Vietnam and the Challenge of Political Civil Society (Report‪)‬

This article aims to advance the discussion of Vietnamese politics beyond contemporary academic preoccupation with so-called "everyday politics" and "civil society" by promoting the concept of political civil society. Political civil society refers to non-violent political, advocacy, (1) labour and religious organizations and movements that seek to promote human rights, democratization and religious freedom in authoritarian states. The term "political" has been included to capture the activist nature of civil society in Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s when citizens became active in creating organizations outside of state control in order to influence the conditions in which they lived, including political pressure on the state. The study of political civil society groups has been largely marginalized by mainstream academics who privilege the role of so-called developmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) in their writings on Vietnamese politics. (2) This article will focus on the roles of nascent "political parties" and trade unions that emerged in 2006 and coalesced in a political coalition known as Bloc 8406. These groups mounted a series of challenges to the political hegemony of the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP) before they were repressed. This article will also analyse the role of external agents, such as the Viet Tan Party, in providing material, financial and human resource assistance to political civil society groups.