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Civil Society in Vietnam: Perceptions, Actions, State-society and Theoretical Reflections
Organizer, Chair and Discussant: Irene Norlund, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies
Civil society was until recently perceived to be inexistent in Vietnam by most scholars as organizations were not considered independent of the state as pointed out in classical theories about civil society, or it was so incomparable that it had little resemblance with civil society in other countries. Moreover it was not considered to be a category in the perception of the one-party state. Social sciences have moved toward new theories about civil society, an increased acceptance of the comparability of different societies and at the same time the uniqueness of each society. According to definitions in recent civic literatur civil societies can be identified in all countries, but they take different forms, roles and directions. The first paper presents new approaches to theoretical and empirical state-society relations and the role of the NGOs in the emerging civil society in Vietnam. The second paper deals with the legislation in respect of the state governing of the associational sector emerging in the 1990s and how the professional, academic and business associations struggle to maneuver more independently of the state in recent years. The third paper examines strikes since their legalization in 1995 as a point of entry to analyze the changing roles of the Vietnamese labor unions and their evolving relations with the state. The last paper challenges most conventional analyses of civil society and governance brought forward in scholarships on Vietnam. It suggests new theoretical approaches on civil society action and recommends exploring civil society action’s potential effects on governance.
Toward a Functional Approach to Civil Society: Local NGOs, Development, and State-society Relations in Vietnam
Joe Hannah, University of Washington
Basing our understanding of civil society solely on formal associations and organizations with full autonomy from the state reveals certain useful insights. But in Vietnam such a structural approach would miss forms of civil society behavior conducted by people and organizations – such as organizations that straddle the state-society boundary – that may not be considered in classical civil society definitions. By looking at potential civil society functions and activities rather than the form or legal nature of the organizations, we cast our net a little wider and overcome some of the Western-centric bias in our definitions of civil society. For instance, many Vietnamese NGOs have close ties to the state and/or are funded by international development agencies with ties to other states, and yet undertake activities associated with “civil society.” Whereas a structural definition of civil society would exclude these groups, a functional approach to locating civil society would include them by virtue of their civil society activities. However, the nature of their work, their aspirations for themselves, the (often unspoken) hopes of their international funders, and the demands of the Vietnamese state are often contradictory and mutually contested, revealing an underlying uncertainty about the nature of Vietnamese civil society, now and in the future. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork among Vietnamese NGOs in Ho Chi Minh City and interviews with Vietnamese and international development organization officials, this paper explores the "shape" and contested nature of Vietnamese NGOs as a particular form of civil society in post-Doi Moi Vietnam.
Struggling over the Emergent Associational Sector: The Debate on the Law on Associations in Vietnam
Mark Sidel, University of Iowa
For fifteen years Vietnamese Party and government officials have sought to draft legislation to govern the rapidly growing role of Vietnam's associational sector - a hugely diverse arena that ranges from water users' clubs and other community based associations to large and increasingly powerful national associations of scientists, writers and others and, by some definitions, includes the traditional "mass organizations" closely related to the Party such as the Women's Union and similar groups. After an initial period of discussion and drafting that began in 1992 and lasted about seven years without agreement on a law, Vietnamese official re-initiated attempts to draft an associational code about five years ago. With the code coming toward completion in 2005 and 2006, resurgent national professional, academic and business associations began to flex their newly powerful muscles in opposition to some of its key positions, and to lobby Party, government and legislative leaders in favor of alternative legislation. The story of Vietnam's nonprofit law is one of conflicting positions and interests in state regulation of the voluntary sector, but it also reflects the rapidly changing role of powerful national lobbying groups that, twenty years after the doi moi period began in Vietnam, are now openly seeking to preserve autonomy from the Vietnamese state through increasingly aggressive political and legislative maneuvering and by challenging the state on the definitions and regulation of associational life.
New Space for Collective Action: Local Labor Unions and Newspapers in Response to Workers’ Strikes in Vietnam
Angie Ngoc Tran, California State University, Monterey Bay
The explosion of over 1000 strikes since their legalization in 1995, especially the December 2005 worker-initiated strikes which resulted in 40% increase in minimum wage in foreign-invested companies, provides a point of entry to analyze the changing roles of the Vietnamese labor unions and their evolving relations with the state in an emerging civil society in Vietnam. The roles of local actors in response to workers’ spontaneous collective action by offering them new fora, strategies and bargaining power for labor organizing and negotiations with multinational corporations are examined. The paper presents intertwining roles of key local actors, such as the Hochiminh City Labor Federation and district labor unions, the Laborer Newspaper (the official forum of HCMC Labor Federation), and the HCMC Export Processing Zones Authority. In addition to responding to workers’ agency, these local actors also engage with members of global civil society such as the International Labor Organization and Corporate Social Responsibility institutions to empower the labor unions and to cope with growing labor-management disputes. The paper is based on data and interviews from fieldwork in Vietnam from 2000 to summer 2006 with perspectives from labor union representatives, workers/strikers, state officials, and representatives of ILO and CSR organizations. As such, this paper demonstrates some special characteristics of an emerging civil society in Vietnam by examining ongoing negotiations between an ever-present state and those dynamic local actors, which still operate within the state structure but increasingly engage in independent actions in response to workers’ collective action vis-a-vis foreign capital.
Civil Society Action and its Effect on Governance in the Era of doi moi
Joerg Wischermann, Free Univesity of Berlin
Vietnam is on the brink of a socio-political crisis. If governance is about exercising legitimized rule, delivering security and public welfare, then there are some good empirical reasons to claim that Vietnam’s Communist Party “rules, but does not govern” (A.Fforde). Civil society action is introduced as a highly useful resource, which could help to overcome the imminent crisis. This differs from the common approach seeing civil society in the context of “peaceful revolution” or simply as helping the state to get rid off costly social services. It also differs from the view on governance, which focuses mainly on aspects of administrative and process-oriented elements of governing and on such forms and processes of governance with the main objective to perpetuate political stability. How to conceptualize such an understanding of civil society without falling into the pitfalls of normatively loaded theoretical concept? How to understand governance and potential contributions to governance by civil society action without reducing governance to the “management of interdependencies” and/or to the introduction of so-called new forms of governance (such as public private partnerships, cost effective forms of societal self regulation, etc.)? The paper will discuss an alternative theoretical way of understanding civil society action and explore its implications for governance. It is high time for research to focus on fast changing societal and political circumstances in Viet Nam and its potential implications. The paper will make suggestions as to how to apply alternative conceptualizations of civil society action and governance for future Viet Nam–related research.