| Summary: | In spite of administrative reforms implemented over the past 30 years of
Renovation Policy (Đổi mới) by the Vietnamese Communist Party with massive
support from donor agencies, Vietnam's state machinery and bureaucracy has
largely remained bloated and fragmented. As they evolved from state to market,
administration and public service did not reform as envisaged in a long-term
policy that aims to bring Vietnam closer to Western-dominated, normative models
of "good governance." The ineffectiveness of these reforms has commonly been
attributed to poor human capacity, weak law enforcement, inconsistent legal
frameworks and similar types of formal institutional shortcomings, all of which
ought to be remedied by strengthening formal institutions and capacity building.
In going beyond such mainstream institutionalist views, this paper appraises
administrative reforms from a more critical, sociological perspective. It takes into
account socio-cultural and socio-political institutional factors, such as norms,
values and worldviews, which often serve as pivotal elements shaping reform
trajectories and outcomes. Conceptually, the paper draws on a 1987 study by
Hans-Dieter Evers that traces different types of bureaucratisation as a means to
unravel the nature of bureaucracy and its evolutionary process through the lens of
social history. This study elucidates that despite formally proclaimed
commitments to Weberian bureaucracy, in practice, bureaucratisation as
currently observable in Vietnam is chiefly featured by strong tendencies of socalled Orwellisation and Parkinsonisation.
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