I first came to study Vietnam because I was interested in what might have happened to foreign developmental ideas: in this case, Marxism, and because I wanted to study an example of Third World socialism. I managed to secure funding for a PhD at Cambridge, in economics, in 1977. I was initially intending to look at the First Five Year Plan in the north (1961-65), but spent time looking at rural society and so switched, when I got to Vietnam in late 1978, to look at rural problems. I defended my thesis in 1982, and this was looked at problems with collectivised agriculture. Out of this came three works, two of which were in origin substantial background papers to the thesis.
The first looked at traditional rural society and what happened to it prior to collectivisation. This used French sources supplemented by Vietnamese ones after I had learnt Vietnamese in 1978-79 in Hanoi.
I brought it out as ‘The historical background to agricultural collectivisation in North Vietnam’ (1981, mimeo and rev.'d 1983) Disc. Paper 148 Dept. of Economics Birkbeck College London 1984. I do not have this in soft copy. If you are interested, contact me.
The second looked at the overall macro-economic and historical context to collectivised agriculture in north Vietnam. It used at the time very rare data collected by me and also a published collection given to my supervisor, Suzy Paine, when she visited Vietnam in 1980.
It was revised and expanded, and published as: The Limits of National Liberation - problems of economic management in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, with a Statistical Appendix (with the late Mrs S.H.Paine), London: Croom-Helm 1987.
It introduced the idea of 'aggravated shortage' to help explain social and economic conditions in the north before and after reunification in 1975-76.
It can be found in various libraries, though it did not have a large print run.
A reviewer commented: “…this book is … very welcome. It will be of value to those with an interest in Vietnamese communism and also, for comparative purposes … and … represents in itself a substantial contribution to Vietnamese studies…” International Affairs, Spring 1988 p: 316, John Main
The main published output from the thesis was: The Agrarian Question in North Vietnam 1974-79: a study of cooperator resistance to State policy, New York: M.E.Sharpe, 1989. In revising it I added the idea of 'resistance', so as to make it more accessible.
Reviewers commented:
“Fforde’s book … provides an extremely useful analysis of the internal operations of the collective farms … [it] provides a wealth of detail of the internal operations of such farms … and is a useful addition to the literature”. Journal of Economic Literature May 1991 pp.124-126, Frederic L. Pryor.
“… as Adam Fforde shows us in this groundbreaking study, outward appearances can be deceiving, for under the surface peasant resistance to official policy has been undermining the system from the beginning. [He] has provided readers with an inside look at the system and much food for thought …” Journal of Asian Studies Nov 1990 pp.992-993, William J. Duiker.
I returned to Vietnam in 1985-86 whilst I was enjoying a Post-Doc, to study Vietnamese Industrial Organisation. This topic allowed me to look at SOEs, as a classic institution of traditional socialism comparable to agricultural cooperatives. The money ran out in 1987 and at the same time I was picked up by Sida for consultancy work. Through the 1980s I had been writing the Vietnam section of the EIU's quarterly Indochina report, and so was generally viewed as 'up to date' on what was happening. Sida was interested to see what could come of this and asked me to write something with Stefan de Vylder. This laid out rather clearly the logic and legality of the transition model of the 1980s, and came out as:
Vietnam - an economy in transition, with Stefan de Vylder, Stockholm: SIDA 1988. It is interesting that this was available for the incoming wave of Western donors, and Sida made sure it was well distributed. Few paid much attention to its lesson of bottom-up change that was not driven by policy.
After moving to Australia in 1992 I secured some academic resources, and out of this came with Stefan de Vylder a revised version of the 1988 study, brought up to date and more clearly theorised. Sida helped keep the paperback price down through a subsidy and it sold rather better.
It was From Plan to Market: The Economic Transition in Vietnam, Boulder CO: Westview, 1996.
Reviewers commented:
“The book is thought-provoking! Although the scope is Vietnam-specific, there are far-reaching implications for reforms of transition economies in general. The authors offer an alternative “bottom-up” view … Although the Vietnamese transition is still in process and more work remains to be done in this area of research, this book makes a valuable pioneering contribution to the specialized field of Vietnamese studies as well as to the broader area of development economies.” Journal of Economic Literature Sept 2000, pp: 683-684, Trien T. Nguyen
“From Plan to Market is a superb exposition and analysis of Vietnam’s transition …[with] some shrewd and informed speculation on the politics underlying the changes. … This work has admirably described and analysed the economic transformation of the past two decades in Vietnam, and is an indispensable work for anyone wishing to understand contemporary Vietnam.” Asian Pacific Economic Literature 1998, David Elliot
“This book is one of the first, and certainly most complete, attempts to chronicle the transition in Vietnam from a planned to a market economy. However, it also reaches beyond mere description of an economic transformation and attempts to develop a framework or model for reform in general, identifying its internal logic …” Journal of Asian Studies Nov 1997, pp: 1160-1162, Gary Larsen
“… this is a very good book indeed, as accessible for the generalist as it is for the specialist.” Development and Change Jan 1997, pp: 190-191, George Irvin
It was translated (very well) into Vietnamese, and came out as Tu ke hoach den thi truong: su chuyen bien kinh te tai Viet Nam, Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia 1997.
My most recent contribution has been the (final) publication of the work on industry. This came out in 2007 as Vietnamese State Industry and the Political Economy of Commercial Renaissance: Dragon's tooth or curate's egg? Oxford: Chandos 2007.
This drew heavily upon two other works. The overall theoretical frame until the beginning of the market economy in 1989-90 was that of From Plan to Market (and thereafter the work states explicitly that a suitable frame remains to be selected). Secondly, it uses results from the study published as a DP in 2004 (‘Vietnamese State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) - “Real Property”, Commercial Performance and Political Economy’ Working Paper Series # 69 August 2004 SEARC City University of Hong Kong. http://www.cityu.edu.hk/searc/WP69_04_Fforde.pdf) to discuss shifts in property-rights over SOEs in the 1990s compared with the 1980s. See also ‘State owned enterprises, law and a decade of market-oriented socialist development in Vietnam’ Working Paper Series # 70 September 2004 SEARC ... http://www.cityu.edu.hk/searc/WP70_04_Fforde.pdf, published revised as ‘SOEs, Law and a Decade of Market-Oriented Socialist Development in Vietnam’, 2005 in Ed P. Nicholson and J. Gillespie Asian Socialism and Legal Change: The Dynamics of Vietnamese and Chinese Reform Canberra: Asia Pacific Press 241-270)
So far, under 'reviewers commented' I only have:
I taught at the SEA Studies Program, National University of Singapore, in 2000-2001 and there developed various courses including one I called 'Comparative Development Policy in SEA'. I taught this again in Melbourne and after many trials it has secured a publisher, and is forthcoming in 2008:
Coping with the Facts: A Sceptic's Guide to the Problem of Development, forthcoming, 2008, Bloomfield, CT : Kumarian Press
This draws upon my 2005 journal article ‘Persuasion: Reflections on Economics, Data and the ‘Homogeneity Assumption’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 12:1, 63-91, March 2005.