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The Diversification of State Power: Vietnam’s Alternative Path toward Budget Transparency, Accountability, and Participation jonathan warren and huong nguyen In the past two decades Vietnam has been transitioning from a centralized, Soviet-oriented, planned economy into a decentralized, state-directed market economy with deepening ties to East Asian and North Atlantic countries. This tectonic shift has led to reconsideration, if not revision, of virtually every facet of government policy and practice, including those related to the budget. Standards and ideals of accounting practices, budget-making processes, and oversight, which most contemporary North Atlantic and Pacific societies define as ideal, have gradually been adopted in Vietnam. This process has been neither one of shock—as was encouraged by North Atlantic advisers in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse —nor one of emulation. Rather reform has been a steady, step-by-step experimental process tailored to local particularities. Because of the new ideals of modernity adopted in 1986, commonly referred to as Doi Moi or “Renovation,” reforms have enjoyed high-level political backing. Indeed successive government and party leaders have instigated and backed constitutional, legislative, and policy initiatives with varying degrees of prodding and encouragement from the general public, businesses, international organizations, and other branches of government , such as the National Assembly, State Audit Vietnam (SAV), and the Vietnamese Fatherland Front (VFF). As a consequence of these changes and dynamics, Vietnam has contributed to the larger global trend of the 1990s in which governments began enhancing and deepening budget transparency, accountability, and participation. Just over one decade ago, the entire budget in Vietnam was deemed a state secret. Presently in208 8 08-2337-0 CH 8:PWW 2284-7 3/11/13 2:28 PM Page 208 year and enacted budgets are published on government websites. Moreover, institutional mechanisms of oversight have been strengthened, and there is greater opportunity for public input. One of the principal comptrollers, the National Assembly, has become increasingly bold in challenging the Politburo. Deputies call government ministers to testify before the National Assembly, frequently press them to explain the performance of their ministries, and periodically reject government proposals. These and other developments have led various transnational organizations, such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, to conclude that substantial improvements in the budgeting system have been made.1 The fact that there have been improvements does not mean that budget transparency and participation are good or even fair in Vietnam. Vietnam is still very much in transition, with an overall level of transparency that most consider to be poor. In 2010, for instance, it received an Open Budget Index (OBI) score of fourteen. This was an advance from 2006, when it scored three, but it still placed Vietnam lower than any other country in Southeast Asia. Summarizing Vietnam’s score, the International Budget Partnership (IBP), which produces the OBI score, notes, “The government provides the public with scant information on the central government’s budget and financial activities. This makes it virtually impossible for citizens to hold the government accountable for its management of the public’s money.”2 Perhaps even more troublesome, the government entities directly responsible for budgetary oversight—namely, SAV, the National Assembly , and the VFF—are also constrained by information gaps. For example, certain revenue streams, especially revenues from crude oil and land, are underreported. Some areas of the budget, most glaringly the Politburo’s expenses and expenditures , are exempt from audit examinations. The discrepancies between the budgeted and the actual outcomes for expenditures and revenues are not provided in year-end or audit reports. Finally, capital and recurrent expenditures are not disaggregated but instead are integrated into a single budget. Despite these and other ongoing challenges and weaknesses, progress has been made and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. From the vantage of the transparency literature, such steps forward are surprising, if not puzzling. Few of the social and institutional conditions exist that are theorized as being key to advancing transparency. In The Right to Know, for instance, Ann Florini observes that “all” of the seventy countries that adopted disclosure laws and policies by 2006 were “pressed by the spread of democratic norms, the increasing strength of civil society organizations, and the rise of an increasingly independent media.”3 On all of these metrics, however, Vietnam lags. Some democratic reforms have Vietnam 209 1. See ADB (2009) and World Bank and Government of Vietnam (2008). 2. IBP (2010, p. 1). 3. Florini (2007, p. 8). 08...

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