Declining opportunities for speaking out: The impact of Vietnam's new leadership on grassroots collective action

Abstract

This article examines how Vietnam's 13th Politburo elected in 2021 affects citizens’ willingness to raise their voices about policy issues through extra-institutional channels such as protests, petitions, and social media. I argue that an exceptionally high number of public security figures in the Politburo reflected the concerns of the Communist Party's Central Committee over regime-destabilizing grassroots activism. Using an online survey experiment administered to 1500 Vietnamese citizens, which manipulates the information on the repressive nature of the public security institution and police representatives’ backgrounds, I find that a heavy police representation in the 13th Politburo makes respondents less likely to sign petitions, share their concerns on social media, and take to the streets to voice their discontent with the government. My findings suggest that single-party regimes can reverse democratic development, particularly the participation dimension, through strategic leadership arrangements.