The Universal Model

Abstract

This chapter investigates the making of Vietnam’s 2013 Constitution. Compared with previous experience in Vietnam and with the experience in the other four socialist countries, the 2013 experience features the local adherence to universal norms in the process and substance of socialist constitutional change. This model of socialist constitutional change is, therefore, characterized as the universal model. The adherence to these universal norms informs and legitimatizes the process of the constitution-making. But, the global norms are contextualized by their intricate interaction with socialist, local elements: the party’s reformist program, legislature’s constituent power, party’s control of participation, and the party’s control of international involvement. Procedurally, the interplay of global and socialist factors results in a more open national constitutional dialogue and a less authoritarian paradigm of constitutional imposition. The three aspects of dissonance (internal to the socialist constitution of Vietnam, between the socialist constitutional ideals and external Vietnamese reality, and between the socialist and global constitutional norms) result in the pragmatic incorporation of universal ideas, principles, and institutions into the socialist Constitution of Vietnam, e.g. people’s constituent power, limited power, and human rights.