Social provision and the transformation of the socialist state: Mass education and health provision in Viet Nam's market transition

In this dissertation I ask how the transition from state-socialism to a market economy and the attendant process of reinsertion into world markets affects the goals, conduct, and outcomes of state social policies nationally and at the grassroots. I analyze mass education and health provision in the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam and in the central Viet Nam province of Quang Nam Da Nang between 1975 and 2000 to elaborate a model for integrating analysis of social provision at national and local levels. I show that a fiscal sociology perspective on the transition from state socialism to a market economy can integrate national and local analysis of social provision over time and can contribute insights into the dynamics of the state and social provision that conventional nationally or locally-centered analysis cannot offer separately.;I find that the economic growth that accompanied Viet Nam's transition from state-socialism to a market economy increased the financial power of Viet Nam's central state and enabled it to increase investments in education and health. At the same time, the fiscal crisis that accompanied the collapse of state socialism, culminating in 1989, and the state's subsequent efforts to shift the costs of mass education and health onto consumers yielded unanticipated results, including the development of informal education and health economies within the shell of nominally public education and health institutions. My analysis shows that Viet Nam's state continues to provide a basic floor of education and health services, despite fundamental changes in the country's economic institutions. I conclude that social provision in Viet Nam represents an instance of transformed duality, in that the transition to a market economy produced objective improvements in living standards, including improved access to education and health, but reproduced many of the inequalities that existed under state socialism, while creating new market-based inequalities.