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Through evidence from field work, this paper assesses the implications of the Grassroots Democracy Decree (GDD) for the central and northern highlands, analyzing how the promotion of grassroots democracy is discursively constructed by rural development professionals.
Over the past decades Vietnam has seen striking efforts to reinvent the exercise of democratic rural development. There has been large-scale unrest among the rural populace due to dissatisfaction with a felt mismatch between espoused commitments to ‘good governance’ and its actual practice. The response from the Communist Party and the government has been to promote grassroots democracy, most notably under the GDD.
The analysis shows there have been three dominant discourses, which center on their respective interests in liberalist democratization, improved efficiency in state renovation, and enhanced accountability in governing local policy ambiguities.
The author argues that ‘grassroots democracy’ is serving as a conceptual mediator, supporting learning between diverging interests associated with rural development and different ideological positions shrouding the notion of democracy itself. Yet, given the extent that discourses are reflective of how professionals relate to grassroots aspirations, grassroots movements, which originally ushered the Party and central government to pass the GDD, have a significant struggle ahead of them to affect concrete changes in professionals’ practices.
Perspective / Equity financing can empower smallholder farmers, enhance their resilience, and promote sustainable and inclusive agriculture.
Other publication / Seven perspectives on how the current food crisis and the global interlinkages of the agricultural sector are unfolding in East Africa and Southeast Asia.
Past event / AFA will hold a two-day workshop on climate resilient pathways for small scale family farmers in the Philippines.
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