Book Review: United Front – Projecting Solidarity through Deliberation in Vietnam’s Single-Party Legislature

UNITED FRONT: Projecting Solidarity through Deliberation in Vietnam’s Single-Party Legislature. Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. By Paul Schuler. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021. xv, 247 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures.) US$28.00, paper. ISBN 978-1-5036-1474-1. 

By Tuong Vu

Paul Schuler’s book focuses on Vietnam’s National Assembly (VNA) as a political institution in a single-party regime. By examining its historical evolution under the control of the Communist Party, its internal organization, the selection of legislators, and their relationship with constituents, Schuler convincingly demonstrates that the VNA’s chief role in the political system is to signal the party’s strength to the population. In particular, by mobilizing voters to go to the voting booths and by orchestrating the show of high unity in legislative activities, the party aims to project an image of legitimacy and dominance that can cleverly shape the beliefs among most Vietnamese about its invincibility and discourage any attempts at resistance to its rule. 

In this role, the VNA is not much different from propaganda, as Schuler insightfully acknowledges. Its propagandistic role puts it in sharp contrast with its counterparts in democratic systems, whose primary functions are legislation and representation. With few minor exceptions throughout its history, the VNA does not make laws but mostly enacts laws already drafted by government agencies and approved by the party. Nor do legislators represent their constituencies, as they are selected by and held accountable only to the party leadership, not to the people. Schuler also makes a strong case that the VNA, as a tool of propaganda that serves the ruling party, has had little impact on Vietnam’s economic growth or on the welfare of the Vietnamese. 

Schuler’s finding that the VNA is a mere rubber stamp confirms classic comparative scholarship on legislatures in communist systems. The novelty in his argument concerns the value of such legislatures as signaling tools rather than as legitimizing covers for communist dictatorships. Another distinction is Schuler’s quantitative techniques combined with Vietnamese sources. His analysis successfully demolishes the widespread myth that Vietnam has become more democratic with publicly televised legislative sessions, during which legislators are seen questioning government ministers. All is merely for show. The legislators have sometimes asked difficult questions, but as Schuler points out, they were, in those rare cases, used by top party leaders as a means to restrain the reformist tendencies of some ministers or to deflect the blame on the party for certain mistaken policies or corruption scandals. In general, “the regime can modulate the temperature of the debate in the VNA like a faucet,” he suggests (201). 

As a study of political science, Schuler makes a major contribution by challenging the dominant view in scholarship that often conflates legislatures in single-party regimes with other authoritarian or hybrid regimes. Yet the legislatures in communist China and Vietnam are different from those in military and personalistic regimes, where opposition parties are often legal and where legislatures serve to co-opt and provide information about the opposition to the autocrats. Where opposition parties are outlawed, as in China and Vietnam, elections and legislatures obviously do not serve such functions. Another common view in the literature is that authoritarian legislatures exist to provide rents to regime supporters, but, as Schuler correctly notes, other institutions in Vietnam, such as the party and the government bureaucracy, already perform that role. Schuler also critically questions existing studies that associate legislatures in authoritarian regimes with positive social outcomes such as economic growth. That is not true in Vietnam; in fact, the opposite seems to be the case. 

Although the VNA is a mere rubber stamp, Schuler convincingly shows that it is a worthy object of study. The politics of image construction and popular legitimation is important to understand why the Vietnamese government spends millions of dollars every year on the VNA. It is fascinating to ask how a legislature can function as propaganda, to what extent it is effective, and how the issue is relevant to debates about democratization and regime change in Vietnam. As Schuler perceptively argues (35–38), the VNA does not contribute to democratizing Vietnam and in fact may hinder it, with the party caught in a “signaling trap” that requires it to continue showing its strength and resist opening up. Nevertheless, once democratization has happened for whatever reasons, the VNA may help stabilize the situation and facilitate peaceful transition. A final reason that Schuler does not mention but that may justify the study is that information about the VNA is rich and publicly accessible in general. Politics in Vietnam is wrapped in secrecy and scholars have extremely limited access to information about how the political system works. The emperor may not wear any clothes in Vietnam and the VNA does offer a good opportunity for outsiders to have a peep at him. 

A minor quibble about the book concerns its title, “United Front,” which may create misunderstanding. The VNA serves to project an image of unity in general, not just a united front against some enemy. In communist politics, united front refers to a tactic in mobilization, which is the role of another institution in contemporary Vietnam, the Fatherland Front. This quibble aside, Schuler has written an outstanding book that deserves to be read widely by both political scientists and Vietnam experts. 

Tuong Vu, University of Oregon, Eugene

Copyright (c) Pacific Affairs. All rights reserved. Pacific Affairs: Volume 94, No. 4 – December 2021, p. 775-776