The Case of Thái Bình

Abstract

Thái Bình province created an earthquake in Vietnam’s political life in 1997 after five of its seven towns experienced unrest, giving rise to the emergence of GRD. In the last 15 years, unlike some of its neighbors, Thái Bình has not witnessed any subsequent major peasant protests. Agrarian villages in the province have been relatively peaceful and have seen development such as newly constructed houses. Many indicators extracted from two annual indices—the PCI and the PAPI—such as quality of public services and governance—show that Thái Bình is not the best performer but that it ranks relatively high, while corruption and corruption-related complaints have declined. These conditions and the province’s political stability make it a suitable case for investigating the implementation of GRD in in the last 15 years.

This chapter is derived in part from the article Hai, Nguyen Hong, “Grassroots Democracy and Inequality Reduction in Rural Vietnam: The Case of Thai Binh in 1997 and Now,” published in Asian Journal of Political Science, Volume 22, Issue 1, 2014, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02185377.2013.879067#abstract.