Movement between academia and policy-making in Vietnam
From: David Payne <payne.dave@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 11:02 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
Reflecting on recent professional experiences bringing together government decision makers/senior experts with professors and lecturers of Vietnamese universities (in this case on the topic of zoonotic diseases), also with the involvement of some other countries in the region, I find myself asking the following questions:
1. Is there any research on movement between academic and public policy/government positions in Vietnam?
2. Are there many strong examples of Vietnamese academics driving/contributing to public policy formulation? Vo Tong Xuan springs to mind but is he more of an exception than the rule?
3. For experts in organizational/personnel systems: my understanding is that people do move between the more prestigious institutes under ministries and senior ministry positions (e.g. between Pasteur Institute HCMC and Ministry of Health). And post-retirement movement from ministries to civic/scientific endeavours (e.g. VUSTA member organizations) seems quite common. But is it possible to move between academia and government prior to retirement? Or does someone effectively have to chose one or the other for their primary career?
Insights and/or suggestions for further reading very much appreciated..
Best,
David Payne
Hanoi
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From: Mark Sidel <sidel@wisc.edu>
Date: Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 11:41 AM
To: David Payne <payne.dave@gmail.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
David asks several very interesting questions. A couple of brief, unsubstantial observations and others will have more:
1. There is clearly movement between Party schools and Party institutions -- not just through the training mechanism that Party schools are responsible for, but also Party school staff working at times in Party organizations. We may think of this as academic-to-public-policy but my experience is that within the Party (in VN as in China) this is often regarded as just a different placement within one's Party organization, not a transition or move from "academic" to "policy."
2. Similar with specialized tertiary institutions tied to specific Ministries. There has long been back and forth (I should probably say back or forth) between the Foreign Ministry and IIR/DAV, for example, and at least one of the leadership group in today's MFA spent years at IIR/DAV. David alludes to this pattern when he mentions MOH/Pasteur. There are interesting permutations here as well, of course -- for those who want to do policy and are in a favored situation, for example, the IIR/DAV-to-MFA route is more common; for those (some on this list know or knew them) who want to move from daily policy to analysis and may be considered a bit iconoclastic/analytical, the MFA-to-DAV route may be preferred, sometimes as a protective device. All are MFA employees, of course.
3. We see the post-retirement government-to-social organizations/GONGOs/NGOs move all the time -- often accompanied by a kind of release from pre-retirement strictures on speaking and action. This shows up in the SO/NGO community, but also in constitutional debates and other fora.
4. I would point out that all this and more is taking place in China, where there are now some more organized academic-to-government channels that show up as funded rotations out of academic life, into ministries or the Party, for a year or two before return to academic life. My sense -- I have not studied this, but I've seen it on extensive work in China -- is that these are organized programs in China, and that they extend down to provincial universities. For example, on visits to the Ministry of Civil Affairs in Beijing, I've met academics who participate in official meetings and who are on secondment from their (high-ranking) provincial universities to MOCA for a period of time.
Unsubstantial comments, as indicated above. But great questions from David.
Mark Sidel
Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin-Madison
975 Bascom Mall
Madison, Wisconsin 53706
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From: David Marr <david.marr@anu.edu.au>
Date: Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 5:34 PM
To: Mark Sidel <sidel@wisc.edu>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I'm out of touch with current practice, but in decades past I'd say the natural scientists moved back and forth much more effectively than the social scientists. Some of the latter of course took part in government or party policy projects, but their degree of expert contribution was limited. Others preferred to address socio-economic or cultural (not political) issues mainly via academic journals and/or the press. It would be interesting to look at specific academic disciplines to see how this is playing out today.
David Marr
ANU
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From: Oscar Salemink <o.salemink@anthro.ku.dk>
Date: Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 11:02 PM
To: "vsg@u.washington.edu" <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I can endorse Mark’s ’unsubstantial comments’ from my own observations over the years.
Then some more substantial analysis. Some time ago I mentioned the doctoral dissertation on this issue by Eren Zink. A monograph based on his dissertation is due to come out soon with NIAS Presshttp://www.niaspress.dk/books/hot-science-high-water.
Oscar Salemink
Professor in the Anthropology of Asia
Department of Anthropology
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Copenhagen
Øster Farimagsgade 5
1353 København K.
Denmark
Office: CSS - Bygning 16, Opgang i, room 16.0.24
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From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 6:47 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Perhaps most notable among environmentalists is Professor Vo Quy, whose work with IUCN in the mid-1980s
produced an action plan for sustainable development, then to a UNDP-funded project to reorganise the then
Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment to its present form and shift Government thinking towards
sustainable development. [Note that this project was Government led and broadly consultative.]
At the moment, Professor Quy is (among other things), a key member of a Viet Nam - US Dialogue
Group on Agent Orange, a project which uses his considerable statesmanship on a difficult question.
Vern
--
Vern Weitzel (Mr.) BSc, BA, MA, M Env Man & Dev
<vern.weitzel@gmail.com> <vernweitzel@mac.com>
--
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From: Bailey, Charles <Charles.Bailey@aspeninstitute.org>
Date: Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 6:52 PM
To: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@gmail.com>, Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Hi Vern- I couldn’t agree more. Prof. Vo Quy is a real gem—a leader at the forefront of policy development. Best, Charles
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From: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 6:54 PM
To: "Bailey, Charles" <Charles.Bailey@aspeninstitute.org>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
And I didn't even mention his is a TV star. ;) Cheers!! vern
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From: Vuong Vu-Duc <vuduc.vuong@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:22 PM
To: Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@gmail.com>
Cc: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dr. Nguyen Xuan Vang, currently heading the overseas studies & cooperation at the Ministry of Ed. and Training, came from Ha Noi University, where he was president for some time.
VDV.
Vu-Ð?c Vu?ng, MSW-JD
Director of General Education
HOA SEN UNIVERSITY
H? Chí Minh City, Vi?t Nam
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From: David Payne <payne.dave@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 9:52 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Mark, David, Oscar, Vern, Charles and Vuong Vu-Duc,
Thanks very much for your responses and links related to my question. There were also some relevant comments and links from the recent Education System thread initiated by Christina Firpo.
Definitely lots of food for thought - notably Mark's examples (especially the 'back or forth' nuance) and analysis as supported by David and Oscar, and the mentions of Prof. Vo Quy and Dr. Nguyen Xuan Vang. Although with regard to the latter case perhaps movement from a senior university position to a ministry other than Education and Training might provide a stronger example that crossing administrative lines is feasible in more than a handful of exceptional cases?
The suggestion from the 2008 Harvard paper that in the past, following the Soviet model, "universities were primarily teaching institutions, while research was carried out by research institutes" also seems relevant (http://www.hks.harvard.edu/innovations/asia/Documents/HigherEducationOverview112008.pdf). Although having worked within a large ministry in Hanoi for the past 6 years or so, my sense is the quality of research by ministry institutes is quite mixed, and anecdotally movement from a department to an institute within the ministry is in some cases probably best described as 'the opposite of a promotion'.
Thanks again,
David Payne
Hanoi