Vietnam under Đổi Mới: one-party rule with market reforms (1986–present)

Background

North Vietnam's Communist Party, founded by Ho Chi Minh, reunified the country by force in 1975. Collectivisation was extended to the south and private trade suppressed; output stagnated, inflation soared, hundreds of thousands fled by boat, and Soviet aid began to shrink. Local "fence-breaking" experiments with household farming and enterprise autonomy spread in the early 1980s. At its Sixth Congress in December 1986 the party adopted Đổi Mới, committing to a "socialist-oriented market economy" under state guidance while keeping its political monopoly.

How it is governed

• Party leadership. Article 4 of the 2013 Constitution names the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) as the force leading the state and society. The party congress, held every five years, elects a Central Committee, which elects the Politburo and the general secretary.
• Collective leadership. Power has been shared among the "four pillars": the general secretary, state president, prime minister and chair of the National Assembly. Edmund Malesky, Regina Abrami and Yu Zheng find that, compared with China, Vietnam's elite institutions build broader policy coalitions, have more competitive selection and place more constraints on executive decision-making; the Central Committee has at times overruled the Politburo.
• Elections and assembly. National Assembly elections offer more candidates than seats, but candidates are vetted by the party-led Vietnam Fatherland Front and nearly all deputies are party members. Televised query sessions let deputies question ministers, and since 2013 the Assembly has held confidence votes on senior officials.
• Local government. In June 2025 the National Assembly cut the number of provinces and centrally run cities from 63 to 34, and from 1 July 2025 the district level was abolished, leaving a two-tier system of provinces and communes, one of the largest administrative restructurings in the country's history.

Jonathan London describes the result as "market-Leninism": markets and trade drive growth within the framework of democratic centralism.

Economy

Collective farms were dismantled, prices liberalised, foreign investment welcomed and state enterprises gradually "equitised". The United States lifted its embargo in 1994 and normalised relations in 1995, the year Vietnam joined ASEAN; it entered the World Trade Organization in 2007. Vietnam became a major exporter of electronics, garments and food. Melanie Beresford argues that the state's inability to support state enterprises meant foreign investors and the domestic private sector came to dominate, and that access to public-private networks shaped who gained, producing regional inequality and a new class structure.

Feedback and accountability

Vietnam has invested in feedback mechanisms that stop short of competition. The PAPI survey, run with UNDP since 2009 and nationwide every year since 2011, asks citizens about participation, transparency, corruption and public services in every province, and provinces' rankings are published. Experiments also show the limits: in a randomised field experiment, Malesky, Schuler and Tran found that publishing delegates' query-session performance online did not improve it, and delegates who received intense exposure curtailed their participation and saw their re-election prospects damaged.

Anti-corruption and leadership change

Under General Secretary Nguyễn Phú Trọng, the "blazing furnace" anti-corruption campaign disciplined thousands of officials and forced the resignation of senior leaders, including President Võ Văn Thưởng in March 2024 after just over a year in office. After Trọng's death in July 2024, Tô Lâm, the former public security minister who had led many of the investigations, was elected general secretary on 3 August 2024. Observers debate whether this marks a concentration of power that weakens collective leadership.

Repression and rights

There is no legal opposition. Independent journalists, bloggers, labour activists and environmental campaigners are prosecuted under penal-code articles against "propaganda against the state" and "abusing democratic freedoms". Religious groups outside state-recognised bodies face harassment, and land disputes have ended in violent police action. Freedom House reports that in recent years the authorities have engaged in one of the most severe crackdowns on dissent in decades.

Outcomes

• Growth. The World Bank reports that GDP per capita rose from under US$500 in 1986 to US$5,066 in 2025 (current US dollars).
• Poverty. The share of the population living on less than US$4.20 a day fell from 14 percent in 2010 to under 4 percent in 2025, according to the World Bank.
• Freedom. Freedom House rates Vietnam Not Free, 20/100 in 2026 (political rights 4/40).

Debates

• Vietnam versus China. Vietnam's broader elite selectorate is linked to more equalising transfers between provinces; whether it also produced better governance is contested.
• Does growth require one-party rule? The record shows that rapid growth coexisted with one-party rule after market reforms, not that one-party rule caused it; the same party presided over the stagnation of 1975–86.
• Collective leadership under strain. The 2024 leadership changes raise the question whether anti-corruption campaigns strengthen institutions or concentrate power.

Lessons for institution design

• Market reform can precede political reform indefinitely. Đổi Mới changed the economy without changing who may hold power.
• Feedback without sanction has limits. Surveys, query sessions and confidence votes generate information, but transparency without electoral sanction can deter rather than reward outspoken deputies.
• Wider elite selectorates spread benefits. Constraints within the party appear to matter for distribution.

Further reading

• Edmund Malesky, Regina Abrami and Yu Zheng, "Institutions and Inequality in Single-Party Regimes" (2011)
• Jonathan D. London, "Viet Nam and the making of market-Leninism" (2009)
• Melanie Beresford, "Doi Moi in review" (2008)
• Malesky, Schuler and Tran, "The Adverse Effects of Sunshine" (2012)