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Vietnam Local Government
Vietnam in 1987 remained divided into thirty-six provinces,
three autonomous municipalities, and one special zone directly
under the central government
(see
fig. 1). Provinces are divided
into districts, towns, and capitals. The autonomous
municipalities directly under central authority are divided into
precincts, and these are subdivided into wards. Provincial
districts are divided into villages and townships; provincial
towns and provincial capitals are divided into wards and
villages. Each administrative level has a people's council and a
people's committee.
The people's councils represent the local authority of the
state and are the top supervisory bodies at each level. They do
not govern directly but instead elect and oversee people's
committees that act as executive bodies and carry out local
administrative duties. Council members are popularly elected--
although candidates are screened by the party--and are
responsible for ensuring strict local observance of the
Constitution and laws and for ruling on local plans and budgets.
Council members are further charged with overseeing the
development and maintenance of local armed forces units
(see The Armed Forces
, ch. 5).
Following the Fourth National Party Congress in 1976, the
districts became the basic administrative units of the
government. The Congress had declared that the districts should
become agro-industrial economic units, acting to orchestrate the
reorganization of production. Formerly, they had functioned
simply as intermediaries for channeling directives to the village
level. After 1976 they functioned as agencies for economic
planning, budgeting, and management, and as the chief political
units of local government. Emphasis on this latter function has
created an enormous bureaucracy. Many provincial people's
committees have in excess of thirty separate departments, and
each district people's committee has had to establish an equal
number of counterparts.
The three autonomous municipalities in Vietnam are Hanoi,
Haiphong, and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). The government
of an autonomous municipality consists of an elected people's
council that in turn elects an executive committee headed by a
mayor. The executive committee oversees numerous departments
administering various activities.
The precinct wards of the three autonomous municipalities are
divided into sectors, which are then further divided into
neighborhood solidarity cells. As many as 28 to 30 cells,
together numbering 400 to 600 households, may make up a sector,
and 10 sectors may compose a ward. The administration of a
village corresponds to that of an urban ward.
The ward executive committee ensures that government
activities prescribed by the precinct committee are carried out.
The precinct committee simply represents an intermediary level
between the municipal government and the ward committees.
At the ward level, in addition to people's councils and
executive committees, there are security departments with
connections to the national security apparatus. The security
departments monitor the activities of ward members, but the
departments' decisions are kept secret from the chairpersons of
the ward executive committees
(see Internal Security
, ch. 5).
A sector, instead of having an executive committee, has a
residents' protective committee concerned with fighting fires and
preventing petty crime. A sector security officer is charged with
the suppression of dissent. Every head of household belongs to a
subcell of only a few families and reports regularly to a
neighborhood solidarity cell comprising twelve to twenty
families. Party directives and policies reach the citizenry via
the party's mass organizations or the hierarchy of the party and
its representatives at the ward level.
Data as of December 1987
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