Introduction

Today, Vietnam is more than ever developing a strategic multilateralism in a context made unstable by the geopolitical and economic rivalry between the US and China. To make the best possible decisions for the future, it is therefore important to take stock of what has been achieved to date, while considering future challenges with no room for complacency. Accordingly, the objective of this volume is twofold. First, we attempt, through the Vietnamese Đổi Mới experience, to identify country specificities in the “double transition” (from central planning and from under-development) in Southeast Asia. Second, we seek to depict the main challenges in the ongoing process and suggest ways they can be tackled. In an attempt to highlight context-specific economic, social and political change, the book discusses Vietnam’s peculiar features in different ways by combining various disciplines in the social sciences. The Đổi Mới “success story” has been questioned over the past decade and this book attempts to describe the real substance of these changes and their implications for Vietnam’s future development. Being methodologically pluralist (including both theoretical and empirical studies), it aims to give a higher profile to the research in comparative political economy being carried on in Southeast Asia, where heterodox economic development strategies are rather understudied.