From the 1990s and into the new millennium, the issue of governance has gained substantial attention from research institutions and development agencies. Democratic governance is one of the main components of assistance programmes of multilateral and bilateral donors to developing countries. The United Nations Development Program's 2002 Human Development Report considered democratic governance a basic condition for human development.

In the Vietnamese context, development agencies consider democratic governance crucial for sustaining the economic performance achieved since the 1986 economic reform, and to ensure the development of human well-being. Resources allocated to this sector reflect multilateral agencies' promotion of political reforms, in particular, democratization and decentralization. “As at mid-August 1999, the total approved budgets for Governance projects [in Viet Nam] stood at US$30.54 million, or about 37% of UNDP's approved programme resources”.

In this broad context of the prominence of governance and, at the grassroots, rural protest against local authorities' abuse of power in Vietnam, as in Thai Binh province in 1997, the government launched Decree 29 on local democracy. The decree promotes citizens’ rights to be informed and to participate in local decision-making. Also the government made efforts to decentralize its political structure, granting local authorities more decision-making power.

This chapter assesses whether these government initiatives have succeeded in enhancing local democracy. It does not examine the motivations for such reforms but studies the relationships between central and local politics that have influenced attempts at democratization. The study examines how local cadres obtain political positions, how they wield and maintain power, and how the local population perceives them.

Based on the available literature and extensive fieldwork conducted in 2001 in a Muong ethnic village, given the pseudonym “Chieng Hoa”, this chapter assesses three political institutions: village elections, meetings, and grievance procedures. These three are referred to as representation, participation, and accountability of democratization. The chapter then argues that, despite their formal existence, these elements contribute little to local democracy because they are trapped in unequal power structures. The analysis demonstrates that such structures are the outcome of: a) the concentration of power in commune executives; and b) the local population's differential access to information.