Autonomy of Public Service Delivery Agencies in Vietnam and OECD : A Comparative Institutional Perspective

This paper analyses the underpinning institutional foundations of autonomy in public service delivery in Vietnam compared to the OECD countries. These include formal institutions such as governance structures, and informal institutions such as norms and values. Vietnam embarked on autonomization to enhance efficiency and flexibility, in line with the OECD countries, as part of a broader reform in response to a critical socio-economic crisis in the 1980s. Paradoxically, Vietnam's autonomization goes against the official ‘socialist' ideology, and is predominantly promoted to mobilize social resources, and to cut back on government expenditure. While autonomous agencies in the OECD countries have been established within institutionalized performance management and accountability backdrops, autonomization in Vietnam is implemented against weak institutional foundation. Considering the wide gap in autonomization outcomes between these jurisdictions, the paper seeks to prescribe some policy advice for Vietnam's future autonomy reforms in terms of building institutions