How do we deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS or avian 'flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope ... more How do we deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS or avian 'flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope with the challenges of climate change? How do we address water and pollution problems in rapidly growing Asian cities? Who benefits from genetically-modified crops? Today's world is experiencing rapid social, technological and environmental change, yet poverty and inequality are growing. Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central challenges of our times. The STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) is a new interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub that unites development studies with science and technology studies. We aim to develop a new approach to understanding and action on sustainability and development in an era of unprecedented dynamic change. Our pathways approach aims to link new theory with practical solutions that create better livelihoods, health and social justice for poor
How did leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) greet the outbreak of the Cold War, and ... more How did leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) greet the outbreak of the Cold War, and in particular the formation of two opposing ideological blocs? Existing scholarship has depicted an independently minded ICP charting a pragmatic course vis-à-vis Moscow in the 1941-1954 period. 1 This line of interpretation would suggest that the arrival of the Cold War, which imposed a rigid global order on small countries, would not be celebrated in Vietnam. Using party documents and Vietnamese newspaper sources, in this chapter I examine the changing worldviews of ICP leaders from 1940 to 1951 in the context of anticolonial nationalist revolution. Long before the outbreak of the Cold War, leading Vietnamese communists had cherished a particular worldview in which the world was divided into two camps. 2 In their imagination, the socialist camp represented all the best things in the world whereas the imperialist camp contained the worst. This binary worldview had three particular characteristics. First, international patterns of alliance were assumed to fundamentally reflect the domestic I'm indebted to helpful comments from Nayan Chanda, Ilya Gaiduk, Chen Jian, Lien-Hang Nguyen, Christian Ostermann, Balasz Szalontai, Peter Zinoman, and participants at the Workshop on Between Imperial Retreat and the Cold War, Paris, September 2004. Christopher Goscha deserves special thanks for his encouragement and advice. I also wish to thank Steven Goldstein for educating me about Chinese foreign policy and Smith College for offering generous financial support and a collegial working environment. Research in Hanoi was sponsored in part by the Center for Vietnamese and Intercultural Studies, whose director Vu Minh Giang was very kind and supportive.
The terms “decolonization” and “Cold War” refer to specific processes and periods in the internat... more The terms “decolonization” and “Cold War” refer to specific processes and periods in the international system, but they do not capture the full agency of local actors such as Vietnamese Communists. Based on recently available archival materials from Hanoi, this article maps those terms onto Vietnamese Communist thinking through four specific cases. The declassified materials underscore the North Vietnamese leaders’ deep commitment to a radical worldview and their occasional willingness to challenge Moscow and Beijing for leadership of world revolution. The article illuminates the connections (or lack thereof) between global, regional, and local politics and offers a more nuanced picture of how decolonization in Southeast Asia in the 1950s–1980s sparked not only a Cold War confrontation but also a regional war.
The present special issue of HumaNetten includes four essays about the historical development of ... more The present special issue of HumaNetten includes four essays about the historical development of the state and polity in Burma, Vietnam, and the archipelagic area east of Java. 1 All four articles examine the historical development of Southeast Asian states in original ways. Specifically, we are interested not in studying these polities in the conventional approach, either in isolation or restricted to a particular period. Building on comparative and regional studies by scholars such as Anthony Reid and Victor Lieberman, our articles focus on historical developments in Southeast Asia while seeking to make fresh and innovative connections and comparisons across periods or across regions. These connections and comparisons illuminate important aspects of Southeast Asian history that have been obscured in much existing scholarship. For example, Michael Charney ventures beyond the Southeast Asian region to compare the systems of transport in premodern and colonial Ghana to those in Burma of similar periods. In his paper, Hans Hägerdal contrasts the development of the small-sized kingdoms and principalities east of Java with that of larger states on mainland Southeast Asia. His focus is on the early modern period but he is able to draw implications for later periods. Tuong Vu's article borrows concepts from studies of central Asia and uses the contrast between China's northern and southern frontiers to explore the synergies between China and Vietnam over the length of their histories. He offers premodern, early modern, and modern examples of Vietnamese imperialism in the paper. Claire Sutherland calls on scholars of contemporary Southeast Asia to transcend the nation-state as an analytical framework. She proposes the concept of "postmodern mandala" as an alternative way to theorize about contemporary Southeast Asian politics, with Vietnam as a test case. While our articles do not cover every polity or every period in Southeast Asia, we believe the papers together make two important contributions to broad scholarship across the region and beyond. First, the papers enhance our knowledge about the differentiated process of integration and consolidation in Southeast Asia. Hägerdal's article shows that the process was disrupted in the archipelagic area east of Java because of European penetration in the
State formation in Vietnam followed an imperial pattern, namely, a process of conquests and annex... more State formation in Vietnam followed an imperial pattern, namely, a process of conquests and annexations typical of an empire. At its peak in the early nineteenth century, the frontier of the Vietnamese empire encompassed much of today’s Cambodia and Laos. This imperial pattern was the basis on which the French built their Indochinese colony and the Vietnamese communist state built its modern hegemony. By re-examining Vietnamese history as that of an empire and hegemon, this paper challenges the nationalist historiography’s assumption about Vietnam’s need for survival from China as the driving force of Vietnamese history. In contrast, I argue that the threat to Vietnamese survival has come less from China than from other states on China’s southern frontier. Vietnam has in fact benefited from a positive synergy with China in much of its premodern and modern history. By situating Vietnamese state formation in the context of mainland Southeast Asia, I hope to correct the tendency in man...
A new perspective has begun to challenge both the conventional portrayal of the Vietnamese revolu... more A new perspective has begun to challenge both the conventional portrayal of the Vietnamese revolution and the communist account of its success. This essay takes stock of new research that presents revolutionary Vietnam in a more complex and less triumphal way. It is argued that Vietnam's nationalist revolution (1945–46) should be conceptually distinguished from the subsequent socialist revolution (1948–88). The former had a distinctly urban and bourgeois character, was led by a coalition of the upper and middle classes, and lacked ideological intensity. The latter was imposed from above, based on socialist visions, and dependent on foreign assistance. The failure to disentangle the two revolutions in existing narratives assigns little agency to Vietnamese actors and leads to triumphs being exaggerated while tragedies are overlooked.
How do we deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS or avian 'flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope ... more How do we deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS or avian 'flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope with the challenges of climate change? How do we address water and pollution problems in rapidly growing Asian cities? Who benefits from genetically-modified crops? Today's world is experiencing rapid social, technological and environmental change, yet poverty and inequality are growing. Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central challenges of our times. The STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) is a new interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub that unites development studies with science and technology studies. We aim to develop a new approach to understanding and action on sustainability and development in an era of unprecedented dynamic change. Our pathways approach aims to link new theory with practical solutions that create better livelihoods, health and social justice for poor
The Vietnam War as a Vietnamese War: Agency and Society in the Study of the Second Indochina War ... more The Vietnam War as a Vietnamese War: Agency and Society in the Study of the Second Indochina War O nce upon a time, during the 1970s and 1980s, the Vietnam War (1959-1975) was studied mainly as an episode in American history. Anglophone authors in the United States and elsewhere wrote extensively about the war during its closing stages and during the first years of the postwar era. This early scholarship on the war included a great deal of pathbreaking research that shed new light on important factual questions; it also sparked impassioned debates over how to interpret the war's origins, course, and consequences. For all of its originality and vibrancy, however, this scholarship focused overwhelmingly on American sources and the American dimensions of the war-that is, on issues having to do with American actions and American motives. Vietnamese and other non-American actors typically played only marginal roles in these accounts; few studies of the war published during these years made use of Vietnamese or other non-American sources. 1 The decidedly America-centric quality of most Vietnam War scholarship in this period was most clearly apparent in the perennial debate between so-called "orthodox" scholars and their "revisionist" counterparts. The questions at stake in this debate were important ones: What were the root causes of the war? Why and how did the United States become involved in Vietnam after 1950? What explains the escalation of the war over the course of the 1960s? Who was responsible for the "loss" of South Vietnam? Nevertheless, both "orthodox" and "revisionist" scholars alike
Cold War historians have neglected the significance of the year 1948 for Indochina. Based on new ... more Cold War historians have neglected the significance of the year 1948 for Indochina. Based on new sources, this paper shows critical shifts in politics within the Vietnamese nationalist movement in 1948. These were the result of converging developments during late 1947 and early 1948, including changes in international politics, in French–Vietnamese relations, and in the relationship between non-communist and communist leaders within the Việt Minh state. By late 1948, Party ideologues were already looking beyond national independence towards building a new socialist regime. The nationalist coalition that had led the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was seriously damaged in 1948, even though civil war would only break out several years later. As elsewhere in Southeast Asia, 1948 thus marked a new period: the beginning of the end of the ‘united front’ period and cooperation with bourgeois nationalists.
Based on archival sources, this paper examines North Vietnam’s labor regimes during 1945—1970. So... more Based on archival sources, this paper examines North Vietnam’s labor regimes during 1945—1970. Soviet and Chinese models are found to be influential there up to the late 1950s. An early emphasis on labor mobilization was gradually replaced by a concern for control to increase economic efficiency and to cope with pressures from workers. As in the Soviet Union and China, a hierarchy based on political criteria was created in the workplace but the state failed to motivate workers to work hard despite intense political campaigns and propaganda. Productivity and labor discipline declined in the 1960s while collusion between state enterprises and the informal sector to steal state resources was widespread. Similar to their counterparts in other socialist states, Vietnamese workers were assertive and able to evade state demands and control. They depended on the state for their food and clothes but the state was not able to count on them for quality labor. The failure of the Vietnamese stat...
Why have some states in the developing world been more successful at facilitating industrializati... more Why have some states in the developing world been more successful at facilitating industrialization than others? Challenging theories that privilege industrial policy and colonial legacies, this book focuses on state structure and the politics of state formation, arguing that a cohesive state structure is as important to developmental success as effective industrial policy. Through a comparison of six Asian cases, including both capitalist and socialist states with varying structural cohesion, Tuong Vu demonstrates that state formation politics rather than colonial legacies have had decisive and lasting impacts on the structures of emerging states. His cross-national comparison of South Korea, Vietnam, Republican and Maoist China, and Sukarno's and Suharto's Indonesia, which is augmented by in-depth analyses of state formation processes in Vietnam and Indonesia, is an important contribution to understanding the dynamics of state formation and economic development in Asia.
According to this source, the French term "révolution" appeared in French Cochinchina much earlie... more According to this source, the French term "révolution" appeared in French Cochinchina much earlier, perhaps in the 1870s. The Vietnamese term fi rst appeared around 1910 but was hardly used by any anticolonialists prior to 1920. 7 Some Vietnamese offi cial historians argued that French censorship prevented information about the Russian revolution from reaching Vietnam. See, for example, Minh Tranh , Chung run so truoc anh huong cua Cach mang Thang Muoi toi Viet Nam [They trembled at the infl uence of the October Revolution in Vietnam] (Hanoi : Su That , 1958). 8 "Talk of the Day" [ Thoi Dam ], Nam Phong 2, August 1917, 132-133. 9 Ibid. The French word "maximalistes" accompanied the Vietnamese term in original. The contemporary spelling of this Vietnamese term is "qua khich." 10 "Talk of the Day" [ Thoi Dam ],
Người Mỹ chúng ta thường nghĩ về chế độ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa (VNCH) như một định chế thống nhất tron... more Người Mỹ chúng ta thường nghĩ về chế độ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa (VNCH) như một định chế thống nhất trong hai thập kỷ khi quốc gia này là đồng minh của Hoa Kỳ. Thực ra, nền chính trị của VNCH trải qua nhiều thăng trầm của cuộc chiến tranh: đầu tiên là một chế độ độc tài, sau đó là một giai đoạn hỗn loạn, rồi đến một thời kỳ thử nghiệm dân chủ đại nghị khá ổn định. Trong phần lớn các bài viết, dù là nghiên cứu học thuật hay báo chí, VNCH hiện lên như một chế độ độc tài, tham nhũng, và hỗn loạn. Hình ảnh này mang tính chất phiến diện, cường điệu, và dựa trên những biến cố trong hai thời kỳ đầu của VNCH. Đã có rất ít nỗ lực đánh giá những thành tựu của VNCH trong tám năm cuối.
How do we deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS or avian 'flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope ... more How do we deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS or avian 'flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope with the challenges of climate change? How do we address water and pollution problems in rapidly growing Asian cities? Who benefits from genetically-modified crops? Today's world is experiencing rapid social, technological and environmental change, yet poverty and inequality are growing. Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central challenges of our times. The STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) is a new interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub that unites development studies with science and technology studies. We aim to develop a new approach to understanding and action on sustainability and development in an era of unprecedented dynamic change. Our pathways approach aims to link new theory with practical solutions that create better livelihoods, health and social justice for poor
How did leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) greet the outbreak of the Cold War, and ... more How did leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) greet the outbreak of the Cold War, and in particular the formation of two opposing ideological blocs? Existing scholarship has depicted an independently minded ICP charting a pragmatic course vis-à-vis Moscow in the 1941-1954 period. 1 This line of interpretation would suggest that the arrival of the Cold War, which imposed a rigid global order on small countries, would not be celebrated in Vietnam. Using party documents and Vietnamese newspaper sources, in this chapter I examine the changing worldviews of ICP leaders from 1940 to 1951 in the context of anticolonial nationalist revolution. Long before the outbreak of the Cold War, leading Vietnamese communists had cherished a particular worldview in which the world was divided into two camps. 2 In their imagination, the socialist camp represented all the best things in the world whereas the imperialist camp contained the worst. This binary worldview had three particular characteristics. First, international patterns of alliance were assumed to fundamentally reflect the domestic I'm indebted to helpful comments from Nayan Chanda, Ilya Gaiduk, Chen Jian, Lien-Hang Nguyen, Christian Ostermann, Balasz Szalontai, Peter Zinoman, and participants at the Workshop on Between Imperial Retreat and the Cold War, Paris, September 2004. Christopher Goscha deserves special thanks for his encouragement and advice. I also wish to thank Steven Goldstein for educating me about Chinese foreign policy and Smith College for offering generous financial support and a collegial working environment. Research in Hanoi was sponsored in part by the Center for Vietnamese and Intercultural Studies, whose director Vu Minh Giang was very kind and supportive.
The terms “decolonization” and “Cold War” refer to specific processes and periods in the internat... more The terms “decolonization” and “Cold War” refer to specific processes and periods in the international system, but they do not capture the full agency of local actors such as Vietnamese Communists. Based on recently available archival materials from Hanoi, this article maps those terms onto Vietnamese Communist thinking through four specific cases. The declassified materials underscore the North Vietnamese leaders’ deep commitment to a radical worldview and their occasional willingness to challenge Moscow and Beijing for leadership of world revolution. The article illuminates the connections (or lack thereof) between global, regional, and local politics and offers a more nuanced picture of how decolonization in Southeast Asia in the 1950s–1980s sparked not only a Cold War confrontation but also a regional war.
The present special issue of HumaNetten includes four essays about the historical development of ... more The present special issue of HumaNetten includes four essays about the historical development of the state and polity in Burma, Vietnam, and the archipelagic area east of Java. 1 All four articles examine the historical development of Southeast Asian states in original ways. Specifically, we are interested not in studying these polities in the conventional approach, either in isolation or restricted to a particular period. Building on comparative and regional studies by scholars such as Anthony Reid and Victor Lieberman, our articles focus on historical developments in Southeast Asia while seeking to make fresh and innovative connections and comparisons across periods or across regions. These connections and comparisons illuminate important aspects of Southeast Asian history that have been obscured in much existing scholarship. For example, Michael Charney ventures beyond the Southeast Asian region to compare the systems of transport in premodern and colonial Ghana to those in Burma of similar periods. In his paper, Hans Hägerdal contrasts the development of the small-sized kingdoms and principalities east of Java with that of larger states on mainland Southeast Asia. His focus is on the early modern period but he is able to draw implications for later periods. Tuong Vu's article borrows concepts from studies of central Asia and uses the contrast between China's northern and southern frontiers to explore the synergies between China and Vietnam over the length of their histories. He offers premodern, early modern, and modern examples of Vietnamese imperialism in the paper. Claire Sutherland calls on scholars of contemporary Southeast Asia to transcend the nation-state as an analytical framework. She proposes the concept of "postmodern mandala" as an alternative way to theorize about contemporary Southeast Asian politics, with Vietnam as a test case. While our articles do not cover every polity or every period in Southeast Asia, we believe the papers together make two important contributions to broad scholarship across the region and beyond. First, the papers enhance our knowledge about the differentiated process of integration and consolidation in Southeast Asia. Hägerdal's article shows that the process was disrupted in the archipelagic area east of Java because of European penetration in the
State formation in Vietnam followed an imperial pattern, namely, a process of conquests and annex... more State formation in Vietnam followed an imperial pattern, namely, a process of conquests and annexations typical of an empire. At its peak in the early nineteenth century, the frontier of the Vietnamese empire encompassed much of today’s Cambodia and Laos. This imperial pattern was the basis on which the French built their Indochinese colony and the Vietnamese communist state built its modern hegemony. By re-examining Vietnamese history as that of an empire and hegemon, this paper challenges the nationalist historiography’s assumption about Vietnam’s need for survival from China as the driving force of Vietnamese history. In contrast, I argue that the threat to Vietnamese survival has come less from China than from other states on China’s southern frontier. Vietnam has in fact benefited from a positive synergy with China in much of its premodern and modern history. By situating Vietnamese state formation in the context of mainland Southeast Asia, I hope to correct the tendency in man...
A new perspective has begun to challenge both the conventional portrayal of the Vietnamese revolu... more A new perspective has begun to challenge both the conventional portrayal of the Vietnamese revolution and the communist account of its success. This essay takes stock of new research that presents revolutionary Vietnam in a more complex and less triumphal way. It is argued that Vietnam's nationalist revolution (1945–46) should be conceptually distinguished from the subsequent socialist revolution (1948–88). The former had a distinctly urban and bourgeois character, was led by a coalition of the upper and middle classes, and lacked ideological intensity. The latter was imposed from above, based on socialist visions, and dependent on foreign assistance. The failure to disentangle the two revolutions in existing narratives assigns little agency to Vietnamese actors and leads to triumphs being exaggerated while tragedies are overlooked.
How do we deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS or avian 'flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope ... more How do we deal with the spread of HIV/AIDS or avian 'flu? How can farmers in dryland Africa cope with the challenges of climate change? How do we address water and pollution problems in rapidly growing Asian cities? Who benefits from genetically-modified crops? Today's world is experiencing rapid social, technological and environmental change, yet poverty and inequality are growing. Linking environmental sustainability with poverty reduction and social justice, and making science and technology work for the poor, have become central challenges of our times. The STEPS Centre (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) is a new interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub that unites development studies with science and technology studies. We aim to develop a new approach to understanding and action on sustainability and development in an era of unprecedented dynamic change. Our pathways approach aims to link new theory with practical solutions that create better livelihoods, health and social justice for poor
The Vietnam War as a Vietnamese War: Agency and Society in the Study of the Second Indochina War ... more The Vietnam War as a Vietnamese War: Agency and Society in the Study of the Second Indochina War O nce upon a time, during the 1970s and 1980s, the Vietnam War (1959-1975) was studied mainly as an episode in American history. Anglophone authors in the United States and elsewhere wrote extensively about the war during its closing stages and during the first years of the postwar era. This early scholarship on the war included a great deal of pathbreaking research that shed new light on important factual questions; it also sparked impassioned debates over how to interpret the war's origins, course, and consequences. For all of its originality and vibrancy, however, this scholarship focused overwhelmingly on American sources and the American dimensions of the war-that is, on issues having to do with American actions and American motives. Vietnamese and other non-American actors typically played only marginal roles in these accounts; few studies of the war published during these years made use of Vietnamese or other non-American sources. 1 The decidedly America-centric quality of most Vietnam War scholarship in this period was most clearly apparent in the perennial debate between so-called "orthodox" scholars and their "revisionist" counterparts. The questions at stake in this debate were important ones: What were the root causes of the war? Why and how did the United States become involved in Vietnam after 1950? What explains the escalation of the war over the course of the 1960s? Who was responsible for the "loss" of South Vietnam? Nevertheless, both "orthodox" and "revisionist" scholars alike
Cold War historians have neglected the significance of the year 1948 for Indochina. Based on new ... more Cold War historians have neglected the significance of the year 1948 for Indochina. Based on new sources, this paper shows critical shifts in politics within the Vietnamese nationalist movement in 1948. These were the result of converging developments during late 1947 and early 1948, including changes in international politics, in French–Vietnamese relations, and in the relationship between non-communist and communist leaders within the Việt Minh state. By late 1948, Party ideologues were already looking beyond national independence towards building a new socialist regime. The nationalist coalition that had led the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was seriously damaged in 1948, even though civil war would only break out several years later. As elsewhere in Southeast Asia, 1948 thus marked a new period: the beginning of the end of the ‘united front’ period and cooperation with bourgeois nationalists.
Based on archival sources, this paper examines North Vietnam’s labor regimes during 1945—1970. So... more Based on archival sources, this paper examines North Vietnam’s labor regimes during 1945—1970. Soviet and Chinese models are found to be influential there up to the late 1950s. An early emphasis on labor mobilization was gradually replaced by a concern for control to increase economic efficiency and to cope with pressures from workers. As in the Soviet Union and China, a hierarchy based on political criteria was created in the workplace but the state failed to motivate workers to work hard despite intense political campaigns and propaganda. Productivity and labor discipline declined in the 1960s while collusion between state enterprises and the informal sector to steal state resources was widespread. Similar to their counterparts in other socialist states, Vietnamese workers were assertive and able to evade state demands and control. They depended on the state for their food and clothes but the state was not able to count on them for quality labor. The failure of the Vietnamese stat...
Why have some states in the developing world been more successful at facilitating industrializati... more Why have some states in the developing world been more successful at facilitating industrialization than others? Challenging theories that privilege industrial policy and colonial legacies, this book focuses on state structure and the politics of state formation, arguing that a cohesive state structure is as important to developmental success as effective industrial policy. Through a comparison of six Asian cases, including both capitalist and socialist states with varying structural cohesion, Tuong Vu demonstrates that state formation politics rather than colonial legacies have had decisive and lasting impacts on the structures of emerging states. His cross-national comparison of South Korea, Vietnam, Republican and Maoist China, and Sukarno's and Suharto's Indonesia, which is augmented by in-depth analyses of state formation processes in Vietnam and Indonesia, is an important contribution to understanding the dynamics of state formation and economic development in Asia.
According to this source, the French term "révolution" appeared in French Cochinchina much earlie... more According to this source, the French term "révolution" appeared in French Cochinchina much earlier, perhaps in the 1870s. The Vietnamese term fi rst appeared around 1910 but was hardly used by any anticolonialists prior to 1920. 7 Some Vietnamese offi cial historians argued that French censorship prevented information about the Russian revolution from reaching Vietnam. See, for example, Minh Tranh , Chung run so truoc anh huong cua Cach mang Thang Muoi toi Viet Nam [They trembled at the infl uence of the October Revolution in Vietnam] (Hanoi : Su That , 1958). 8 "Talk of the Day" [ Thoi Dam ], Nam Phong 2, August 1917, 132-133. 9 Ibid. The French word "maximalistes" accompanied the Vietnamese term in original. The contemporary spelling of this Vietnamese term is "qua khich." 10 "Talk of the Day" [ Thoi Dam ],
Người Mỹ chúng ta thường nghĩ về chế độ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa (VNCH) như một định chế thống nhất tron... more Người Mỹ chúng ta thường nghĩ về chế độ Việt Nam Cộng Hòa (VNCH) như một định chế thống nhất trong hai thập kỷ khi quốc gia này là đồng minh của Hoa Kỳ. Thực ra, nền chính trị của VNCH trải qua nhiều thăng trầm của cuộc chiến tranh: đầu tiên là một chế độ độc tài, sau đó là một giai đoạn hỗn loạn, rồi đến một thời kỳ thử nghiệm dân chủ đại nghị khá ổn định. Trong phần lớn các bài viết, dù là nghiên cứu học thuật hay báo chí, VNCH hiện lên như một chế độ độc tài, tham nhũng, và hỗn loạn. Hình ảnh này mang tính chất phiến diện, cường điệu, và dựa trên những biến cố trong hai thời kỳ đầu của VNCH. Đã có rất ít nỗ lực đánh giá những thành tựu của VNCH trong tám năm cuối.
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