Political Dynamics of Grassroots Democracy in Vietnam is an in-depth and carefully constructed account of how grassroots democracy functions in both contemporary Vietnamese politics and community relations. A must read for scholars studying Vietnamese political and economic development and those interested in understanding the contours of authoritarian forms of power in the context of rapid economic liberalisation.' - Melissa Curley and David Martin Jones, School of Political Science and International Studies, University of Queensland, Australia
'Hai Hong Nguyen's Political Dynamics of Grassroots Democracy in Vietnam is a path-breaking study of Vietnam's attempt to apply its concept of grassroots democracy to local government in response to rural unrest in the late 1990s. Based on field work in Vietnam, it represents a major milestone in the study of politics in Vietnam and will be the foundation for all future studies on political change in Vietnam.' - Carlyle A. Thayer, Emeritus Professor, University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, Australia
'[This book] by the distinguished young scholar Hai Hong Nguyen is among those rare books that brilliantly transforms the way we think about Vietnam, one-party political systems, power, and the future of democracy.' - John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Sydney, Australia
Foreword; Carlyle A. Thayer 1. Introduction 2. Grassroots Democracy: History and Context 3. Conditions and Democracy 4. An Analytic Framework 5. The Case of Thái Bình 6. The Case of H?ng Yên 7. The Case of ?à N?ng 8. Case-study Analysis: Explaining Variation 9. Conclusion: Shoots of Hope
Hai Hong Nguyen is a Research Fellow at the University of Queensland, Australia. He holds a Masters in International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from Lund University, Sweden, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Queensland, Australia. He has been teaching international human rights law, international relations, and politics in Vietnam and Australia.
In Political Dynamics of Grassroots Democracy in Vietnam, Hai Hong Nguyen takes a new approach to evaluating the ongoing implementation of grassroots democracy in Vietnam's one-party state. He explores the resilience, reinforced legitimacy, and survival of the Communist Party of Vietnam as the ruling party, as well as its impacts on potential local governance reforms in the future. Employing extensive field research and case studies from the Thái Bình, H?ng Yên, and ?à N?ng provinces, Nguyen investigates the correlation between independent variables and grassroots democracy to demonstrate that grassroots democracy has created a mutually empowering mechanism for both the party-state and the peasantry.