The dynamics of legal transplantation: regulating industrial conflicts in post-Đổi mới Vietnam

© 2016 Dr. Hai Ha DoThe economic reforms (Đổi mới) initiated from the late 1980s in Vietnam led to the introduction of a new regulatory framework for industrial conflicts, which was built extensively on transplanted legal concepts. This thesis investigates how state actors borrowed, interpreted, adapted and implemented these concepts and the factors that impacted these processes. This investigation adopts systems theory as the general theoretical framework and discourse analysis as a methodological tool. This thesis finds that despite its extensive reliance on imported legal concepts, the regulatory framework for industrial conflicts in post-Đổi mới Vietnam was a unique system, with mixed features of socialist, capitalist and international labour laws. Further, state actors regularly retranslated and disregarded capitalist and international legal concepts and their underlying ideas while remaining substantially loyal to Marxist-Leninist notions and traditional perspectives. This resulted in the marginalisation of legal mechanisms, which were transplanted from capitalist and international labour laws, and the emergence of alternative mechanisms, which essentially replicated Marxist-Leninist and traditional regulatory means and principles. Notwithstanding this, there was limited but growing reception of legal transplants from capitalist market economies and international labour laws. Moreover, the thesis shows that several factors shaped the borrowing, adaptation, reception and marginalisation of foreign legal concepts. The most important factors include the continual but eroding impact of Marxist-Leninist political and economic ideas, the emergence of new modes of political and economic thought, the persistence, decentralisation and liberalisation of the Leninist political system after Đổi mới, and changes in economic policy and practice following this transition. Other influential factors include the frequent emphasis on moral values and perspectives, pre-Đổi mới and newly emerged legal ideas and principles, dialogical contestation between the actors involved, and their technical knowledge and communicative strategies