landscape. Protests against the development of golf
courses, for instance, have occurred repeatedly outside Hanoi and Ho Chi
Minh City (BBC 2004; Thai Doan 2008); like theme parks, golf courses are
highly unequal and exclusionary forms of land use. Land in the periphery of
major cities is extremely valuable for development, but when land is seized
by the government, peasants are typically compensated only for the agricultural value of the land, not its market value. Similar processes in China,
where land rights are less protected than in Vietnam, have sparked hundreds of thousands of local protests (O’Brien and Li 2006). Unlike the Reunification Park dispute over public space, many rural protests are primarily
concerned with the uses and values of space for economic production, land
that is legally owned by the state but allocated to households for their own
use.
Rural and peri-urban residents who do not receive adequate land compensation in their local areas increasingly travel en masse to large cities and
press their cases there. In 2007–8, several dozen such demonstrations occupied the pavement and sometimes blocked streets in front of the Hanoi city
government, National Assembly offices, and the Ministry of Justice. Numbers ranged from about 30 to several hundred people, and demonstrations

lasted an average of two or three days, with participants sleeping on site.
Police, both uniformed and plain-clothes, were always present, but usually
at a distance. Some protesters carried signs or banners, which may be seized
by police. Most recent demonstrations have been peaceful, with one alleged
self-immolation since 2005 (Reuters 2007). Police and demonstrators negotiate an end to the sit-ins, allowing the protesters to return home unharmed,
but no information is available to determine how many demonstrations attain their aims.
A particularly large and extended land demonstration occurred in Ho Chi
Minh City in July 2007. Hundreds of farmers from seven southern provinces
converged on the city to protest expropriation of their land by local officials;
they occupied a major downtown street for 27 days, attracting local and
international press attention. In the end, exhausted, the demonstrators put


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up no resistance when police cleared the area and told them to return home
(Deutsche Presse Agentur 2007).
Unusually, the Ho Chi Minh City demonstration also attracted supporters from an overseas-based opposition group, the Viet Tan Party. Articulate
Viet Tan members used their website and underground radio station (Chan
Troi Moi or ‘New Horizon’) to publicise the demonstration while also drawing attention to their own cause. The Vietnamese government considers
Viet Tan a terrorist group, although none of the group members appear
to have been involved in any armed activity for decades, if ever (Agence
France Presse 2007). On the other hand, there is no evidence that the southern demonstrators themselves had any involvement or support for Viet Tan;
the more likely explanation is that Viet Tan members, sensing a chance to
hitch their cause to the largest demonstration in Ho Chi Minh City for years,
attempted to take advantage of the political opportunity. Viet Tan’s presence, as well as the participation of the Buddhist opposition leader Thich

Quang Do, probably did little to help the demonstrators’ cause. Rather than
demonstrators using media and overseas groups to advance their interests,
it seems more likely that the media and Viet Tan used them. Some analysts
have identified Viet Tan as a driving force behind present and future civil
society activism (Thayer 2008: 10), while others see external political groups
as extraneous actors in a system in which change is more likely to arise from
within (Heng 2004).
Most land protests do not attract such international media coverage
or high-level political attention. Urban ethnographer Nguyen Vu Hoang
(2007) conducted fieldwork in an outer district of Hanoi which is a site of
major construction and road-building, examining cases of one neighbourhood threatened by demolition and another street where residents were
under-compensated for their houses seized for a road-widening project. In
the first neighbourhood, residents signed petitions, held meetings and sitins. They also reached out to a nearby district where residents had held off
a construction project for several years and demanded greater compensation.5 In the process, the residents discovered a map that was different from
the construction plans that had been shown to them by local officials. After
much effort, they were eventually able to bring this to the attention of the
city government, who overruled the district authorities’ decision and saved
the neighbourhood from demolition, at least for the time being.
The core of this neighbourhood’s campaign strategy lay in their creative
use of the state machinery against itself, joining with part of the state in
order to press a claim from another part. The neighbourhood Communist
Party cell leader, in fact, became the spokesperson and de facto leader
of the group. A retired state enterprise director, he was educated, wellconnected and respected by everyone in the neighbourhood. On the nearby
street that was due for widening, the residents’ group became led by an
active-duty policeman, who as a current government employee had access
to more information than the retired Party cell leader (Nguyen 2007). Use


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of ‘insider–dissenter’ connections in this way limits risk from what may otherwise be a dangerous path of opposing entrenched state interests (Heng
2004). It also fits at the edges of what David Koh (2006: 70) describes as
normal ways to play local politics in Hanoi, with residents as well as officials using moral arguments, personal connections and reciprocal benefits
to pursue their objectives.
Such a strategy does not ensure success, but it does give otherwise
disempowered groups a chance at making their voices heard. While the
neighbourhood campaigners temporarily achieved their aims, the nearby
street residents’ group was ultimately unable to save their houses from
demolition, and the group dispersed as residents were relocated to other
districts (Nguyen 2007). In autumn 2008, Catholics in Hanoi unsuccessfully
attempted to reclaim several tracts of land that had been appropriated
by the state in the 1950s; in this high-profile case, the state media framed
the Catholic protesters as an unruly special interest group, while Catholic
spokespeople and their international allies presented the protesters as
victims of state repression (AsiaNews 2008; VietNamNet 2008). (In an
ironic twist, Hanoi authorities then converted the disputed properties,
which otherwise might have been sold for commercial use, into public
parks.) Like the 2007 Ho Chi Minh City land demonstrators, the Catholic
protesters attracted international media coverage and support, but this
strategy proved ineffectual and may have backfired on their cause. In
contrast, the Reunification Park campaigners and the Hanoi residents’
groups in Hoang’s study, while not all successful, formed coherent plans to
use the available political space to seek common interests.
From a diverging perspective, contentious episodes of ‘public discontent
and social tension’ may also be seen as evidence of the lack of space for
political action (Colm 2008; Freedom House 2008). In this case, the focus is

kept squarely on the state’s response to contention, rather than the agency
of the contenders themselves. International media and human rights groups
frequently write articles and reports about the detention or arrest of prominent campaigners, including Viet Tan activists, some of whom have received lengthy prison sentences for apparently minor, non-violent offences.
As of December 2007, the US State Department’s Human Rights Report
cited ‘at least 30 political detainees’ held by the Vietnamese government,
though ‘no reliable estimates’ were available of other prisoners. At least
14 national security-related prisoners were released during 2007 (US State
Department 2008).
Episodes of contention with neutral or successful outcomes, or amnesty
and release of prisoners, are not generally included in such international
reports, since these cases do not fit the definition of abuses or violations.
A focus on individual dissidents and opposition figures may also inadvertently obscure broader social trends, perceptions and experiences, as human rights advocates publicise and rightly condemn political ‘crackdowns’
but miss gradual loosening of restrictions and expansion of political space


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over a sequence of years. A fuller understanding of the overall trend is only
available through locally-grounded, qualitative empirical research.

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Civil society views of political space
The constructivist, bottom-up approach of my research on the abovementioned episodes of contentious politics, among others, assumes that
people directly involved in collective action have an awareness of the political opportunities and risks associated with it; indeed, they are in the best
position to know the extent of those opportunities and risks. Their voices
and experience, in turn, are fundamental to an understanding of political
space in Vietnam. From February to July 2008, as part of ongoing doctoral

field research, I conducted exploratory interviews with 20 civil society actors
and supporters in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Of these respondents, 10
are founders or directors of Vietnamese NGOs and NGO networks, while
others are Vietnamese staff of international NGOs, journalists, and international donors engaged in giving support to civil society development. Ten
similar interviews, using an identical open-ended questionnaire, were conducted in Hong Kong and Hanoi with respondents working in China. As
these interviews were all conducted in urban areas with staff of registered
or unregistered organisations, they were not intended to form a representative sample of civil society networks, but rather to scope attitudes and
concepts and to identify case studies for further research.
All of the interview respondents self-identified as members of civil society, or in the case of international NGOs and donors, involved in support
to civil society as they understand the term. One question asked to each
respondent dealt with perceptions of political space from the standpoint of
civil society actors: ‘In the past five years, do you think the space for organisations like yours to operate has expanded, shrunk, or stayed about the
same?’
Twenty out of 20 respondents in Vietnam answered that space has expanded, while only two out of 10 of the Chinese interviewees did so. A
general thread running through Vietnamese respondents is that civil society groups can operate with fewer restrictions from the state and have a
greater sense of independence than in the past; respondents offered a wide
range of explanations for why they see this as the case. (Assessments of
space to operate in China, in contrast, were much more mixed, with space
seen as opening for some organisations in some areas, but becoming more
restrictive for others, with most respondents viewing the overall trend as
neutral at best.)
A sample of views offered by Vietnamese NGO respondents6 is as follows:
Our space to operate has expanded a lot. It’s much freer now, both to
talk about civil society and to carry out projects.


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People of my [older] generation are quite happy that we have witnessed a big transformation. There is much less police state control

than there was before the 1990s. With the coming of the Internet,
printers and photocopiers, there’s no way they can control everything!

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Five years ago, no one knew what ‘civil society’ meant, but now we
agree on a translation [xa hoi dan su or ‘civil(ian) society’] and it is no
longer sensitive to use the term.
It’s much easier to register a new organisation now. The authorities
understand better and have more capacity and more supportive attitudes.
More donors are focusing now on local community groups like ours.
It’s become acceptable and normal to start an NGO, and some local
philanthropy is starting, especially in Ho Chi Minh City.
Space has opened up largely because we have more opportunities to
network. Anything we can do ourselves as an organisation, we do;
what we can’t do ourselves, we do as a network.
While this article does not consider potential variations in political space
at sub-regional levels within Vietnam, such variations exist to some extent and should be examined further. One interview respondent in Ho
Chi Minh City, for instance, believes that political space for local associations and other forms of civil society is presently greater in northern
Vietnam than southern, since the government is more concerned about
maintaining political control in the south (interview, April 2008). This finding appears to stand conventional wisdom about southern openness on its
head.
A follow-up question asked what changes respondents expect in the next
five years; most answered that they expect opportunities to continue to increase as in the recent past. On the question of what issues and obstacles are
facing Vietnamese civil society, most responses focused on logistical issues:
When I started this organisation, I thought my largest problems would
be government relations and fundraising. Actually, neither of these
has been difficult! The hardest part has been recruiting and maintaining qualified staff.
Our relations with the government are good, but we have little opportunity to participate in larger government projects like Project 135 [for
poverty reduction in disadvantaged communes]. Our networks and capacity are too small.

A. Wells-Dang: Political space in Vietnam

105

Real estate prices are so high now that it is hard for member associations of our network to find any office space. Most people are working
voluntarily out of their homes.

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We need to learn how to adopt good practices from the business
sector, while still remaining non-profit. We should think in terms
of clients, not beneficiaries, and social entrepreneurship not only
projects from donors.

There’s no money to fund this network, but we do it anyway.

These informants may or may not have knowledge of, interest in or accurate
perceptions concerning macro-level political issues in Vietnam, but they do
have perceptions and experience concerning their own operations and the
opportunities and risks they face. Interviews were conducted in private and
largely in respondents’ native language. Respondents were in no way echoing government policies or the Party line; in fact, most were quite critical of
certain state practices towards civil society, economic policy, ethnic issues
and poverty reduction, and so on. Finally, there was no difference in perceptions between Vietnamese and international respondents, while there
were distinct divergences from the Chinese interview sample. Thus, there
is no reason to believe anyone was untruthful about their perceptions or
exhibiting some form of false consciousness.
Certainly, no respondent was arguing that conditions in Vietnam are
ideal or could not be improved. But most people compared the present

with the past, not with an imagined perfect state. When asked to describe
changes over the last five years, many respondents drew comparisons to
further in the past and also into the future. They did not rush to compare
Vietnam to other countries, but instead with itself at different points in history. Of course, Vietnamese can and do compare their own country to others – most generally to their richer neighbours in the Southeast Asia region,
such as Thailand and Singapore. (In fact, one of the key arguments used by
corporate leaders in the Reunification Park case was that rich Vietnamese
otherwise have to go to Singapore to enjoy a theme park experience!) However, the immediate frame for understanding political space is personal and
domestic: an assessment of today’s situation compared to yesterday’s experience, not compared to another country’s situation that is not as familiar.
This long view is not available to most outsiders, not because they are
ignorant or Vietnam is in some way unique, but because they have not lived
the experiences of Vietnamese actors and consequently see the world differently. Vietnamese civil society, and politics generally, need to be understood on their own terms before they can be profitably compared to others.


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State responses to increasing political space
The Vietnamese government began to take note of the challenges posed by
popular collective action in the aftermath of the 1997 Thai Binh uprising.
Although protests in the Central Highlands have been more widely covered
in the international media, as they fit with the narrative of human rights
abuses against ethnic and religious minorities, the Thai Binh revolt was arguably of greater significance to the Vietnamese state, as it took place not
in a remote ethnic area which no Hanoi or Saigon-based government had
ever fully controlled, but rather in a revolutionary centre of the northern
Red River Delta (Luong 2005).
In the words of one high-level advisor to the Vietnamese government:
In Thai Binh and the Central Highlands, and in some other rural areas

of the country . . . the democratic rights of the people were violated,
their interests were damaged by poor policies, the gap between the
rich and the poor was widening in the market economy, and not a few
officials were corrupt. These factors have led large numbers of people
to make extended appeals to higher levels, and in some cases have
already erupted into conflict or have the potential to do so. (Hoang
2007: 6)
The Thai Binh uprising was the immediate impetus for the passage of
a Decree on Democracy at the Commune Level (Nghi quyet ve Dan chu
co so); in 2007 this was expanded to an Ordinance (Phap lenh) covering
all local government administrative units. Co so, meaning ‘base’, is generally translated as ‘grassroots’, but could perhaps be more appropriately
rendered as ‘rice-roots’ democracy. Rather than procedural democracy via
elections, the rice-roots variety is in principle participatory, focusing on decentralisation, local decision-making, use of government budgets, and consultation. Following Ho Chi Minh’s oft-quoted (in Vietnam) paraphrase of
Abraham Lincoln, government should be ‘of the people, by the people and
for the people’ (cua dan, do dan, vi dan). ‘What is beneficial to the people
we must strive to do; what is harmful to the people we must strive to avoid’
(Ho 1994).
The 1997 Decree and 2007 Ordinance outline what particular legal
and political decisions must be publicised at the local level (‘ensuring
the people’s right to know’), which must be ‘discussed and decided directly by the people’ at the village level, and which should be decided
by government officials after consultation and comment from the people (Socialist Republic of Vietnam 2007). In general, the first category
refers to government policies at the central and provincial levels, the
second relates to infrastructure and social affairs within the village, and
the third to implementation of government programmes at the local
level.


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Rice-roots democracy should not be confused with Western liberalism.
It is meant more as a ‘social value’ (Hoang 2007) or methodology of governance than as a political system. Thus, as a government advisor explains,
‘Vietnam [indicating the Vietnamese party-state] has a political orientation
and socialist ideology that is different from liberal democracy. However, in
the process of developing democracy, Vietnam is consciously learning and
applying appropriate theories and practices from developed countries and
the management experience of Western law-based states where democracy
has a centuries-old history, tradition and culture’ (Hoang 2007: 4).
The decree and ordinance on rice-roots democracy are one example
of new legislation aimed to increase popular voice within the existing
political system. Along with legal reform has come a stronger role for the
National Assembly as the vehicle for debating and passing laws. During
the past decade, the assembly has promulgated legislation on gender
equity (2006), reform of the political system at the commune, ward and
town levels (2002), conflict resolution and local mediation (1998), public
administration reform, and anti-corruption. Resolutions of the 9th and
10th Congresses of the Vietnamese Communist Party (in 2001 and 2006)
have included statements calling for a ‘law-based state’ and ‘democratic
society’. This is reflected in what is now the pre-eminent political slogan
in Vietnam, a description of the goals of Doi moi: ‘a rich people, a strong
nation and a just, democratic and civilised society’ (dan giau, nuoc manh,
xa hoi cong bang, dan chu, van minh). Thus, in the intent of the Vietnamese
state, Renewal is not simply a programme of economic reform, as it is
frequently portrayed by international observers; it includes both economic
and political elements as part of a plan for national development.
On paper, then, Vietnam has taken steps towards greater democracy
within its one-party political system. The intent of rice-roots democracy legislation is not to end the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, but rather

to preserve it by preventing future conflicts such as the 1997 unrest in Thai
Binh. The result, notwithstanding, is a significant opening of political space
– if it can be implemented and realised. Actual practice often varies considerably from formal principles. When the above laws and ordinances were
promulgated, some local officials were given basic information and training
to carry them out, but on a one-time only basis with a limited budget and no
follow-up.7 Other localities were reportedly not trained at all (World Bank
2003: 99). Meanwhile, as a result of administrative reform procedures, term
limits of five years have been enforced for local government positions, so
that none of the people trained in 1998 or 2002 are still in their original offices.8 Moreover, there is a noticeable lack of local political will to carry out
some of the elements of rice-roots democracy, resulting in ineffective implementation in many locations (Hoang 2007), particularly in remote areas
and further away from Hanoi. External evaluations of the 1998 decree range
from limited positive effects to manipulation and co-optation by local officials, but all agree that low capacity, limited funding, and poor application


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have hindered its reach (Shanks et al. 2004: xiii). According to the Democracy Ordinance and other legal documents, for instance, the proposal to redevelop Reunification Park should have been posted for public discussion
by the Hanoi People’s Committee before a decision was made. In practice,
the invitation to two well-connected corporations was made behind closed
doors, and leaked to the public after the fact.
There is a conceptual problem here too. If the elements of the Doi moi
programme are addressed in the sequential order of the ‘rich people, strong
nation’ slogan, it is not clear whether wealth and strength will ever lead to
equity and democracy. That is, legal reforms notwithstanding, the current
Vietnamese government is giving priority to economic growth, industrial
production for export, and urbanisation over the needs of rural and urban

communities. Public debate on these political topics often happens too late,
when it happens at all. However, it is in this space between the letter of the
law and de facto government policy that activism can occur, as in the case of
Reunification Park. Effective actions require engagement and negotiation
with the state, as the ‘state-in-society’ approach (Migdal 2001) suggests; but
activism also calls for independent thinking and strategizing.

Implications
In their conclusion to Contentious Politics, Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow (2006: 199) argue that ‘Citizens of authoritarian regimes are normally
compliant, rising in resistance only when dramatic windows of opportunity
open up’. This reasonable-sounding generalisation does not easily hold in
the case of Vietnam, which is clearly authoritarian by Tilly and Tarrow’s
definitions, and where the windows of opportunity, while real, are contested
and ambiguous rather than dramatic. Although Western-style social movement organisations and opposition parties do not exist in Vietnam, some
citizens nevertheless engage in political discussion, collective action and
contentious politics ‘in spite of their seeming powerlessness at the hands
of [the] state’ (Loeschmann 2006: 1). These are not merely ‘hidden transcripts’ or ‘weapons of the weak’ (Scott 1985, 1990) but rather active efforts
at contention through a repertoire of ‘rightful resistance’ (O’Brien and Li
2006).
Existing approaches to measure political space shed some light on, yet
are insufficient to explain political dynamics in Vietnam. While attempts
to rank or classify countries according to indicators as ‘open’ or ‘closed’,
‘democratic’ or ‘not free’ may have macro-level comparative value at an
abstracted level (Tilly and Tarrow 2006: 62–7), such etic rankings and definitions tell us little about the complexities of politics in any particular society. Political space cannot be quantified on a linear scale or graphed in
a box; it must be understood within a national or local context. Furthermore, static pictures of the nature of political space cannot do justice to
the historical processes at work in political change; a time dimension is


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essential (Sztompka 1993). Political analysts need therefore to focus not
just on the immediate impact of current events, but also on cumulative longterm trends and processes that build over time.
These trends are less visible in structures and legal systems, which can
serve as an unchanging or slowly evolving fac¸ade, behind which social practices may in fact be changing rapidly. Trends and processes can be better
captured through understanding the perceptions and experiences of those
who live through them, even if these actors do not have complete information. Outcomes are not predetermined but are contingent on a range of
factors, which always include governance and the state as well as transnational influences, but should also not leave out the agency of civil society
actors to expand the political space that is available to them.
If this analysis is correct, then political developments in Vietnam will
be determined more by domestic factors, including the role of civil society networks, than by international trends. Broad, far-reaching transformations like the eastern European ‘colour revolutions’ are unlikely, as are
scenarios of overseas opposition groups making common cause with discontented urban intellectuals. Instead, political changes are taking place
within the complex and actually existing political system and society, and
citizens join with elements of the state to express their views. As Vietnam edges toward a more open polity, change will come first from the riceroots.

Notes
1 I am grateful to Matt Desmond (Oxfam International) for pointing out this reference.
2 Meaning a private theme park modelled after Disneyland. The Walt Disney Corporation was never involved in these plans, but as in other cases of brand piracy,
was probably not harmed by the publicity.
3 Data on Reunification Park, except where noted, is taken from personal interviews and media and legal analysis shared with the author.
4 Notable recent examples of online organizing in China have been the protests
against a chemical factory in Xiamen (Li 2007) and railroad construction in
Shanghai (French 2008), both conducted mainly by communication through cell
phone text messaging.
5 Personal communication, March 2008.
6 Interviews were conducted in a mix of Vietnamese and English. Most quotations
are translated from Vietnamese by the author.

7 Interview with Vietnamese official, Ministry of Home Affairs, December 2007.
8 Interview with local government officials, Thanh Hoa province, August 2007.
Some officials have been promoted or rotated offices, while others have retired
or been transferred.

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