Political Institutions: Party, State, and Mass Organizations

 

Political Institutions: Party, State, and Mass Organizations


"The party leads, the people control, and the state manages," so goes the slogan expressing the Vietnamese Communist Party's idealized vision of how the political system operates. In this vision, each of the three main institutional components of the system—the VCP, the state apparatus, and mass associations—has a distinct function in the system. In practice, however, the state and mass organizations have always been little more than extensions of the party's power.


In theory, the overarching leadership role of the Vietnamese Communist Party in the political system maximizes unanimity and ensures that party lines and policies are implemented fully and accurately. In fact, it has simply led to confusion and conflict over the proper roles of party and state and to the bureaucratization of mass organizations. The price of a centralized political structure under the domination of the party has been an overburdened leadership group, rampant abuses of power, popular alienation, ineffective policy-making on many issues, and an inability to respond administratively to popular needs.


Starting in 1987, the VCP leadership responded to widespread dissatisfaction with the "formalism" of the SRV's elected organs and mass organizations by attempting to rejuvenate these institutions while leaving untouched the party's control over them. These reforms embraced party-state relations, the roles of the National Assembly and local elected organs as well as mass organizations, and the quality of electoral processes. They were aimed at encouraging wider and more open debate on major policy issues, giving greater legitimacy to popularly elected organs, and eliminating the intrusion by party organs into problems that were properly the responsibility of the state. In the process, the party leadership clearly hoped as well to satisfy growing demands for greater freedom and participation.


Within the relatively narrow limits set by the VCP leadership,

however, the reform of political institutions was unable to overcome some of the difficulties inherent in an authoritarian one-party system. The National Assembly, even with an enhanced legislative and debating role, could not address issues that challenged the power of the party leadership. Nor could mass organizations reflect fully and accurately the interests of socioeconomic groups such as farmers, merchants, and students.


By the end of the 1980s, the VCP was confronted with demands for pluralism from within the party itself as well as from businessmen, intellectuals, students, and others. In the context of transitions to pluralist systems in Eastern Europe and steps in the Soviet Union in that direction, politically aware Vietnamese were no longer content with the superficial reforms that accompanied the "renovation" (doi moi) campaign that began in 1986. In response, the VCP leadership drew the line firmly against any challenge to its political monopoly.


The Role of the Party


The Vietnamese Communist Party is assigned an extraordinarily powerful role in the Vietnamese political system, even when compared with other Communist systems. Unlike the Chinese and former Soviet constitutions and previous Vietnamese constitutions, which gave no formal grant of power to the role of the party, the 1980 SRV Constitution made the Vietnamese Communist Party the "sole force leading the state and society." The party's role in Vietnamese society is described in a party training manual as all-embracing, including "all aspects of life in all domains—political, military, economic, social, cultural, and the material and spiritual life of the people." The VCP's political functions include setting major lines and policies; training and assignment of cadres both within the party and the state; conducting ideological education among the masses; and persuading them to carry out party resolutions.


The National Party Congress is, in theory, the highest authority within the party. Held every four to five years, it is attended by delegates representing at least two-thirds of the party members and two-



1.Hiến Pháp Nước Cộng Hòa Xã Hội Chủ Nghĩa Việt-Nam [Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam] (Hanoi: Phap Ly, 1981), pp. 19–20.

2.Tài Liệu Học Tập: Lý Luận và Chính Trị [Study document: Theory and politics] (Hanoi: Sách Giáo Khoa Mác-Lê-Nin, 1976), p. 330.

3."Thoroughly Understand the Resolution of the Fifth Party Central Committee Plenum," Nhân Dân, July 30, 1988, FBIS, East Asia Daily Report, September 29, 1988, p. 67.



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