Contextualizing the Global Constitution-Making Process: The Case of Vietnam

Abstract

On November 28, 2013, the National Assembly of Vietnam adopted the nation’s new constitution, the culmination of a three-year constitution-making process. This study attempts to situate the Vietnamese experience within the global trend of constitution making in the twenty-first century. It argues that the constitution-making process in twenty-first century Vietnam is driven by an intricate interplay between global sources and norms and local and national concerns. The global sources and norms that inform the Vietnamese constitution-making process include: international pressures, the global emphasis on the significance of process in constitution making, universal constitutional questions, the international norm of public participation, and international involvement. At the same time, the Vietnamese constitution-making process is affected by the local context: the political context featuring the exclusive leadership of the Communist Party, the socioeconomic context featuring the long-term Đổi mới national program (“Renovation”), the institutional context featuring legislative supremacy, and the intellectual context featuring the prevailing socialist ideology. The interplay of global and local factors has resulted in a more open constitutional dialogue and a less authoritarian paradigm of constitutional imposition, which is constructive to constitutionalism in Vietnam. The Vietnamese experience suggests that more academic attention should be paid to the general relation of the constitution-making process to dialogic constitutionalism.