ABSTRACT
Changes in property rights can radically alter how individuals and groups cope with external change. In Vietnam, the system of governance and property laws has changed dramatically during the 1990s from central planning towards a market-oriented economic policy. Part of this trend has resulted in the effective privatisation of productive assets such as agricultural land, forests and marine resources. These resources were previously managed through state organised cooperatives. Often, local government overlaid traditional common property rights regimes, resulting in hybrid complex organisations and property regimes (see, for example, Hy Van Luong 1992). As Chapter 4 has demonstrated, prevailing property rights regimes during the ‘collectivised’ period and their subsequent evolution were, indeed, local compromises in ongoing resource allocation struggles for land and livelihoods.
