Policy Brief
“When a regime considered Not Free on the Freedom House Index, engages in practices that resemble gerrymandering . . . something important resembling representation is taking place beneath the label of authoritarianism.”
Gerrymandering Vietnamese Style
The number of provinces in Vietnam has increased dramatically since 1990, by about 60 percent, far exceeding international norms. Vietnam now has nearly twice as many provinces as India or China, which have more than ten times Vietnam’s population. In Gerrymandering Vietnamese Style: The Political Motivations behind the Creation of New Provinces in Vietnam, IR/PS faculty member Edmund Malesky explores the reasons behind the creation of new provinces. Malesky provides evidence that new provinces were created to shift the balance of power in the central government to provinces that are less dependent on State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) and more open to economic reform. Even in a communist country like Vietnam, increasing the power of the private sector has been important for initiating economic reform.
Economic reform in Vietnam began with the 6th Party Congress in 1986. The sequencing of reforms opened the door to monopoly pricing for SOEs and gave them preferential access to the export market. To maintain this privileged position, a coalition of conservative SOE supporters blocked new reforms in the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party. However, the power of SOEs gradually declined throughout the 1990s even as their contribution to GDP stayed relatively steady. A new round of reforms, including the Enterprise Law, made it easier for private firms to enter the market and provided for the privatization of some SOEs. How was this economic reform possible given the strength of the SOEs?
By dividing existing provinces, the creation of new provinces increased the number not dependent on SOEs (non-state provinces). The process involved dividing up provinces dominated by SOEs to create pairs of new provinces with one still dominated by the state sector, but the other less dependent on it. By 1992 the number of non-state provinces had surpassed SOE-dominated provinces. The leaders of these new provinces in the Central Committee had incentives to support economic reform because Hanoi sets national taxes but returns to the provinces any revenue they generate above a negotiated target, creating an incentive to support the high revenue earners in the province.
To accomplish the provincial divisions, leaders required the support of some conservative leaders. Although in the long-term the divisions would erode the power of conservatives, individuals could be convinced to support them because of the new opportunities for personal and political gain, especially if the state sector was a larger share of the provincial economy and there was more than one compatriot working at the central government level. New provinces mean new contracts for administrative buildings and other infrastructure as well as new political leadership positions that can be distributed to political supporters.
Other theories have been offered to explain the division of provinces, but they all fail to account for the timing of the divisions and leave some anomalies unexplained. For instance, Vietnamese officials generally justify new provinces as increasing efficiency, but most other countries have much larger provinces in terms of both land mass and population. Additionally, many small provinces have been divided while larger ones were left untouched.
Other scholars have emphasized historical legacy. In Vietnam, many provinces were consolidated after 1965, and the new divisions have been viewed as a return to the pre-1965 borders. However, some divisions have created borders different from those of 1965, and this theory says nothing about the timing of divisions. Both the efficiency and the historical legacy explanations are less controversial justifications used by politicians interested in the political goal of reform.
