Group 1 final group paper of leadership (final version)

Viet Nam–Japanese University
Viet Nam National University

LEADERSHIP
GROUP PAPER
ANALYSIS ON LEADERSHIP STYLE OF VIETNAMESE GOVERNANCE

Group I
Name and student ID
Hoang Hai Chau - 17110076
Vu Hoang Dung - 17110077
Nguyen Thu Ha - 17110078
Nguyen Thu Hang - 17110079
Phan Thi Quynh Hoa – 17110080

Hanoi, October 2017


Table of Contents
Abstract.............................................................................................................................1
1.

Introduction and Rationale.......................................................................................2
1.1.
1.2.

Introduction....................................................................................................................2
Rationale.........................................................................................................................2

2.

Literature review and Research question..................................................................3

3.

Methodology..............................................................................................................5
Literature review...............................................................................................................................5
Web-check Statistic............................................................................................................................6
2.1.
Limitations......................................................................................................................6

4.

Key findings...............................................................................................................6
4.2.1. Symbols of autocracy in leadership by the Party-State.........................................................9
4.2.2 Impact of autocratic symbols of leadership in Viet Nam......................................................11

5.

Discussion................................................................................................................12

6.

Conclusion...............................................................................................................14

References.......................................................................................................................15

Abstract
The study aims to analyze the relationship between the leadership style of Vietnam political
system that is representative by the Communist Party of Vietnam with its influence level
towards people via measuring people’s attention and participation level. There are five main

parts of this study. The first one is introduction and rationale of the study which is followed
by the literature review and research questions. The third part will describe methodology
used in this study. After that, the most important section of key findings will be provided. In
this part, evidence of people’s attention and participation level towards domestic politics life
will present. Following that, analysis of relationship between symbols of autocratic
leadership styles of the Party and low level of people’s interests in politics. Then, applying
the theory of 5 levels of leadership will be used to explain for the influencing relationship.
Lastly, the paper will provide some points for discussion and conclusion. It is expected our
effort contributes a small part to analysis and researches on the Party leadership in
particular and Vietnam political system in general.

1


1.

Introduction and Rationale

1.1. Introduction
The political structure of Vietnam is unique. Despite the fact that Vietnam is not the
only country pursuing the one-Party state model and socialism under Marxism
ideology, the political structure and system of Vietnam have distinctive characteristics.
Vietnam is defined as the State of single-led Party, the Communist Party of Vietnam
(the Party). The Party’s leadership is comprehensive, covering all political, economic,
cultural and social aspects and all legislative, executive and judicial fields. The
principle of the Party leadership is the combination between centralism and
democracy, namely to ensure centralized leadership based on democracy and to ensure
democracy under the centralized leadership.
There is an endless argument over the characteristics of the Party leadership. From
Western scholars’ opinion, many people believe that the Party leadership is dictatorial

and autocratic (Russell Heng Hiang Khng) 1. On the other hand, it is argued by
domestic politic scholars that democracy is already demonstrated in various forms of
people’s participation in state administration, which are recognized by law and assured
by the State. Particularly, it is formally announced in the Constitution that “the State
of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a socialist law-governed s of the people, by
the people and for the people. All State powers belong to the people... The State
guarantees and unceasingly promotes the mastery of the people in all aspects.”2
The year of 2016 is special for Vietnamese people and American people as both of
countries held national elections to find out the best people for leadership.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that while the U.S President election attracted attention
of global people, including Vietnam, the 14 th National Assembly election in Vietnam
likely received low responsiveness of Vietnam citizens, especially the youth. From
that observation, the group consider a question on the relationship between the
leadership style of the Party and people’s attention level to politics in Vietnam.
Therefore, this study aims to figure out influence level of the Party’s leadership
towards Vietnamese people’s politics attention through analyzing characteristics of
leadership styles.
1.2. Rationale
After reviewing dozens of related documents and researches on the political system of
Vietnam, we decide to analyze the leadership of the political system in Vietnam,
particularly the Party leadership because of the following reasons:

1 Russell Heng Hiang Khng, Leadership in Vietnam: Pressures for Reform and Their Limits, Contemporary
Southest Asia Vol 15, pp. 98-110
2 Article 3 of the Constitution 2013


 It is necessary to have a deep understanding about the Vietnam political system
including its structure, decision-making mechanism and process and
characteristics that provides fundamental base for students of the Master

Program of Public Policy. During the process of topic selecting, each member
of the group discussed and shared opinions and understanding topic by topic
and we realized that we have lacked a comprehensive understanding about the
domestic politics and we believe that it is a common of other people in the
class. Therefore, we agree to work on that topic despite challenges we would
have faced that will present in the next section.
 Almost all previous studies and researches on Vietnamese political system and
governance focus on analysis of organizational structure and operation
mechanism that often fell into tendency of either critism of the single-Party
system or overestimation of the Party achievement. Hardly, it is a study on
leadership characteristics of the Vietnam Communist Party. Therefore, in this
study, we would like to apply theories introduced to analyze the leadership
style of the Party as a united subjective.
 Last but not least, “Leadership is influence. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing
less.”3 (John. C. Maxwell). That indicates the correlational relationship
between the leadership level and the influence level. In other words, in order to
evaluate the leadership level of a political system, it could be based on the
influence level on people living under that system. The influence level could be
measured by the level attention and involvement of citizens in national political
life. From the angle of leadership style of the Party, the study will provide some
evidences for low attention and involvement of people in politics in Vietnam.
With all above mentioned reasons, it is expected that this study provides a new angle
of view of the leadership style and contributes a small part to analysis and researches
on the Party leadership in particular and Vietnam political system in general.
2. Literature review and Research question
In order to develop research question, the group review dozens of documents and
researches related to topics of leaderships, leadership styles, Vietnamese political
system/structure and Vietnamese leadership and governance. This step helps us to find
a gap of studying leadership of Vietnamese political system and develop our direction
for this study.

First of all, according to Gary Yukl (2013), “Leadership is the process of influencing
others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the
process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared

3 Maxwell, J.C. (2011). The Five Levels of Leadership – Proven steps to Maximize your Potential,1sted.


objectives.” (p.7) 4. Whereas, John. C. Maxwell also said that “Leadership is
influence. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.5” According to Katz & Kahn (1978),
“Leadership is the influential increment over and above mechanical compliance with
the routine directives of the organization” (p. 528)6. In another study, Rauch &
Behling (1984) added on to this by stating that “Leadership is the process of
influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement” (p. 46)7.
All above definitions of leadership demonstrate a common that leadership is the
influencing process of the leaders to the followers to achieve certain objectives
through making changes.
In order to give influence, the leaders affect the followers in different ways. The
leaders may use traits, skills, and behaviors sharping their leadership styles to interact
with the followers. Great leaders are people who are able to make the followers
believe and accept their instructions and they are in their best interests to implement
given tasks in order to achieve the mutual goals. The influence that leaders have on
their subordinates will usually decide the leadership effectiveness which is relied on a
number of indicators such as the followers’ attitudes, leaders’ performances, the extent
to which the organization’s target is achieved, and the level of successful career ladder
of the leader.
In term of leadership styles, there are different way to classify but it could account two
basic styles of Leadership, as democratic leadership style and autocratic leadership
style. Autocratic leadership style is a style in which the leaders make all decisions and
provides commands what to do with closely supervision 8. Meanwhile, people who
pursue democratic leadership style tend to encourage participation in decisions and

work with the followers to determine what to do with proper supervision. Gastil
(1994) states: “Democratic group leadership amounts to giving group members
responsibility, improving the general abilities and leadership skills of other group
members, and assisting the group in its decision-making process.” (p.403). Discussing
to the impact of leadership style, David De Cremer asserted that “Thus, if a leader is
not autocratic, group members will feel attachment toward the group, and followers
will therefore be focused on the subsequent behavior that the group leader displays.
Conversely, if a leader is seen as autocratic, subsequent self-sacrificial behavior is
believed to influence followers’ reactions much less.” (p.81). In brief, the democratic
style is considered more efficient than the other because it requires participation and
4 Yukl, Gary A, (2013), Leadership in organizations / Gary Yukl. — 8th edition.
5 Maxwell, J.C. (2011). The Five Levels of Leadership – Proven steps to Maximize your Potential,1sted.
6 Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1978), The social psychology of organizations, 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley
7 Rauch, C. F., & Behling, O. (1984), Functionalism: Basis for an alternate approach to the study of
leadership.
8 Ohio State studies


attention from the followers which is necessary to turn out positive and feasible
expertise of the subordinates rather than only the knowledge of the leader.
Regarding the researches on leadership and leadership style of Vietnam governance or
political system, it is noticeable that almost all of them focus to study organizational
structure, operation mechanism, the key fields of the State or the relationships among
Vietnam and other countries rather than leadership characteristics of the Vietnam
Communist Party. In some researches, scholars seemed to define the leadership style
of Vietnam leaders as autocratic without providing evidences. For example, Lewis M.
Stern stated that “In practice the meaning and impact of the plenary session has
depended more on the operating style of the general secretary and the chemistry
among members of the Central Committee than the Party organization's rules.”
(p.909)9 Russell heng Hiang Khng also indicated that “the Vietnam Communist Party

has been dictatorial and corrupt, …” (p.99)10.
In this study, we provide a hypothesis that the leadership style that is the manner of
the leaders work and interact with the followers will determine the influence level of
the leadership. As a result, the democratic style tends to encourage people’s
attention and participation while the autocratic style restricts them. Therefore, we
consider characteristics of the leadership style of the Vietnam Communist Party, the
supreme leader of the country as the direct reason to influence the level of attention
and participation of people in the politics life. To solve that hypothesis, this study will
focus on two key questions:
i) What is leadership style of the Party?
ii) How is the influence level of leadership in Viet Nam towards Vietnamese
people via measuring the level of attention and participation of people towards
political activities?
3. Methodology
Due to constraint of resources, especially time constraint, this assignment mostly
bases on desk study methodology.
Literature review
We find and review dozens of documents consisting of both primary and secondary
data. The primary data include official documents that were issued by the Party and
the Government of Vietnam regulating organizational structure, operational principles
and implementation instructions. Some examples are:
- The Constitution 1992 and 2013
- Resolution No. 04/NQ-TW dated 30 October 2016
- Law on the Promulgation of Legal Documents 2015
9 Lewis M. Stern. Party Plenums and Leadership Style in Vietnam. Asian Survey, Vol. 35, No. 10 (Oct., 1995),
pp. 909-921
10 Russell heng Hiang Khng. Leadership in Vietnam: Pressures for Reform and Their Limits. Contemporary
Southest Asia, Vol 15. (1993), pp. 98-110

The secondary data consist of researches on leadership, leadership style and the
Vietnamese leadership. They are:
- Yukl, Gary A, (2013). Leadership in organizations / Gary Yukl. — 8th ed
- Katz, D., & Kahn, R. L. (1978). The social psychology of organizations, 2nd
ed. New York: John Wiley
- Rauch, C. F., & Behling, O. (1984). Functionalism: Basis for an alternate
approach to the study of leadership.
- Stogdill, R. M. (1974). Handbook of leadership: A survey of the literature. New
York: Free Press.
- Russell heng Hiang Khng (1993). Leadership in Vietnam: Pressures for
Repform and Their Limits. Contemporary Southest Asia, Vol 15.
- Alexander L. Vuving (2017). The 2016 leadership change in Vietnam and Its
long-term implications. Southers Asian Affairs 2017.
- Lewis M. Stern (1995). Party Plenums and Leadership Style in Vietnam. Asian
Survey, Vol. 36.
Web-check Statistic
Besides documents review, we also conduct a statistic on the number of visiting of the
official websites of minitries and the Party. We use the tool developed by the
similarweb.com to count total visiting times of available ministry website and their
ranking in the search trending. In addition, we also make a comparison between top
keywords searching on Google in Vietnam and the global in 2016. The results of those
statisctics will be present in the next section.
2.1. Limitations
As mentioned above, this study is conducted in significant resource constraints.
Firstly, we only have had three days to review related documents to develop
hypotheses and research direction as well as prepare for a presentation on the forth
day. Secondly, it is difficult to access data and information related to leadership of the
Party and Vietnamese governance. It is necessary to explore academic researches and
studies with scientific evidences rather than propaganda and polished reports. Lastly,
politics is a complex issue that requires multidimetional analysis. It would be great if

the group was able to access and make several interviews with political experts about
this topic. That would increase the persuasiveness of this study. However, due to
resource limitation, it is impossible. Instead of mentioned limitations, it is expected
that the study provides a small contribution to research work of leadership and
Vietnam leadership system.
4. Key findings
4.1. The level of attention and participation of Vietnamese people towards politics


In order to measuring the level of attention of people towards politics, we base on two
evidences. First fact is the most popular keywords searching on Google and second
fact is the visiting number of official websites of ministries.
The table below shows top 10 most keyword searched in Viet Nam and global in
2016. It is a big difference in politics interest between Vietnamese people and the
global. Vietnamese people tended to spending much more time and interests in
entertainment such as game, sport, music, movie and TV show than the politics.
Among 30 search trending, only 4 keywords related to politics. It is noticeable that
half of them about the politics in the U.S, Donald Trump and Obama. Also, the official
list of 12 member of the Politburo was at lower rank than two the U.S presidents. It
demonstrates a fact that the attention of Vietnamese people towards politics, especially
the domestic politics is very low. That is whether related to leadership capacity of our
elite group.
Table 1. The most popular searches 2016 in Vietnam and Global on Google
Topic

Searche
s

People

News

Global
1. Pokémon Go (game)
2. iPhone 7 (technology)
3. Donald Trump (politician)
4. Prince (people)
5. Powerball (finance)
6. David Bowie (people)
7. Deadpool (movie)
8. Olympics (sport event)
9. Slither.io (game)
10. Suicide Squad (movie)
1. Donald Trump (politics)
2. Hillary Clinton (politics)
3. Michael Phelps (sport)
4. Melania Trump (politics)
5. Simone Biles (sport)
6. Bernie Sanders (politics)
7. Steven Avery (social)
8. Céline Dion (social)
9. Ryan Lochte (sport)
10. Tom Hiddleston (social)
1. US Election (politics)
2. Olympics (sport)
3. Brexit (politics)
4. Orlando Shooting (social)
5. Zika Virus (social)
6. Panama Papers (politics)
7. Nice (social)

8. Brussels (politics)

Vietnam
1. Game Slither (game)
2. Euro 2016 (sport event)
3. We don’t belong together (music)
4. Behind the girl (music)
5. Pokemon Go (game)
6. Vietlott (finance)
7. Minh Beo (people)
8. Descendant of the sun (movie)
9. Wife of the people (music)
10. Challenge the comedian (TV show)
1. Minh beo (social)
2. Song Joong Ki (social)
3. Ho Van Cuong (social)
4. Donald Trump (politics)
5. Obama (polictic)
6. Trinh Xuan Thanh (polictics)
7. Song Hye Kyo (social)
8. Tung Son (social)
9. Allan Walker (social)
10. Lam Tam Nhu (social)
1. Hurricane No.7 (social)
2. University benchmark 2016 (social)
3. Latest news about Minh Beo (social)
4. Miss Viet Nam 2016 (social)
5. Obama comes to Viet Nam
(politics)
6. Tortoise Hoan Kiem (social)

9. Dallas Shooting (social)
10. 熊熊 熊熊 ( Kumamoto
Earthquake) (social)

7. U23 Viet Nam (sport)
8. Hoang Xuan Vinh (sport)
9. Result of Mega Lottery (social)
10. List of 12th politburo (politics)
Source: Google Trends - />In the era of technology development, website is important channel to connect the
people to governance offices. Hence, we use the number of visiting in official
websites of ministries to measure the attention level of people to leadership activities
of the governance system. The statistics result shows that the number of visiting to
those website is very low. The highest number is 2,480,000 times of the Ministry of
Justice. However, it only ranks at 448 of search trending in Vietnam in the last six
months. It is significant that the visiting number of the Ministry of Justice is forth
times as many as other ministries. That proves a fact of low attention and
communication between the people and the leaders in Vietnam.
Figure 1.The number of visiting times of ministries ‘website and their rank in search
trending in the last 6 months

In term of participation level of people to politics at local levels, the data of Viet Nam
Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) shows
that Despite some improvements, citizen participation in local political life and
decision-making remained the weakest governance aspect compared to the other five
dimensions in 2016, similar to previous years’ findings. Therefore, innovative
approaches for engaging voters in future national and grassroots elections, and in local

decision-making, are needed to ensure their legitimate civic right to political
participation.
Figure 2.Participation of people in politics at local level (PAPI score)11

All above results demonstrate a fact that Vietnamese people have low attention and
participation into the policy and decision-making process. To understand the reasons,
the next part will analyze characteristics of leadership styles of Vietnam current
governance system that is representative by the Party.
4.2. Analysis of leadership style and its impact to peoples’s political interest
With agreement to David De Cremer’s view that negative feeling and diminished
interest of the people in political issues is associated with symbols of autocracy in
leadership style, this part focus on analyzing the autocracy style of leadership in Viet
Nam and its influences on people’s attitude.
4.2.1. Symbols of autocracy in leadership by the Party-State
With regard to the one leading Party system, the Communist Party of Vietnam is the
only Party who is officially recognized in Viet Nam political system. This is clearly
stated in Provision 1, Article 4 – Vietnam Constitution 2013:
“the Communist Party of Vietnam, the vanguard of the Vietnamese working
class, simultaneously the vanguard of the toiling people and of the Vietnamese
nation, the faithful representative of the interests of the working class, the
toiling people, and the whole nation, acting upon the Marxist-Leninist doctrine
and Ho Chi Minh's thought, is the leading force of the State and society”.
11 PAPI is the largest time-series policy monitoring tool that captures the provincial performance in governance
and public administration in Viet Nam. PAPI has captured and reflected the experiences of nearly 89,000
citizens.


The Constitution of Vietnam in 2013 is the highest legal document regulating the
political system of Vietnam. In this Constitution, other Parties are not mentioned and
there are not any legal documents of Vietnam regulate the existing of other Parties. It

means that in Vietnam, the Party is authoritarian and its leadership is comprehensive,
covering all political, economic, cultural and social aspects and all legislative,
executive and judicial fields. The power is vested in a small group of ruling elites that
form the core of the Party. Their leading role is expressed in setting guidelines and
policies in key areas of the state through Resolution adopted by Party organizations
and demonstrating State’s personnel and organization. Party members are trained by
Party organizations to take over the tasks in the state administration apparatus. Party
organizations give opinions on the posting of leading officials of state administrative
bodies. In Vietnam, the heads of state agencies are Party’s members and must have
deep knowledge of Marxist-Leninist doctrine and Ho Chi Minh's thought. The fact
that all Politburo members are members of the Party. Most of them both keep party
positions and state positions.
One more point is the control of civil society in Vietnam that should be considered as
an expression of autocratic leadership. Civil society is an effective channel for people
to involve in the political activities of one country. It is considered as an important
bridge between the authorities and their citizen. As Drake E, Malik A, Xu Y, Kotsioni
I, Habashy RE, et al. (2001) Good Governance and the World Bank, civil society is
used to “refer to groups and organizations which act independently of the state and
market in order to promote diverse interests in society”, it also contribute to a good
governance of the country. However, the Resolution No. 04/NQ-TW dated 30 October
2016 discourages the development of civil society in Vietnam. It is considered that
people who “reject and deny the Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh's thoughts and
organizational principles of the Party, especially the principle of democratic centralism
and demanding the implementation of "multi-party, multi-party and asking for
development of civil society” are reactionaries12.
As above ideas, the Vietnamese political system has characteristics of the autocratic
leadership style. State agencies make decisions, orient people what to do and closely
supervise them.

12 NHỮNG BIỂU HIỆN SUY THOÁI VỀ TƯ TƯỞNG CHÍNH TRỊ, ĐẠO ĐỨC, LỐI SỐNG, "TỰ DIỄN

BIẾN", "TỰ CHUYỂN HÓA"
Phản bác, phủ nhận nền dân chủ xã hội chủ nghĩa, Nhà nước pháp quyền xã hội chủ nghĩa; đòi thực hiện thể chế
"tam quyền phân lập", phát triển "xã hội dân sự" . Phủ nhận nền kinh tế thị trường định hướng xã hội chủ
nghĩa, chế độ sở hữu toàn dân về đất đai.
(Ý số 2, mục 3, phần 2 – Toàn văn Nghị quyết Trung ương 4 Khoá XII)


4.2.2 Impact of autocratic symbols of leadership in Viet Nam
The manifestations of autocratic style listed in section 4.2.1 are easily identified and
compared with the opposite one in the Western or American political system, leading
to frustration and diminished interest and participation in political issues.
The negative effects of those arbitrary features will be analyzed in the 5 levels of
leadership theorized by John. C. Maxwell in relation to the Opposite one in the West
or United States.
At level 1- leadership by rights, In the West and the United States, the highest power
belongs to the National Assembly, which represents the rule of law. The National
Assembly also holds the role of supervising the activities of the ruling Party, thus
implements the supreme power of the people. That is why leadership by title is so
direct and straight. Meanwhile, with the political system of Vietnam, the Communist
Party is the highest authority and only has a self-monitoring mechanism. National
Assembly is elected by the people but behind the Party in terms of power. Thus,
leadership by title for State and people-voted Parliament is more difficult to be
realized. It seems that the power is vested in a small group of population in CPV.
In addition, the restriction on the formation of civil society as well as funding and the
participation in the organization of the CPV's social and political organizations has
shown limited leadership in the civil society. While this is an advantage for western
and American countries to show the democratic leadership of the people.
At level 2, 3 and 4, the autocratic symbols are real obstacles to the acceptance and
satisfaction of the people towards the CPV’s leadership while democratic symbols of
the western and American political system are great advantages for them to attract

people. In western and American countries, by the pattern in which people are allowed
to choose to vote for the Parties, the relationship between the political Party and the
people becomes closer with the decisive role depends on the people. Given the choice
of the ruling party and the representative of the country, people are therefore more
likely to acknowledge the results achieved for the country and for themselves. Effects
at level 2, 3, 4 so that are easy to achieve if the party selected gives satisfactory
performance. In contrast, in Vietnam, people have the right to vote for members of the
National Assembly, and even though the Party members are widely proposed by the
people, it is only the choice of a virtuous person who has the talent to perform
publicly job. The political framework and the way the Party operates are "fixed". In
the Communist Party there is no mechanism for the competition of a different political
platform. Thus, the relationship is rigidly enforced and people are therefore unlikely to
feel co-ownership of achievements or share difficulties and failures in the Party's
leadership process.
Finally, the campaign between the opposite parties in the West and the United States
allows for the emergence images of leaders, which enhances the ability to achieve


leadership by respect. While in Vietnam, the leadership image is somehow blurry and
does not have a close impression on the people and to them leadership is only a
representative image of party organizations. Influences on the 5th level of leadership
by respect is therefore more difficult to achieve. In reality, the respected images of
leaders such as President Ho Chi Minh and General Vo Nguyen closely went with the
war years before the 75th year. In the country's reconstruction from year 1975 to now,
there are no respective images of leadership which are widely earn the respects from
Vietnamese people.
Figure 3. Overview of the 5 levels of Leadership13

5. Discussion
While it is vital to prove democracy orientation in leadership style enhancement and

development to achieve and maintain sustainable influence towards the people, the
Communist Party of Viet Nam once again denied the necessity and intension to reform
the political system in Viet Nam in their resolution no.04-NĐ/TW dated 30/10/2016
and objected the idea of developing multi-party political system, trias political and
civil society. The Party based its decision on the rationale that the western model just
facilitates the democracy for a minority of population. Though various parties are able
to exist and play in the political system of those countries, only two dominant parties
13 Adapted from “The 5 levels of leadership – Proven Steps to maximize your potential” by J. C. Maxwell
(2011, p.6)


takes turns to take the leadership of the countries. It is believed that it is a minority of
population who are capitalists and own the majority of capital and social treasures are
the real donors of these parties and the two parties rather represent the benefit of the
small group rather than the benefit of the people. On the other hand, the Communist
Party represent the benefit of the majority of population including workers, farmers
and other labors by following Marxism-Leninism. All the Communist Party needs to
do is reinforce their own organization and improve their own members to commit with
the orientation to Marxism-Leninism.
The two political ideologies are still showing their own advantages and proved
contribution to the development of the countries and being accepted by the people of
the countries at the moment. Also there are no political crisis in the current context
and situation shows no political crisis. Thus, the authors agree with the current view of
the CPV that there is no necessity in short term to reform political system. However,
the challenge is how to improve the level of influence by CPV leadership with the
existing disadvantages of the current module.
The idea of facilitating a mechanism that allow the proposal and competition of
different political programs within CPV may be a potential solution in short term to
decrease the autocratic symbols that is creating negative impact to the people’s interest
to the political system.

6. Conclusion
Leadership styles of Viet Nam and Western/American countries have their own
characteristics due to different nature of political ideologies that is pursued in the
countries and different patterns of eastern/western cultures. However, the requirement
to constantly improving and enhancing the influence towards people are the same
challenge for leadership in both sides. In the context that any proposed solutions so far
bring about both opportunities and challenges and no ideal solution is available for the
problem of both systems and a more advanced political system is still in expectation,
to achieve stable and sustainable support by the people, both systems have to find
their ways to eliminate autocracy and push up democracy in their leading styles.


References
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implications. Southers Asian Affairs 2017.
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Lewis M. Stern (1995). Party Plenums and Leadership Style in Vietnam. Asian Survey, Vol. 36.
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