Political Legitimacy in Vietnam under Challenge

Abstract

This chapter examines the challenges to the legitimacy of Vietnam’s one-party state and the state’s responses to these challenges in the period from 1986 to the present. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first section provides a brief overview of the evolution of the Vietnamese state and the historical basis of regime legitimacy from 1945 to 1976. The second section considers the evolving challenges to the political legitimacy of one-party rule mounted by southern war veterans, communist intelligentsia, nonparty elites, peasants, retired senior generals, and prodemocracy activists with a particular focus on the period after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989–1991. Critics challenged the basis of the regime’s legitimacy on four fronts: ideology, economic performance, legal-rational, and nationalism. The third section examines the regime’s responses to each of these challenges. Finally, the chapter concludes by noting that Vietnam’s one-party state rests on multiple sources of legitimacy and party elites have accommodated and adjusted their policies in response to criticisms from their critics.