I distribute three types of materials through this site.
Free downloads: These papers have generally been prepared using public funds and so I apply the principle of free distribution.
Free distributed materials. Some materials are better suited to direct distribution. If you ask for a copy I send it to you.
Charged-for distributed materials We all have to live, and there are also research costs. For these materials I make a small charge and send you a soft copy.
Click here for: SALES
Vietnam: 2007 retrospective For contents and listed contributors see here. And to pay go here.
Labour Market Transformation in Vietnam: an introduction and overview. For contents see here. And to pay go here.
The following paper is available on request - send an Email to adam@aduki.com.au and I will send a copy to that Email address
Commentary # 1 2007 - Vietnam: politics and puzzles in mid 2007 (double-click here and you will access the first pages). For the rest, contact the Editor.
This puts together some ideas from various sources on what is happening as of mid 2007.
It includes:
Editor’s Notes, Adam Fforde
And two reviews. The first, by Gerhard Will of the SWP in Berlin, looks at the Xth Congress of 2006 and raises some central questions.
The second, by Bill Hayton, BBC Correspondent in Hanoi until early 2007, looks at events since the Congress.
My public domain research output comes under three headings: aid consultancy, commercial and academic. The first and last, produced using tax payers' money, are distributed in ADOBE *.pdf format. The software for reading these papers is available at the ADOBE website: www.adobe.com.
Other downloadable files from here
The following papers are available for distribution in ADOBE format.
2010
Paper coming
2009
This paper was originally prepared in 2008 for a comparative FAO study led by Ha-Joon Chang. A revised and shortened version, without the Tables, is being prepared for book publication at the time of writing (7/10/2009).
Tables here are rough but legible.
Thanks are owed for comments from FAO staff and Ha-Joon Chang; mistakes remaining are my own responsibility. The study examines the ‘‘ontology of the Vietnamese state’ in the context of rural development policy. It uses Ha-Joon Chang’s argument that contemporary normative development prescriptions are quite different from institutional set-ups pertaining in the countries advocating those set-ups when they themselves were developing. It also argues that the content of the Vietnamese state (its ‘ontology’) requires considerable thought.
2005
Instability, the causes of development success and the need for strategic rethinking
A paper written to reflect on the situation in Vietnam in the mid 2000s, and the far higher degree of risk present than is often believed.
Vietnam's successful turnaround and the intentionality issue
This is a paper commissioned by the World Bank as part of their LINCUS project. Due to failure to meet agreement on content, mainly to do with the intentionality issue, the paper was not accepted by the Bank.
2003
Reflections on extension and its organisation in Vietnam
A paper worked up from a presentation I made in North Vietnam in 2003. Reflects on the tensions inherent in trying to use existing structures to support a wide range of social and economic groups, and the general failure to escape from essentially conservative methods.
2001-2
This report is based upon survey work in 3 provinces carried out in 1998-99. It is a 'scoping' study, rather than a strict academic analysis. It shows that the 'new-style' cooperatives were largely imposed, and that farmers' own cooperative groups can be a positive and dynamic contributor to rural institutional change. We are grateful to Sida for financial support. The Vietnamese end-user was the Policy Department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Hanoi. Province were: Long An, Quang Tri and Ninh Binh.
Authors: Adam Fforde and Nguyen Dinh Huan (CERUDEV/NISTPASS/MOSTE).
The study is also available in Vietnamese.
Author: Adam Fforde.
Please note that this is a consultancy report, commissioned by SIDA. Note also that a large database was created.
Poverty in Vietnam - study for Sida, 1995, pointing the ways in which definitions of poverty were being made so as to link them to certain forms of intervention, thus avoiding addressing underlying socio-economic issues. This was despite that fact that the Party's own research had looked at in the late 1980s, conveniently (in terms of donor disbursement priorities) then forgotten by much of the donor community's public research, keen to use existing formal structures as channels for aid. This laid the foundations for the medium term strategies still evident in the mid 2000s.
Reforms in Laos - study for Sida, mid 1990s.
The following papers are available for distribution in ADOBE format.
2009
Probably unpublishable as it stands.
Abstract: "In a situation where the scholarly literature remains deeply divided, this paper discusses possible meanings of exterior aspects of politics and policy in Vietnam. It presents evidence that whilst the formal political system continues to exhibit Leninist or neo-Soviet characteristics, these observations at the same time co-exist with evidence for increasingly extensive ‘autonomous’ social organisation. It discusses how, just as both the political realities and political theory of the Cold War period accepted a certain degree of social autonomy, so the apparent freedoms of the market economy period since the end of the Cold War are also arguably problematic. In some ways this situation creates pitfalls for essentialist application of terms such as Leninist or neo-liberal, thus allowing different observed empirics to suit very different explanatory frameworks. The paper argues that we may observe here a common problem in much Western analysis, which is the assumption that relations between analytical categories and observables are relatively unproblematic, a tension greatly exacerbated by the projection into Vietnam studies of generalists’ inescapable views of the relative lack of such ontological issues. The paper concludes that what amounts to a ‘Cheshire cat’ of politics reflects shared assumptions in the literature, and suggests that at the centre of these are shared tendencies to use concepts, especially that of the state, that are inadequately theorised in the context of available information. A tentative hypothesis is advanced that this is compounded by a ‘definitional crisis’ (undefined) in the Vietnamese polity probably dating from the implicit dogmatic changes of 1979."
This is a paper given at a Conference at the SEARC in Hong Kong in 2009. It will probably be published in due course with the other conference papers.
Abstract: "This paper examines political and social dynamics associated with Viet Nam’s pattern of economic growth since the emergence of a market economy in the early 1990s. Its point of departure is the observation in Ha-Joon Chang’s Kicking away the Ladder 2003 that normative development institutions prescribed for poor regions are very different from the generally undemocratic and/or corrupt state of affairs in today’s rich countries when they themselves were developing. Starting from a situation in the late 1980s of a widespread food shortage, Vietnamese GDP accelerated in the early 1990s and has since grown far faster than population.
Economic investigation has two important implications relevant to political and social analysis. First, that by the late 1990s it is clear that a Vietnamese capitalism had emerged and was relatively consolidated. Second, that – probably because of the strength of the informal capital market – within this consolidated form, political and societal connections, whilst important in securing initial control over assets, do not seem to have been anywhere near as important subsequently, such as in generating major recurring benefits for business. This is consistent with the “Viet Nam paradox” of a rising share of the recorded state sector in GDP and the lack of the macroeconomic imbalances expected in consequence by mainstream economic views. If true, this would suggest in turn that political and societal power was very important for processes of appropriation, but far less important for “rent-creation” influencing the relative profitability of capitals once classes had formed."
Vietnam: water policy dynamics under a post Cold War Communism
Paper for Conference:
WATER POLICY DYNAMICS IN STATE-CENTRIC REGIMES, Centre for Development Research, University of Bonn.The paper will probably be published in due course with the other conference papers.
Abstract: "Vietnam is widely seen as a development success, with rather rapid economic growth and reported reductions in policy, yet presents many paradoxes to conventional analytical frameworks. Two of relevance to this conference are accounts that stress a combination of a strongly hegemonic regime with weak internal sovereignty in terms both of the internal coherence of the apparat and its interactions with the rest of Vietnamese society, and also associated accounts that deny much role to intentionality in explaining apparent development success. This paper will contextualise accounts of political intention and policy development towards water issues in Vietnam through an examination of two main empirics: the evolution of formal policy, understood as documents of the state, as well as of political intention, understood as documents of the ruling Party; and the by now extensive series of ‘active’ case studies that have examined donor as well as other projects in the sector. It will examine the notion, in the contexts suggested by the Vietnamese experience, that notions of political power and order that underlie discourse will here tend to shift away from orthodoxy’s a priori positivisms, which assume that an analytical framework’s categories may easily and without too much risk be extended across different contexts. Rather, comparisons of Vietnamese experience across contexts will tend, if they are to be persuasive, to shift to use of languages that reflect ontological fluidity, in that what things mean is expected to change over time, without reference to an imagined transcendental and universal ‘real’. In this sense, Vietnamese water policy may be usefully understood as the playing of a game with shared rules but in recognisable and particular ways, and with unpredictable outcomes."
2005
My presentations at the Berlin Conference organised by the Boell Foundation on Civic association in SEA. I looked at two issues - Farmers' Organisations and the general question of the emergence of signs of civil society in Vietnam. The latter argued that the frequent reference to change processes in Vietnam as being 'bottom-up' was often confused, as this frequently corresponded, not to an emergent civil society, but a 'proto-civil society' on the margin of Leninist institutions. The conference materials can be downloaded from http://www.boell.de/downloads/asien/Towards-6.pdf
Persuasion: Reflections on Economics, Data and the ‘Homogeneity Assumption’
Final version of paper published in Journal of Economic Methodology, early 2005
2004
‘State owned enterprises, law and a decade of market-oriented socialist development in Vietnam’ Working Paper Series # 70 September 2004 SEARC City University of Hong Kong. http://www.cityu.edu.hk/searc/WP70_04_Fforde.pdf
‘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
2002
Paper for the VIETNAM UPDATE 2001: Governance in Vietnam: The Role of Organizations ANU/ISEAS, November 2001. Revised 2002.
2001
Paper given at ADB Manila, 2001. Later revised. Shorter version in Journal of Economic Methodology: ‘Persuasion: Reflections on Economics, Data and the ‘Homogeneity Assumption’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 12:1, 63-91, March 2005.
Work in progress.
1998
ANU Seminar Paper
1995
‘Public goods, the state, civil society and development assistance in Vietnam’, with Doug Porter
Paper for the 1995 ANU Vietnam Update Conference