https://orcid.org/0009-0007-1665-362X
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ABSTRACT
Authoritarian responsiveness, as opposed to repression, is expected to quell social unrest. Yet, not only did institutionalized measures to strengthen citizen rights in Vietnam’s 2013 Land Law fail to mitigate social unrest, but unrest also became more explosive in the Dong Tam land clash, the deadliest to have taken place in Vietnam’s contemporary history. Why does authoritarian responsiveness fail to alleviate social contention? How can responsiveness subsequently heighten, rather than diminish, social resistance? This article explains the paradox of responsiveness by developing a feedback theory of repression-responsiveness through a case study of the Dong Tam land conflict. We argue that authoritarian responsiveness can amplify unrest by providing citizens with a legible transcript for contentious claim-making. At the same time, it also equips the regime with a public transcript to limit accommodations of societal claims and to engage in repression. This exploitation of the law, in turn, provides positive feedback to unrest while encouraging citizens to further adopt the regime’s own transcript in their resistance.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the discussants and participants who attended the panel on “Resistance and the State in Southeast Asia” at the 2022 AAS Annual Conference in Hawaii, the anonymous reviewers, and the editors of Democratization for their valuable comments. We are especially grateful to Benedict Kerkvliet, Paul Hutchcroft, Erik Martinez Kuhonta, Eunsook Jung, Aurel Croissant, and Rui Hua. All errors are our own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Crouch, Government and Society in Malaysia; Kerkvliet, Speaking Out in Vietnam; Heurlin, Responsive Authoritarianism in China; Todd et al., “Testing Legislator Responsiveness.”
2 Kerkvliet, Speaking Out in Vietnam.
3 Blaydes, State of Repression; Francisco, “Coercion and Protest.”
4 Centre for Community Support and Development Studies et al., “The 2020 Viet Nam Governance and Public Administration Performance Index.”
5 Malesky, Phan, and Pham, “The Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index.”
6 In fact, it was held up as a paragon of the government’s responsiveness in the VCP Mass Mobilization Magazine: “From the Dong Tam incident, we realize that in order to solve people's problems and frustrations, the government must know how to listen to the people and address people's questions in a timely manner. Only then will people have faith and confidence in the Party and the State.” See Nhi Bac, “Bai hoc tu doi thoai.”
7 Elfstrom, Workers and Change in China; Zheng and Meng, “The Paradox of Responsiveness and Social Protest in China.”
8 Béland, Campbell, and Weaver, Policy Feedback; Pierson, “When Effect Becomes Cause.”
9 Manin, Przeworski, and Stokes, “Introduction”; Powell, “The Chain of Responsiveness”; Esaiasson and Wlezien, “Advances in the Study of Democratic Responsiveness.”
10 Bernstein and Lü, Taxation Without Representation; Mertha, China’s Water Warriors. Reilly, Strong Society, Smart State; Miller, “Elections, Information, and Policy Responsiveness in Autocratic Regimes”; Todd et al., “Testing Legislator Responsiveness.”
11 Conrad, “Constrained Concessions.”
12 Li, “A Zero-Sum Game Repression and Protest in China.”
13 Cai, “Power Structure and Regime Resilience”; Teets, Civil Society Under Authoritarianism; Fu, Mobilizing without the Masses.
14 Weiss, Powerful Patriots.
15 Pierskalla, “Protest, Deterrence, and Escalation”; Frantz and Kendall-Taylor, “A Dictator’s Toolkit”; Escribà-Folch, Abel, “Repression, Political Threats, and Survival”; Hager and Krakowski. “Does State Repression Spark Protests?”
16 Truex, Making Autocracy Work; Dimitrov, “Internal Government Assessments”; He, “From Village Election to Village Deliberation in Rural China.”
17 Zheng and Meng, “The Paradox of Responsiveness and Social Protest in China.”
18 Béland, Campbell, and Weaver, Policy Feedback; Pierson, “When Effect Becomes Cause.”
19 Kerkvliet, Speaking Out in Vietnam, 145. Also see, note #5 on p. 216. “Dialogism” emphasizes both “contextual” and “structural” elements of domination and subordination, similar to “social” and “semiotic” aspects of contentious speech. As Steinberg explains, “social in that meaning is a function of the social interactions between people and the contexts in which these take place; and semiotic in that the languages themselves that people use and that are available to them to express their senses of the world limit what can be expressed and understood.” See Steinberg, “The Talk and Back Talk of Collective Action.”
20 Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 27.
21 A regime’s responsive measures constitute a distinct “public transcript” by dominant elites that involves necessary concessions to and that resonate with citizens. But different from Scott’s discussion of “public transcript” as a crude “self-portrait” of how dominant elites would have themselves seen that carry predominantly performative aspects, responsiveness in our analysis is substantive (Scott 1990, 18).
22 Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies; Weber, Economy and Society.
23 Ritter and Conrad, “Preventing and Responding to Dissent.”
24 Gregory, Terror by Quota.
25 Deng and O’Brien, “Relational Repression in China.”
26 Cai, “Power Structure and Regime Resilience.”
27 Lichbach, “Deterrence or Escalation?”; Rasler, “Concessions, Repression, and Political Protest in the Iranian Revolution”; Moore, “The Repression of Dissent”; Franklin, “Contentious Challenges and Government Responses in Latin America.”
28 Kerkvliet, Speaking Out in Vietnam; Elfstrom, Workers and Change in China.
29 Crouch, Government and Society in Malaysia.
30 Chua, “Legal Mobilization and Authoritarianism.”
31 O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance.
32 Scheppele, “Autocratic Legalism”; Gallagher, Authoritarian Legality in China; Cheesman, Opposing the Rule of Law.
33 Ginsburg and Moustafa, Rule by Law.
34 Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party, “Resolution No. 19-NQ/TW.”
35 Bui 2013, emphasis added.
36 Personal interview with VNHN 20160921. Civil society actor in LANDA. Hanoi, September 21, 2016.
37 2013 Land Law, art. 61.
38 2013 Land Law, art. 62.
39 2013 Land Law, art. 70 and 71.
40 Ibid.
41 “Nhin lai vu Dong Tam.”
42 Ha Son Binh province was split into Ha Tay and Hoa Binh province in 1991; the former was merged into Hanoi in 2008.
43 “Dong Tam: Dat tranh chap.”
44 Hereby referred to as the western and eastern parcel, respectively.
45 “Truy to 14 cuu can bo.”
46 The eastern parcel was never a point of contention by the citizens, who considered it within the government's jurisdiction to expropriate. Citizens only contested the regime's expropriation of the western parcel.
47 “Nhin lai vu Dong Tam.” Article 204 and 205 of the Land Law, for instance, grants citizens the rights to lodge complaints and denounce violations regarding land use, respectively. The procedure was further outlined in the 2011 Denunciation Law, Decree No. 76/2012/NĐ-CP, and Circular 06/2013/TT-TTCP.
48 Amnesty International, “Viet Nam: Arrests and Social Media Crackdown.”
49 He and Xue, “Identity Building and Communal Resistance against Landgrabs in Wukan Village, China.”
50 “Dong Tam: Dat tranh chap.”
51 “Dong Tam: Canh sat ap vao.” Article 16a allows the government to recover land “for national defence and public security purposes;” Article 61 describes 10 specific land use cases that meet this definition.
52 Article 16b allows the government to recover land “found in violation of land use laws;” Article 64 describes 9 specific violations that meet this definition.
53 “Dong Tam: Canh sat ap vao.”
54 “Dong Tam: Dat tranh chap.”
55 Hanoi E-Government Portal, “Promote Telecommunications Development.”
56 “Dat truong ban.”
57 Ngo et al., “Don Kien Nghi.”
58 Le Dinh Kinh, quoted in “Ong Le Dinh Kinh noi ve dat Dong Senh.”
59 “Dong Tam: Dat tranh chap.”
60 Then-member of Hanoi Party Standing Committee and Vice Chairman of Hanoi People’s Committee.
61 Le Dinh Kinh, quoted in “Ong Le Dinh Kinh noi ve dat Dong Senh.”
62 Nguyen, “Vu Dong Tam.”
63 “Chu tich Ha Noi ket thuc.”
64 Thanh Nam, “Bai Hoc Tu Dong Tam.”
65 Le, “Lessons Learned.”
66 “Chu tich Ha Noi Nguyen Duc Chung.”
67 Ibid.
68 “Thanh Tra Chinh Phu Doi Thoai.”
69 “Ban Do Xa Dong Tam”; “Ong Le Dinh Kinh noi ve dat Dong Senh.”
70 Ngo et al., “Don Kien Nghi,” 10.
71 “Nguoi dan Dong Tam gui tam thu,” April 15, 2018.
72 Government Inspectorate of Vietnam, “Doi thoai voi cong dan xa Dong Tam.”
73 “Chinh phu co that su doi thoai?”
74 Pepinsky, “The Institutional Turn in Comparative Authoritarianism.”
75 Kerkvliet, Speaking Out in Vietnam, 145.
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Nhu Truong
Nhu Truong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Affairs at Denison University. Her research examines the repression and responsiveness of autocracies and democracies, repertoires of resistance, state formation, and the political economy of rural development in East and Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam, China, and Cambodia. She is the co-editor of The Dragon's Underbelly: Dynamics and Dilemmas of Vietnam's Economy and Politics (ISEAS, 2022), and a Mansfield-Luce Asia Scholars Network Fellow, a Rosenberg Institute Scholar, and a Centre for Khmer Studies Senior Research Fellow.
Duy Trinh
Duy Trinh is a Data and Statistical Specialist at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, Princeton University. Dr. Trinh received his PhD in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego.