It has been two weeks since I stopped teaching and traveling to focus on research. It feels wonderful. I have been reviewing Mushtaq's theory and the general framework for capability building reading Lall's 2003 paper on the role of the government and building industrial capacity today. I found a few things that I could adapt from his paper to the case of Vietnam- such as the central issue with Vietnam's development is a weak (and corrupted) government with lots of distributive rents and a relatively new, small but productive and growing private sector.
The country is facing two options: (1) strengthen the capability of the private sector by using either neoliberal approach or industrial policies, (2) upgrade its institutional capacity so that they could better manage the increasingly powerful SOEs. The country is caught between these two options since 2006 and so far things are getting worse (politically and economically) instead of better.
The common practice of attaching capability building with technology appears to be a bit short-sighted as the issue with capability building in Vietnam is largely caused by weak institutions and coordination instead of lack of technology. I'm thinking of the ways to expand the scope of capability building in my thesis so that it would encompass other market failures, not just technology and learning.
Above all, I'm suspecting if my hunch feelings is right. It's strange, I feel as if with qualitative analysis, I seem to speculate on a lot of the things based on empirical evidence that heard from fieldwork. I must find a way to validate these assessments. How do you that?
1 comments:
I am so touched by your post on your yearning for California and feel so bad that I do play a role in delaying your trip. Instead of comment on the other post, I turn to this one and am somehow relieved that you can now refocus on your research.
You touched upon a very important issue for VN development: capacity building for both private sector and institutions and pointed clearly out that weak institutions and coordinations limit the progress of capacity building in Vietnam. I fully agree with you on those points.
Yet capacity building is only a means, not an end itself and my hunch is that Vietnam has to tackle simultaneously all these challenges: weak capacity, weak institutions and weak coordination.
Perhaps it would be useful to look at the theory of institutional changes as well. I believe that this is a loop: weak institutions generate weak capacity which in turn results in weak institutions (ala a Darwinian Selection Process, perhaps?).
Another issue is that institutional changes are context-dependent, and Vietnamese people are very good at adapting to and taking advantage of surrounding circumstances. So "improved" capacity in weak institutions may lead to the worse, insetad of better. This is what I think of the current situation: a combination of state power and talented entrepreneurs has been exploiting market failures for their interest. It exolains why so many capacity building efforts, including large number of Western Uni's graduates have not lead anywhere yet.
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