The state, local associations, and alternate civilities in rural northern Vietnam

In July 1998 I returned to Son Duong commune (population 4,823) in the northern Vietnamese province of Phu Tho. It was the first time I had been back in seven years, and I was startled to find that I had returned during a profound crisis in the relations between the local population and the commune’s administration.1 As just one example of the magnitude of this crisis, from 1993 to 1998 three Communist Party secretaries and four presidents of the People’s Committee quickly succeeded one another, partly due to strong local pressure.