Comparative Perspective on Public Bureaucracy in the late Developmental States: Development and Challenges in Vietnam

Many of research on East Asian economic success account for ‘right public policies’ that were formulated and implemented by leadership and economic technocrats as well as effective public bureaucracy. In Vietnam, one of the prospering economy in Southeast Asia in terms of annual economic growth rate, the central government has carried out a series of public administration reform since the mid-1980s (doi moi), which includes downsizing of state agencies, civil servant salary reform, budgetary reform, red-tape reduction and so forth. With critical feedback from foreign investors and consultation from international development aid agencies, the government leaders have continuously declared their vision for competent, efficient, and transparent bureaucracy, which has been pertinent to global trend in public management reform. However, despite these endless efforts, Vietnamese bureaucracy, even many years of public management reform, is still considered as inefficient and corrupted one, and its decisions are complicated, overlapping, and often inconsistent with each other. Why has this discrepancy between the vision and the practice continued? In this overview paper, building upon the earlier works on East Asian bureaucracy and Hart’s three ideal model of public management, we argue that the new vision for Vietnamese competent bureaucracy has been carried out on the fragile and unsound basis of traditional rule-based bureaucracy.