Group 1 final group paper of leadership (final version)

Conclusion...14 References...15 Abstract The study aims to analyze the relationship between the leadership style of Vietnam political system that is representative by the Communist Part

Viet Nam–Japanese University Viet Nam National University

LEADERSHIP

GROUP PAPER ANALYSIS ON LEADERSHIP STYLE OF VIETNAMESE GOVERNANCE

Group I

Name and student ID Hoang Hai Chau - 17110076

Vu Hoang Dung - 17110077 Nguyen Thu Ha - 17110078 Nguyen Thu Hang - 17110079 Phan Thi Quynh Hoa – 17110080

Hanoi, October 2017

Table of Contents

Abstract 1

1 Introduction and Rationale 2

1.1 Introduction 2

1.2 Rationale 2

2 Literature review and Research question 3

3 Methodology 5

Literature review 5

Web-check Statistic 6

2.1 Limitations 6

4 Key findings 6

4.2.1 Symbols of autocracy in leadership by the Party-State 9

4.2.2 Impact of autocratic symbols of leadership in Viet Nam 11

5 Discussion 12

6 Conclusion 14

References 15

Abstract

The study aims to analyze the relationship between the leadership style of Vietnam political system that is representative by the Communist Party of Vietnam with its influence level towards people via measuring people’s attention and participation level There are five main parts of this study The first one is introduction and rationale of the study which is followed

by the literature review and research questions The third part will describe methodology used in this study After that, the most important section of key findings will be provided In this part, evidence of people’s attention and participation level towards domestic politics life will present Following that, analysis of relationship between symbols of autocratic leadership styles of the Party and low level of people’s interests in politics Then, applying the theory of 5 levels of leadership will be used to explain for the influencing relationship Lastly, the paper will provide some points for discussion and conclusion It is expected our effort contributes a small part to analysis and researches on the Party leadership in particular and Vietnam political system in general.

1

1 Introduction and Rationale

1.1 Introduction

The political structure of Vietnam is unique Despite the fact that Vietnam is not the only country pursuing the one-Party state model and socialism under Marxism ideology, the political structure and system of Vietnam have distinctive characteristics

Vietnam is defined as the State of single-led Party, the Communist Party of Vietnam (the Party) The Party’s leadership is comprehensive, covering all political, economic, cultural and social aspects and all legislative, executive and judicial fields The principle of the Party leadership is the combination between centralism and democracy, namely to ensure centralized leadership based on democracy and to ensure democracy under the centralized leadership

There is an endless argument over the characteristics of the Party leadership From Western scholars’ opinion, many people believe that the Party leadership is dictatorial and autocratic (Russell Heng Hiang Khng)1 On the other hand, it is argued by domestic politic scholars that democracy is already demonstrated in various forms of people’s participation in state administration, which are recognized by law and assured by the State Particularly, it is formally announced in the Constitution that

“the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a socialist law-governed s of the people, by the people and for the people All State powers belong to the people The State guarantees and unceasingly promotes the mastery of the people in all aspects.”2

The year of 2016 is special for Vietnamese people and American people as both of countries held national elections to find out the best people for leadership Nevertheless, it is undeniable that while the U.S President election attracted attention

of global people, including Vietnam, the 14th National Assembly election in Vietnam likely received low responsiveness of Vietnam citizens, especially the youth From that observation, the group consider a question on the relationship between the leadership style of the Party and people’s attention level to politics in Vietnam Therefore, this study aims to figure out influence level of the Party’s leadership towards Vietnamese people’s politics attention through analyzing characteristics of leadership styles

1 Russell Heng Hiang Khng, Leadership in Vietnam: Pressures for Reform and Their Limits, Contemporary

Southest Asia Vol 15, pp 98-110

2 Article 3 of the Constitution 2013

1.2 Rationale

After reviewing dozens of related documents and researches on the political system of Vietnam, we decide to analyze the leadership of the political system in Vietnam, particularly the Party leadership because of the following reasons:

 It is necessary to have a deep understanding about the Vietnam political system including its structure, decision-making mechanism and process and characteristics that provides fundamental base for students of the Master Program of Public Policy During the process of topic selecting, each member

of the group discussed and shared opinions and understanding topic by topic and we realized that we have lacked a comprehensive understanding about the domestic politics and we believe that it is a common of other people in the class Therefore, we agree to work on that topic despite challenges we would have faced that will present in the next section

 Almost all previous studies and researches on Vietnamese political system and governance focus on analysis of organizational structure and operation mechanism that often fell into tendency of either critism of the single-Party system or overestimation of the Party achievement Hardly, it is a study on leadership characteristics of the Vietnam Communist Party Therefore, in this study, we would like to apply theories introduced to analyze the leadership style of the Party as a united subjective

 Last but not least, “Leadership is influence That’s it Nothing more, nothing less.” 3 (John C Maxwell) That indicates the correlational relationship

between the leadership level and the influence level In other words, in order to evaluate the leadership level of a political system, it could be based on the influence level on people living under that system The influence level could be measured by the level attention and involvement of citizens in national political life From the angle of leadership style of the Party, the study will provide some evidences for low attention and involvement of people in politics in Vietnam

With all above mentioned reasons, it is expected that this study provides a new angle

of view of the leadership style and contributes a small part to analysis and researches

on the Party leadership in particular and Vietnam political system in general

In order to develop research question, the group review dozens of documents and researches related to topics of leaderships, leadership styles, Vietnamese political system/structure and Vietnamese leadership and governance This step helps us to find

3 Maxwell, J.C (2011) The Five Levels of Leadership – Proven steps to Maximize your Potential,1 st ed.

a gap of studying leadership of Vietnamese political system and develop our direction for this study

First of all, according to Gary Yukl (2013), “Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.” (p.7) 4 Whereas, John C Maxwell also said that “Leadership is influence That’s it Nothing more, nothing less 5 ” According to Katz & Kahn (1978),

“Leadership is the influential increment over and above mechanical compliance with the routine directives of the organization” (p 528)6 In another study, Rauch &

Behling (1984) added on to this by stating that “Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement” (p 46)7 All above definitions of leadership demonstrate a common that leadership is the influencing process of the leaders to the followers to achieve certain objectives through making changes

In order to give influence, the leaders affect the followers in different ways The leaders may use traits, skills, and behaviors sharping their leadership styles to interact with the followers Great leaders are people who are able to make the followers believe and accept their instructions and they are in their best interests to implement given tasks in order to achieve the mutual goals The influence that leaders have on their subordinates will usually decide the leadership effectiveness which is relied on a number of indicators such as the followers’ attitudes, leaders’ performances, the extent to which the organization’s target is achieved, and the level of successful career ladder of the leader

In term of leadership styles, there are different way to classify but it could account two

basic styles of Leadership, as democratic leadership style and autocratic leadership style Autocratic leadership style is a style in which the leaders make all decisions and

provides commands what to do with closely supervision8 Meanwhile, people who pursue democratic leadership style tend to encourage participation in decisions and work with the followers to determine what to do with proper supervision Gastil (1994) states: “Democratic group leadership amounts to giving group members responsibility, improving the general abilities and leadership skills of other group members, and assisting the group in its decision-making process.” (p.403) Discussing

to the impact of leadership style, David De Cremer asserted that “Thus, if a leader is not autocratic, group members will feel attachment toward the group, and followers

4 Yukl, Gary A, (2013), Leadership in organizations / Gary Yukl — 8th edition.

5 Maxwell, J.C (2011) The Five Levels of Leadership – Proven steps to Maximize your Potential,1 st ed.

6 Katz, D., & Kahn, R L (1978), The social psychology of organizations, 2nd ed New York: John Wiley

7 Rauch, C F., & Behling, O (1984), Functionalism: Basis for an alternate approach to the study of leadership.

8 Ohio State studies

will therefore be focused on the subsequent behavior that the group leader displays Conversely, if a leader is seen as autocratic, subsequent self-sacrificial behavior is believed to influence followers’ reactions much less.” (p.81) In brief, the democratic style is considered more efficient than the other because it requires participation and attention from the followers which is necessary to turn out positive and feasible expertise of the subordinates rather than only the knowledge of the leader

Regarding the researches on leadership and leadership style of Vietnam governance or political system, it is noticeable that almost all of them focus to study organizational structure, operation mechanism, the key fields of the State or the relationships among Vietnam and other countries rather than leadership characteristics of the Vietnam Communist Party In some researches, scholars seemed to define the leadership style

of Vietnam leaders as autocratic without providing evidences For example, Lewis M Stern stated that “In practice the meaning and impact of the plenary session has depended more on the operating style of the general secretary and the chemistry among members of the Central Committee than the Party organization's rules.” (p.909)9 Russell heng Hiang Khng also indicated that “the Vietnam Communist Party has been dictatorial and corrupt, …” (p.99)10

In this study, we provide a hypothesis that the leadership style that is the manner of the leaders work and interact with the followers will determine the influence level of the leadership As a result, the democratic style tends to encourage people’s attention and participation while the autocratic style restricts them Therefore, we

consider characteristics of the leadership style of the Vietnam Communist Party, the supreme leader of the country as the direct reason to influence the level of attention and participation of people in the politics life To solve that hypothesis, this study will focus on two key questions:

i) What is leadership style of the Party?

ii) How is the influence level of leadership in Viet Nam towards Vietnamese people via measuring the level of attention and participation of people towards political activities?

Due to constraint of resources, especially time constraint, this assignment mostly bases on desk study methodology

Literature review

We find and review dozens of documents consisting of both primary and secondary data The primary data include official documents that were issued by the Party and

9 Lewis M Stern Party Plenums and Leadership Style in Vietnam Asian Survey, Vol 35, No 10 (Oct., 1995),

pp 909-921

10 Russell heng Hiang Khng Leadership in Vietnam: Pressures for Reform and Their Limits Contemporary Southest Asia, Vol 15 (1993), pp 98-110

the Government of Vietnam regulating organizational structure, operational principles and implementation instructions Some examples are:

- The Constitution 1992 and 2013

- Resolution No 04/NQ-TW dated 30 October 2016

- Law on the Promulgation of Legal Documents 2015

The secondary data consist of researches on leadership, leadership style and the Vietnamese leadership They are:

- Yukl, Gary A, (2013) Leadership in organizations / Gary Yukl — 8th ed

- Katz, D., & Kahn, R L (1978) The social psychology of organizations, 2nd

ed New York: John Wiley

- Rauch, C F., & Behling, O (1984) Functionalism: Basis for an alternate approach to the study of leadership

- Stogdill, R M (1974) Handbook of leadership: A survey of the literature New York: Free Press

- Russell heng Hiang Khng (1993) Leadership in Vietnam: Pressures for Repform and Their Limits Contemporary Southest Asia, Vol 15

- Alexander L Vuving (2017) The 2016 leadership change in Vietnam and Its long-term implications Southers Asian Affairs 2017

- Lewis M Stern (1995) Party Plenums and Leadership Style in Vietnam Asian Survey, Vol 36

Web-check Statistic

Besides documents review, we also conduct a statistic on the number of visiting of the official websites of minitries and the Party We use the tool developed by the

similarweb.com to count total visiting times of available ministry website and their

ranking in the search trending In addition, we also make a comparison between top keywords searching on Google in Vietnam and the global in 2016 The results of those statisctics will be present in the next section

2.1 Limitations

As mentioned above, this study is conducted in significant resource constraints Firstly, we only have had three days to review related documents to develop hypotheses and research direction as well as prepare for a presentation on the forth day Secondly, it is difficult to access data and information related to leadership of the Party and Vietnamese governance It is necessary to explore academic researches and studies with scientific evidences rather than propaganda and polished reports Lastly, politics is a complex issue that requires multidimetional analysis It would be great if the group was able to access and make several interviews with political experts about this topic That would increase the persuasiveness of this study However, due to resource limitation, it is impossible Instead of mentioned limitations, it is expected

that the study provides a small contribution to research work of leadership and Vietnam leadership system

4.1 The level of attention and participation of Vietnamese people towards politics

In order to measuring the level of attention of people towards politics, we base on two evidences First fact is the most popular keywords searching on Google and second fact is the visiting number of official websites of ministries

The table below shows top 10 most keyword searched in Viet Nam and global in

2016 It is a big difference in politics interest between Vietnamese people and the global Vietnamese people tended to spending much more time and interests in entertainment such as game, sport, music, movie and TV show than the politics Among 30 search trending, only 4 keywords related to politics It is noticeable that half of them about the politics in the U.S, Donald Trump and Obama Also, the official list of 12 member of the Politburo was at lower rank than two the U.S presidents It demonstrates a fact that the attention of Vietnamese people towards politics, especially the domestic politics is very low That is whether related to leadership capacity of our elite group

Table 1 The most popular searches 2016 in Vietnam and Global on Google

Searche

s

1 Pokémon Go (game)

2 iPhone 7 (technology)

3 Donald Trump (politician)

4 Prince (people)

5 Powerball (finance)

6 David Bowie (people)

7 Deadpool (movie)

8 Olympics (sport event)

9 Slither.io (game)

10 Suicide Squad (movie)

1 Game Slither (game)

2 Euro 2016 (sport event)

3 We don’t belong together (music)

4 Behind the girl (music)

5 Pokemon Go (game)

6 Vietlott (finance)

7 Minh Beo (people)

8 Descendant of the sun (movie)

9 Wife of the people (music)

10 Challenge the comedian (TV show)

2 Hillary Clinton (politics)

3 Michael Phelps (sport)

4 Melania Trump (politics)

5 Simone Biles (sport)

6 Bernie Sanders (politics)

7 Steven Avery (social)

8 Céline Dion (social)

9 Ryan Lochte (sport)

1 Minh beo (social)

2 Song Joong Ki (social)

3 Ho Van Cuong (social)

4 Donald Trump (politics)

5 Obama (polictic)

6 Trinh Xuan Thanh (polictics)

7 Song Hye Kyo (social)

8 Tung Son (social)

9 Allan Walker (social)

10 Tom Hiddleston (social) 10 Lam Tam Nhu (social)

News

1 US Election (politics)

2 Olympics (sport)

3 Brexit (politics)

4 Orlando Shooting (social)

5 Zika Virus (social)

6 Panama Papers (politics)

7 Nice (social)

8 Brussels (politics)

9 Dallas Shooting (social)

10.熊本 地震 ( Kumamoto Earthquake) (social)

1 Hurricane No.7 (social)

2 University benchmark 2016 (social)

3 Latest news about Minh Beo (social)

4 Miss Viet Nam 2016 (social)

5 Obama comes to Viet Nam (politics)

6 Tortoise Hoan Kiem (social)

7 U23 Viet Nam (sport)

8 Hoang Xuan Vinh (sport)

9 Result of Mega Lottery (social)

10 List of 12th politburo (politics)

Source: Google Trends - https://trends.google.com/trends/yis/2016

In the era of technology development, website is important channel to connect the people to governance offices Hence, we use the number of visiting in official websites of ministries to measure the attention level of people to leadership activities

of the governance system The statistics result shows that the number of visiting to those website is very low The highest number is 2,480,000 times of the Ministry of Justice However, it only ranks at 448 of search trending in Vietnam in the last six months It is significant that the visiting number of the Ministry of Justice is forth times as many as other ministries That proves a fact of low attention and communication between the people and the leaders in Vietnam

Figure 1.The number of visiting times of ministries ‘website and their rank in search trending in the last 6 months

In term of participation level of people to politics at local levels, the data of Viet Nam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) shows that Despite some improvements, citizen participation in local political life and decision-making remained the weakest governance aspect compared to the other five dimensions in 2016, similar to previous years’ findings Therefore, innovative approaches for engaging voters in future national and grassroots elections, and in local decision-making, are needed to ensure their legitimate civic right to political participation

Figure 2.Participation of people in politics at local level (PAPI score) 11

and public administration in Viet Nam PAPI has captured and reflected the experiences of nearly 89,000 citizens.