The political relationship between Islam and the state in Indonesia has been largely a story of mutual antagonism and distrust. This adversarial relationship has been due primarily, but not wholly, to the conflicting ideas among the nation's founding fathers, the majority of whom were Muslims, on what constituted an ideal Indonesian independent state. Crucial in the debate was whether the state should be “Islamic” or “nationalist” in character. The former necessitated that Islam, given its holistic nature and the fact that it is professed by the majority, be adopted as the ideological basis of the state. On the ground that Indonesia is socioreligiously heterogeneous, for the sake of the country's unity, the latter required that the state be based on a “deconfessionalized” ideology — Pancasila.

The fact that such ideological discourse instigated conflict was not so much because of the different degree of religious devotion among the Muslims — a notion which underpins the famous santri–abangan and Islamic–secular (or religiously neutral) nationalist concepts. Rather, it was due largely to the inability of the nation's political elite to negotiate and reconcile those differences, as if Islam and nationalism are mutually exclusive entities.

Beginning in 1990, the Australian National University (ANU) has been holding its series of Vietnam Update conferences almost every year. The chapters in this volume began as papers presented at the Vietnam Update 2001 held at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore on 19–20 November. The theme of that particular Update was “Governance in Vietnam: The Role of Organizations”.

By the time of the Vietnam Update 2003, there would have been 10 conferences, each focused on a particular theme. Over the years, the Update has looked at agriculture, education, law, civil society, mass media, urban culture, local government, and social differentiation, to name just a few of the themes. Conference proceedings have resulted in eight publications (books and monographs). The specialized nature of ANU's Vietnam Update is its hallmark, attesting to a capacity to draw on a critical mass of experts, both Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese, to explore specific topics. It also underlines the university's long record in researching Vietnam.

The 2001 Update was the first time the conference left the shores of Australia. Holding the conference in Singapore tapped into the island's strategic location in the region and drew a greater attendance from people working in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries. Since then, ISEAS has continued to co-host the conference in Canberra in 2002 and 2003. This book underlines how fruitful this ANU-ISEAS collaboration has been. More titles will be available when the volumes from the 2002 and 2003 Updates are published.

Finally, we would like to thank all those who funded the Vietnam Update 2001: the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), ISEAS and the ANU's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. We are also grateful to staff members of both ANU and ISEAS who rendered invaluable organizational, editorial, and secretarial support.

For many years it was quite common, in the analysis of the Vietnamese political system, for American and European political scientists to presuppose a mono-organizational model of state–society relations. This model is not or no longer appropriate. Current research on Vietnam indicates “that a multiplicity of changes is underway in this country” (Thayer 1995, p. 59). We do not want to discuss whether such models ever were appropriate for analyzing Vietnam's socio-political development. Nor do we want to speculate on whether there was much more local activity and scope for “everyday politics” in Vietnam in the 1960s and the 1970s than previously imagined, as Thayer put it (ibid., p. 59). Instead, we would like to offer some empirical evidence for the thesis that a remarkable diversification of social, political, and economic practices has taken place in Vietnam since the official start of the “policy of reform” (doi moi) in 1986. One of these is an impressive variety of different types of what we call Civic Organizations. In Spring 2000, our research team identified more than 700 Civic Organizations in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

We use the label Civic Organizations as a general term for a heterogeneous ensemble of non-state, voluntary, non-profit-oriented societal organizations (See also chapter 1). Within this set, we differentiate between Mass Organizations, Professionals' Associations, Issue-Oriented Organizations, and Associations of Businessmen/ women. We include even such organizations that many scholars call “Government-Run-and-Inspired Non-governmental Organizations” (GRINGOS), and hybrid organizations that function in a dual mode and are “amphibious”, to use Ding's term, (Ding 1994, p. 298). We do not presuppose specific relationships between these Civic Organizations and Governmental Organizations, but leave this issue open for discovery in the process of our empirical research. The organizations we analyze are “civic” in their concern for articulating interests and affecting policy (Diamond 1999, p. 265), but they are not necessarily “civic” in the way Putnam puts it. All of them enjoy at least some leeway in pursuing their respective activities.

Political and economic reforms beginning in the 1980s have, as correctly observed by Carlyle Thayer, led to “a loosening of the party's mono-organizational grip on society and to the explosion of private activities, which the state has found difficult to control” (Thayer 1992, p.110). In post-socialist Vietnam, this loosening provided opportunities for citizens to form groupings in pursuit of certain common interests. By the end of the 1990s, the Vietnamese themselves began to use the term “non-governmental organization” (co quan phi chinh phu) to refer to popular organizations that were loosely connected to the party-state structure, financially self-sufficient and involved in development work once considered as falling under the jurisdiction of the party-state.

This paper focuses on how popular organizations, both state and non-state sponsored, influenced the policy-making process in the era of doi moi. It examines the relationship between interests, organizational networking, and policy influence. It argues that although popular organizations—state and non-state sponsored—continued to be closely associated with the party-state structure, they assumed an increasingly important role as advocates and pioneers for policy options on behalf of certain interests. Operating under the structure of the one-party state, the successful organizations were the ones that could muster political resources by both vertical networking with certain sections of the party-state hierarchy, and horizontal networking with other popular organizations. The vertical alliance provided the necessary policy support from elements within the party-state, while the horizontal alliance helped to legitimize the policy position these organizations are adopting. I argue that this model of policy influence departs from that developed under state socialism in which interest aggregation was top-down, the mobilization channels for policy influence were vertically and sectorally- based, and policy positions were expressed mostly through the method of “fence-breaking” (pha rao), i.e., violations of rules and regulations set up by the party-state. This influence in policy-making marks a transformation of the mono-organizational structure, from so-called “exclusionary” towards some degree of “inclusionary” corporatism.

Since doi moi began in 1986, the Vietnamese political authorities have implemented reforms aimed at expanding the scope and modalities of interest representation in Vietnam. These reforms can be seen in official efforts to rejuvenate traditional mass organizations, to encourage the development of new representative groups in sectors where mass organizations do not exist, and, especially, to intensify the participation of these organizations in policy and law-making. During the 1990s, it became common for government-appointed drafting committees to distribute draft laws to mass organizations and other groups, such as the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Phong Thuong Mai va Cong Nghiep Viet Nam), in order to solicit comments on the content of drafts. In 1994, Adam Fforde summed up these changes succinctly by observing that “public organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce and Industry… have been given scope to voice political opinions and participate in law-making. Thus mechanisms have been created for criticizing, drafting and redrafting laws as an overt means to ‘change the rules.’ ” By the late 1990s, the government was facilitating more direct business representation in law-making by inviting leaders of the Chamber of Commerce to serve as official members of legislative drafting committees.

This chapter argues that the changing role of business associations and other groups is indicative of an emerging “corporatism” in Vietnam. Broadly speaking, corporatism may be defined as a pattern of organizing interests and influence in which the state gives favoured status to certain interest groups. This institutional pattern typically involves tripartite consultations among representatives of business, labour, and government over economic policy. The state may grant representational monopolies to interest groups within their respective economic sectors or social categories, but, in exchange, these groups must operate within parameters determined by the state and often through leaders chosen or approved by the state. Sometimes the state itself even creates the interest groups.

Economic liberalization and industrialization have brought rapid changes to Vietnam's labour scene in recent years. Cheap and disciplined labour attracts foreign investors and the party-state has been anxious to maintain control over labour by restricting autonomous workers’ organizations. Simultaneously, the industrial labour force in this predominantly agricultural country is growing and the number of conflicts in the labour market has remained at a high level all through the 1990s. This article looks at the impact of economic liberalization on the regulation and organization of labour and discusses what possible political consequences these developments may have on the wider political structures.

My point of entry into the issue of trade unionism is the rising number of labour conflicts, which leads to questions concerning the role of the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL or Tong Lien Doan Lao Dong Viet Nam) and its relations with the party-state and how these relations have changed. In Vietnam's authoritarian political structure, the VGCL, the only officially recognized trade union organization, is part of the one-party system. Its organizational size in combination with its potential role in accommodating labour–capital conflicts in a market economy makes the VGCL important for political stability. I will argue that the VGCL has failed to carry out the reforms needed to respond to the concerns of workers in the emerging market economy. This has led to a situation where workers are left with no or very limited protection. In order to defend themselves, they organize outside the formal party-state structures, primarily, through illegal strikes (but also through “study groups”, “labour councils”, etc.). I argue that this development challenges the role, legitimacy and organizational monopoly of the VGCL and has also put pressure on the relations between the party-state and the VGCL. Consequently a process of de-authoritarianization of power relations from below is taking place.

Challenges to Authoritarianism

Understanding Vietnamese trade unions requires taking note of the restrictive environment in which they operate.

International donors have attempted to contribute to, and indeed influence, the overall tenor of socioeconomic and governance-related reforms in Vietnam. They have done so in a number of ways: directly supporting policy research, establishing forums for debate of developmental issues with government counterparts, funding projects on administrative and legal reform and central level capacity building, and providing direct financial and sometimes indirect support for “indigenous” NGOs, primarily development service organizations working as contractors for particular development projects.

This chapter examines another modality through which donors sought to influence administrative reform over the heady “development decade” of the 1990s—donor support for rural development projects conceived as “policy experiments” (Rondinelli 1983). Though diverse in sectoral focus, these projects commonly attempted to introduce local institutional arrangements that promote greater responsiveness and accountability of local governments to rural communities as a whole, or to particular sub-groups such as smallholder farmers. To do so, local organizations or grassroots groups were typically established as new ways of organizing the rural populace to demand, plan for, access, or provide services underpinning rural development and poverty alleviation. “Local development groups” (LDGs) is the name I give to groups comprised of farmers and other end-users of project services (or representatives they choose) that were formed in the process of implementing particular development projects.

This chapter probes the experience of these development projects and LDGs over approximately the last ten years. It depicts how projects funded by a wide range of donors became an important part of the institutional landscape in many areas of Vietnam, leaving a significant mark on many sectors related to rural development. Five sections follow this introduction. The first examines how changing donor roles interacted with institutional developments to produce an opportunity for projects to influence policy. Section two presents a theoretical framework with which to assess LDGs and the policy experiments in which they were embedded. Section three applies the framework to a sample of 15 donor projects operational over the 1990s in Vietnam.

For many years the role of non-government organizations (NGOs) in sociopolitical development has been described in relation to the importance of a strong civil society in fostering accountability and democratic governance. In Vietnam, until recently, the government through its mass organizations dominated the “landscape” of civil society that in most other nations is dotted with NGOs. This began to change in 1992 when the government issued Decree 35/CP allowing the formation of private, non-profit social organizations (Sidel 1995). In 1996, I interviewed about 15 organizations in Hanoi that were using the term “NGO” to describe their activities (Gray 1999). Most had used Decree 35 to register directly or indirectly under the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA).

One of the organizations was Towards Ethnic Women (TEW), which worked with minority farmers from several highland provinces. TEW had many interesting ideas for working with minorities, including the networking of farmers from different parts of the country. But despite the innovations offered by groups like TEW, it seemed clear that NGOs in Vietnam were emerging in an environment or social space tightly controlled by the state, and their ability to offer meaningful alternatives to the state approach was very limited. I argued that the pace of growth of Vietnamese NGOs would be dictated largely by the amount of donor support, with some danger that foreign donors would expect a great deal of local NGOs, and try to push them to accomplish too much. I felt this way because in large measure the literature on NGOs and civil society talked in terms of an “independence” or even “opposition” to the state, or state structures—as if a clear dividing line could be drawn between state and society. A more accurate starting point with which to view the development of NGOs in Vietnam would be to look at civil society as a sphere or “arena” where competing ideas are debated and acted upon, as described by Ben Kerkvliet in an article on state–society relations in Vietnam (Kerkvliet 2001, pp. 239–42).

Given Vietnam's war-torn history, the disabled form a sizeable community. Organized treatment of the disabled was largely in state hands until the 1980s when political reforms enabled a bigger, more proactive role for citizens to organize their own affairs. Part of this self-organization meant contact and interaction with the outside world and the input of foreign ideas and financial resources that in turn challenged the old state-dominant policy, both in terms of assumptions and in practice. In effect, there have been paradigm shifts in governance where the management of the disabled is concerned. This study looks at one such organization that grew up in a time of paradigm shifts. The details provided describe the dynamics of how NGOs relate to the state.

This paper is a study on the situation of disabled people in Vietnam that goes beyond the statistics on various kinds of disabilities and their health or rehabilitation related aspects. Some developments in the disability scene over the past two years justify the author's choice of the present subject for discussion in the context of governance. The point of departure has been the author's first-hand knowledge of a self-help group of disabled people in Hoi An, Central Vietnam, acquired during his stay there between December 1999 and July 2000. Another starting point was the author's friendship with the group's leading member, Le Nguyen Binh, and the latter's involvement with a website created for the Disability Forum, a group of foreign NGOs focusing on people with disabilities in Vietnam. Beyond this, the data is based on on-line resources and e-mail communication. The interviews targeting the Hoi An group, conducted largely by e-mail, followed the ethnographic method of M.H. Agar (Agar 1980). Most documents and data were collected from February through October 2001, without any opportunity for fieldwork. Some of the conclusions in this chapter were checked on the ground during the author's brief visit to Hanoi in December 2001.

In the early 1990s, observers began to comment on the increasing diversity of groups and associations in Vietnam. Phan Dai Doan, a distinguished professor of history in Hanoi, marvelled in 1994 at the “abundant and complex forms of organizations” that had emerged in rural villages following the end of collectivized farming. Unlike during the agricultural collective period, he found that villagers were joining together for mutual assistance, animal husbandry, charity work, religious activities, and adult education, among other purposes. Meanwhile, Carole Beaulieu spotted what looked like NGOs (non-government organizations). People in Hanoi and elsewhere, she said, were creating “what they believed were independent organizations” and they felt free “to decide their own agenda and to raise money to act”. During the rest of the decade, evidence accumulated that the numbers and range of associations and groups were expanding.

To look at this phenomenon, scholars of Vietnam at the Australian National University and Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies made organizations the theme of the Vietnam Update conference held in November 2001. The chapters that follow began as presentations to that gathering. The conference was one of two looking at aspects of governance in Vietnam. Governance has several meanings and many features. Two aspects stood out for us: the ability of government authorities and institutions to make and implement policies and regulations that serve citizens and the country at large; and the accountability of authorities and institutions to the citizens and the public generally. We reasoned that one way to examine governance is to analyze organizations that claim to speak on behalf of certain sectors of the public, represent their interests, provide linkages between citizens and government, and enable people to hold authorities accountable. Our call for papers invited analyses of organizations in Vietnam that do these things or at least claim to. They could be government-created, government-linked, non-government, or other types of organizations, associations and groups.

Introduction

Towards the end of year 2000, a group of researchers from the Social Monitoring and Early Response Unit (SMERU) Research Institute in Jakarta conducted a study of small-scale rural credit in a number of villages traditionally associated with wet-rice cultivation in the Cirebon area of West Java. In one of these villages, Buyut in Kecamatan Cirebon Utara, our team was struck by the dynamic economic environment within the local community. Throughout the day there was little evidence of young people chatting idly with nothing to do—a common indication of unemployment in many other village communities throughout Java. Every morning a number of vehicles collected young men and women from the village, and returned them in the evening from their work in the rattan industry. Some of those returning home carried rattan from their places of employment, apparently as models for making additional items in their own homes. At the same time, in houses throughout the village, many of the occupants—old and young, male and female—were busily occupied with rattan work. It was apparent that in Buyut, and possibly in other villages nearby, the rattan industry had become a mainstay for those people looking to obtain additional income outside the parameters of the traditional agricultural economy.

Fieldwork for this study was carried out in September 2001. The research team observed and recorded the economic activities of the village community in Buyut, and especially those associated with the rattan industry. The study aimed to concentrate on the following three areas: to examine the impact of economic activities in nearby villages on the economic life of Buyut; to assess the impact of non-farm economic pursuits on agricultural activities; and to consider briefly the influence of these nonfarm economic activities on the wider dimensions of economic and social life in the village.

Information was collected from a wide range of sources during fieldwork. In addition to interviews with members of the local community involved in the entire range of economic activities within the village, valuable insights were also gathered from interviews with rattan factory staff and managers, local sub-contractors, workers at all levels of the rattan industry, industry association representatives, and government officials from various agencies.

Rural Households, Agricultural Households and Landowning Households in Rural Indonesia

The twenty-five years from 1970 to 1995 witnessed dramatic changes in the role of agriculture in the Indonesian economy. There was a marked decline in the proportion of total national output (GDP) accruing from the agricultural sector, and the proportion of the labour force employed in agriculture also fell. By 1990, just under half the employed labour force was working in agriculture (in the sense that agriculture was the main source of income), according to the Population Census of that year. Between 1990 and 1995 the absolute size of the agricultural labour force declined, and by 1995 only 44 percent of the employed labour force was reported as “working in agriculture”. This percentage was lower for the densely populated inner islands of Java and Bali where the process of structural change and diversification away from agriculture was especially rapid. If the absolute increase in the employed labour force between 1990 and 1995 is distributed between urban and rural areas, and between economic sectors, it is clear that much of the increase in the non-agricultural labour force occurred in urban areas. In rural areas, which accounted for about one third of the total increase in employment over these five years, much of the growth occurred in the trade and service sector (Table 2.1).

In 1995, the Intercensal Survey (Supas) reported that there were 45.7 million households in Indonesia, of which only about 32 percent were wholly dependent on agriculture for their income, and a further 9.5 percent were largely dependent on agriculture with some non-agricultural income sources. Less than half of the households located in rural areas, which comprised 65 percent of all households, were earning all their income from agriculture in 1995. On the other hand, of those rural households earning at least part of their income from agriculture (over 70 percent of all rural households), the great majority reported that agriculture was either the sole or the main source of their income (Table 2.2). Clearly it would be wrong to argue that the agricultural sector, even before the crisis of 1997, was not an important source of income for many millions of rural households in Indonesia.