Political trends in Vietnam have shaped political trajectories in Cambodia and Laos. During French colonial rule, Vietnam was the colony's epicentre. The French recruited from and trained their administrators among the Vietnamese, and sent them out across Indochina. After Cambodia obtained its independence in 1953, the Khmer Rouge, a communist movement with ties to the Vietnamese communists, had already challenged the fragile regime. It was an alternative nationalist movement with its own brand of communist project, and largely rose in opposition to Vietnamese influence. It gained power for a few years but subsequently the Vietnamese army dislodged and replaced it with a government under its control. Although the government eventually gained more autonomy, Vietnamese influence has remained present, although to a much lesser degree. In Laos, political division was deep after independence, and no political force was able to exercise sufficient power to establish a stable government. Laos was drawn into the Vietnam War, as was Cambodia, and suffered casualties and destruction as well. The end of the war provided the opportunity for the communist Pathet Lao to establish its dominance, with Vietnamese support. The Vietnamese government maintained strong influence over the communist regime in Laos for the following decades.

Communist regimes in both countries, however, were never able to establish the stability and continuity that characterized the Vietnamese regime. While they shared some of the institutional strength of communist regimes, other factors intervened to create much more unstable and even chaotic political histories.