III. Confucian values and the transition to the rule of law in Vietnam
III.3. Confucian values and the rule of law – an empirical test
Hence, it can be argued that, under the ideal of Confucian social harmony, the level of personal trust in society as a whole is indeed low.
To summary, Confucianism was introduced very early and had a long development history in Vietnam. Despite the rise and fall of Confucianism in Vietnam, Confucian values have not disappeared in Vietnam, but have developed into informal institutions. Social order, Confucian ethics and social harmony are three main features of Confucian values significantly influencing political and institutional reforms in Vietnam today.
and have a GDP per capita much higher than that of Vietnam. Therefore, although Vietnam remains in the lower level of economic development, the Vietnamese public supports institutional reform to democracy and the rule of law.
Figure 4.1: Support for Democracy Index by Nation
Source: 1995-98, 2000-2001 World Values Surveys, cite in Dalton and Ong (2002).
Figure 4.2 compares attitude of Vietnamese people with those in other Asian countries when answering the question of whether it is better to have a good democracy or a strong economy.
Clearly, Vietnamese people prefer good democracy to strong economy. The number of Vietnamese correspondents who favor good democracy is twice as high as those who opt for a strong economy. Again, the Pew Global Attitude survey shows that support for democracy in Vietnam is comparatively high.
Figure 4.2: Support for Democracy or strong economy
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Bangl ade
sh Indi
a Indon
esia
Philippines
South Kore a
Vietnam
% Good democracy
Strong economy
Source: Pew Global Attitude Project (2003)
Second, as mentioned above, the level of personal trust and democracy are likely to be positively correlated. It is interesting to note that most Vietnamese people are skeptical about personal trust – 59% of the respondents say that one needs to be careful in dealing with other people. More importantly, there is no relationship between trust and people’s support for democracy in Vietnam. According to Dalton and Ong (2002), such a relationship cannot be found in China, Taiwan and South Korea either. There are two presumptions drawn from this fact. First, if the aforementioned hypothesis of Putnam – Voigt is true, it will not be easy to establish pluralist democracy in Vietnam due to the low level of personal trust although the support for democracy in Vietnam is relatively high in the region. Second, as explained earlier, a low level of trust in society can be the consequence of a high regard for hierarchical order. This seems to be true in Vietnamese society because there is a low degree of trust among the people regardless of Confucian efforts in promoting social harmony. Thus, Confucian value of harmony has converse effect in reality of Vietnam.
For such reason, I suppose that the Vietnamese people will support hierarchical order. In Vietnamese tradition, family is the basis of society. The family is regarded as a small society with hierarchical order in which parents have great power over their children. Filial piety is conceived as the main obligation of children. Therefore, the World Values Survey measures the degree of respect for Parents. Their result clearly illustrates my supposition. Specifically, more than any other of the Confucian societies, Vietnamese people answer that parents are to be respected regardless of their quality and fault. Additionally, as observed by Dalton and Ong (2003), 56% of Vietnamese correspondents say that obedience is a quality that children should be encouraged to learn. If the degree of respect for parents reflects the degree of hierarchical order in society, it is possible to say that Vietnamese people still have high regard for hierarchical order.
Figure 4.3: Respect for Parents in East Asian Countries
74 78
91 93 99
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Japan China Taiwan S. Korea Vietnam
respect for parents (%)
Source: 2001 and 1995-98 World Values Survey, cited from Dalton et al, 2001.
Third, I argued in chapter II that one important component of the rule of law is the respect for (private) property rights. Confucianism, as mentioned above, disregards individual economic rights and values state interests over individual rights. The World Values Survey provides data regarding the Vietnamese opinion about privately owned business and state-owned business. As is clear from Figure 4.4, although the percentage of Vietnamese who support privately owned business is slightly lower than those in other East Asian countries and the U.S, most of the respondents (81%) are in favour of private ownership. Only 19% of the Vietnamese respondents still endorse state-ownership. The survey also shows that, on the contrary with traditional notion of Confucianism, there is a high respect for private property rights among Vietnamese people. Thus the goal of buttressing institutional reform toward economic liberalization and the rule of law, which endorses private property rights, is feasible.
Figure 4.4: Support for privately owned and government owned business (%)
19
10
3 3 2 1
81
90 97 97 98 99
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Vietnam
China
Taiwan
S. Korea
Japan
USA
Government Private
Source: 2001 and 1995-98 World Values Survey, cited in Dalton & Ong, 2001.
It is worth noting that although the percentage of Vietnamese who favour privately owned business is slightly lower than those in other East Asian countries, the support for free market economy is relatively higher than those in other East Asian countries, according to the results of the Pew Global Attitude Project (2003). In this survey, 95% of Vietnamese respondents say that they are better off in a free market economy. The number of negative answers is 4% (see figure 4. 5).
Figure 4. 5: Free market economy is good or bad in Asia
4 13
26 29
39 27
55 17
95 82
71 70
54 44
43 32
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Vietnam S. Korea Philippines China Indonesia India Japan Bangladesh
negative positive
Forth and finally, in order to see how the Vietnamese people are content with the current political regime, we can observe the degree of Vietnamese confidence in political institutions.
According to the World Values Survey, almost all Vietnamese support the current political institutions. The level of support is even higher in comparison with ten years ago (from 84%
to 96% of all correspondents). But the most surprising result is that Vietnamese people seem to have more confidence in the current political regime than the populations of other democratic regimes in East Asia, for example Japan and Taiwan as well as the US (see figure 6).
Figure 4.6: Confidence in political institution
96
33
19
35 84
52 47 51
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Vietnam Taiwan Japan US
now 10 yrs ago
Source: 2001 and 1995-98 World Values Survey, cited in Dalton & Ong, 2001.
Similarly, the data from the Pew Global Attitude Project (2003) also show that Vietnamese people seems to be content with their current social life. Vietnam is among the top countries of the world where the majority think that many aspects of their life have been improved, such as: job opportunities (92%), working condition (85%), availability of food and modern medicine (91% and 95% respectively), and affordable health care (76%). There are only two problems that, in the view of Vietnamese people, are getting worse namely, spread of diseases (64%) and the gap between the rich and poor (51%). In such a situation, it is unfeasible to exploit “shock reform” in the field of political reform that has been implemented in Central-East Europe and former Soviet Union. However, public opinion in Vietnam also supports further political reform. When asked about further reforms, the majority of Vietnamese respondents (54%) say that stronger measures should be applied toward societal reform and another 30% says society must be gradually improved through reforms (Dalton and Ong, 2001).