Democracy and Vietnam

One can credibly say that democracy and politics in contemporary Vietnam go hand in hand. Such a claim, however, is likely to be incredulous to a reader of international press coverage about the country today. Even in scholarly literature, the two words “democracy” and “Vietnam” are rarely paired. Nevertheless, democracy as a concept, aspiration, and form of government has figured in the country’s political evolution from its struggles against French colonial rule in the first half of the twentieth century until debates today about its future.