Reinventing rural development in Vietnam: Discursive constructions of grassroots democracy during the renovation reform

Abstract

Over the past decades Vietnam has seen striking efforts to reinvent the exercise of democratic rural development. Promotion of grassroots democracy, notably under the Grassroots Democracy Decree (GDD), has been an acute response by Communist Party and government to large scale unrest among the rural populace owing to dissatisfactions with a felt mismatch between espoused commitments to 'good governance' and its actual practice. Through evidence from field work, this paper assesses the implications of the GDD in the central and northern highlands, analyzing how the promotion of grassroots democracy is discursively constructed by rural development professionals. The results outline three dominant discourses, which center on their respective interests in liberalist democratization, improved efficiency in state renovation, and enhanced accountability in governing local policy ambiguities. It argues that 'grassroots democracy' is serving as a conceptual mediator, supporting learning between diverging interests associated with rural development and different ideological positions shrouding the notion of democracy itself. Yet, given the extent that discourses are reflective of how professionals relate to grassroots aspirations, grassroots movements, which originally ushered the Party and central government to pass the GDD, have a significant struggle ahead of them to affect concrete changes in professionals' practices.

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“…The GDD is believed to be a form of ideological democratisation rather than empowerment (Larsen, 2011). In addition, according to Duong (2004, p. 24), there have been inconsistencies in the implementation of the GDD throughout the country and a lack of commitment to it by local leaders.…”

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“…This custom of networking and negotiating is "distinctly rooted in the legacy of Confucian ideology surviving through shifting forms of centralised authority under the imperial court and successive eras of concentrated powers during the French reign and subsequent Leninist democratic centralism" (Larsen, 2011).…”

“…This translates into genuine attempts by the Vietnamese one party state government to reach agreement with people's wishes through extensive consultation at several administrative levels prior to a decision or policy approvals. In the consultation process "people will go a long way to achieve consensus without anyone losing face in the process" (Larsen, 2011). This consultative custom finally obtained its legal framework by Decree 29/1998/ND-CP on the exercise of democracy in the commune (popularly called the Grassroots Democracy Decree or GDD), which gives higher levels of decision making power for the communes and increased people's participation in policy implementation (UNDP, 2006).…”

“…Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) has been "promoting grassroots democracy to yield new formalised rules for villages, which were to be adopted by the whole community to govern social relations on the basis of self-autonomy" (Larsen, 2011).…”

“…The new administrative conditions were central to enabling the agricultural sector having a pivotal role in poverty reduction (Larsen, 2011). Craig and Porter (2006) wrote "Vietnam is by almost any standards a 'liberalisation -brings -poverty -reduction' success story, but it is also a 'strong -state -brings -economic -success' story, a place where security and empowerment have a strong socialist ring to them, and where governance is run along powerfully illiberal lines."…”