Presentation to
Seminar of the Like‐Minded Donor Countries,
Royal Norwegian Embassy, Hanoi, December 3, 2008
Introduction
This paper attempts to advance the discussion of civil society in Vietnam beyond contemporary academic preoccupation with so-called development ‘nongovernmental organisations’ and state-affiliated research centres and institutes to political movements and religious groups that have become advocates of human rights, democratization and religious freedom. These groups have been largely marginalized by mainstream academics who study civil society in Vietnam. This paper will focus on the roles of Bloc 8406 and associated nascent ‘political parties’ and trade unions that are currently mounting challenges to the political hegemony of the Vietnam Communist Party. This paper will also analyze the role of external agents, such as the Viet Tan Party, in providing material, financial and human resource assistance to political civil society groups.
In the past, the activities of human rights, pro-democracy and religious freedom groups were relatively compartmentalized from each other (Thayer 2006a). Due to increasing networking between politically active civil society groups crossfertilization is taking place and a nascent movement is gradually taking shape despite state repression. This development is occurring when the legitimacy of the Vietnam Communist Party is coming under challenges due to public discontent with endemic corruption, rising inflation, environmental pollution, traffic jams and other social ills. The paper concludes by noting that Vietnam may face the risk of domestic instability if the one-party state fails to address adequately the challenge of political civil society.
This paper is divided into four parts. Part one addresses the changing nature of Vietnam’s one-party system. Part two discusses the question: what is civil society in a Vietnamese context? Part three analyzes the rise of political civil society primarily through a focus on the activities of Bloc 8406 and the Viet Tan. And finally, part four offers some observations on the challenge these political developments pose for Vietnam’s one-party system.
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