Doctoral Dissertation in Political Science: Deliberative Autocracy: How Single-Party Regimes Manage Liberalized Assemblies

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award satisfies Division B, Title V, Sec. 543 of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 (P.L. 113-6, enacted on March 26, 2013). The project is directly related to US interests in democratization as it addresses how single party regimes create and control legislatures, focusing on Vietnam. Recent scholarship has argued for the importance of partially-liberalized legislatures in stabilizing power sharing and generating growth under authoritarian rule. This research leaves unresolved a fundamental commitment problem posed by partial liberalization, which is how legislators are prevented from using their public platform to mobilize a personal base of support. This project presents two novel arguments for how it is overcome. It shows that agenda control and strategic vetting are used to prevent debate from occurring on divisive issues while channeling debate towards areas where the regime desires feedback. These arguments are tested in Vietnam, which features a partially-liberalized legislature controlled by a single party. The project will rely on state-of-the-art automated text analysis techniques to analyze speeches made on the floor of the Vietnam National Assembly (VNA) and interviews in the Vietnamese news media. It will also rely on qualitative data collected from interviews with Vietnamese officials and VNA delegates. Intellectual Merit: Understanding how authoritarian regimes can manage institutions to serve their interests is a critical issue in democratization and political stability. In the past decade, research has considered the importance of parliaments or elections in stabilizing authoritarian rule. This work will add depth to this agenda in two important ways. First, it exposes a previously unacknowledged dilemma that prevents regimes from reaping the rewards of authoritarian institutions. Second, through its theoretical argument, it also proposes how successful regimes protect themselves from this problem. This project will also be important to those interested in authoritarian durability more generally. In particular, it will help explain the empirical finding that single-party systems are more durable than other types of authoritarian regimes, such as military or personalistic regimes. This study suggests that single parties are strong because they are adept at organizing agenda control and vetting through parallel party institutions. Broader Impacts: This project will have several broader impacts outside of its theoretical contributions. For policy makers, it addresses a debate regarding the stability of partially-liberalized regimes. Policy makers debate whether or not to engage partially-liberalized regimes due to uncertainty about the democratizing effects of partial political reforms. By specifying the challenges facing regimes that attempt to liberalize, this project highlights factors suggesting that partial liberalization may not be easy to manage for authoritarian rulers. In short, while liberalization does not inevitably lead to democratization, it may nonetheless increase the likelihood of an eventual transition. The second broader impact of the project will be to deepen our understanding of the recent political history and political institutions of Vietnam, an important country to US national security interests. Since the normalization of relations with Vietnam in 1995 and the signing of the Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2001, the relationship between Vietnam and the US has strengthened. As interest in the region, particularly regarding tensions in the South China Sea, has grown, Vietnam has become an increasingly important partner. This project will contribute by providing in-depth analysis of recent Vietnamese politics and institutions. It will also produce the first comprehensive digital archive and analysis of Vietnamese-language news articles and blogs.