tailieunhanh - Public governance in economic transition and restructuring in Vietnam: an overview look

By acknowledging incompetence and inefficiency currently in operations of public governance, basing on its structure to review the developments of Vietnam’s transition in recent time, the article pinpoints eight key areas (work that needs to be done, and done correctly, with a new approach) to improve public governance’s competency and efficiency in upcoming periods. | Vietnam Social Sciences, No. 2(160) - 2014 PUBLIC GOVERNANCE IN ECONOMIC TRANSITION AND RESTRUCTURING IN VIETNAM: AN OVERVIEW LOOK TRAN DINH THIEN * Abstract: By acknowledging incompetence and inefficiency currently in operations of public governance, basing on its structure to review the developments of Vietnam’s transition in recent time, the article pinpoints eight key areas (work that needs to be done, and done correctly, with a new approach) to improve public governance’s competency and efficiency in upcoming periods. Key words: Public governance, restructuring, economic transition. 1. Public governance in Vietnam is a hotly debated topic, stemming from 3 issues: i) incompletion of current transition efforts; ii) incompetence in macro-level operation and management, exposed 7 years ago following Vietnam’s membership into WTO (January 2007, Vietnam struggled with adopting suitable policies to accommodate the opportunities, to cope with demanding requirements of international integration and internal inadequacies of the economy, as well as potential for other social instabilities); iii) very limited results from administrative reform despite 15 years of prioritizing (recognized by the government as a “strategy breakthrough”), modest success in battling corruption – the “national disease” that has been plaguing all branches of government, sluggish progress in educational reforms; traffic congestion, urban flooding, social evils. are in the public’s scrutinizing eyes, further highlighting the issues at hand with public governance. It is worth noting 8 that these aching concerns persist in a period of consistent economic growth and projected long-term development, backed by a determining factor: socio-economic stability. This paradox remains unexplained in a myriad of literatures on public governance in Vietnam. One question is: Why have improvements in public governance been so negligible, while the severity of the problem has been widely acknowledged, .