In 1975Ð76 the fall of Saigon was followed by national reunification and the establishment of the Socialist Republic. Access to the Mekong Delta was widely expected to facilitate rapid neo-Stalinist industrialization and the appearance of a powerful military threat to capitalist SEA. But this did not happen. By 1981 partial reforms had permitted all state enterprises to operate in markets and some degree of agricultural decollectivisation. In the second half of the 1980s there was a clear de-Stalinization of everyday life. And by 1989Ð90 a recognizable market economy had emerged. Since then the Vietnamese Communist Party has, with some success, negotiated a major opening-up of the country to foreign contacts. Vietnam has joined ASEAN, and has seen the emergence of land, labor, and capital markets, and the confused processes by which classes form. Fundamental economic and political change has therefore occurred. Growth has been rather fast and the use of state violence minimal. Politically, for the still-Leninist VCP, the shift from Plan to Market has been a great success. What is the political economy basis for this? Despite emergent capitalist classes and a market economy, the political economy of "post-transition" Vietnam is heavily marked by its recent history, and remains very different from other ASEAN members. Notwithstanding revolutionary change, dualities common to both the traditional and modern political economies have offered great potential for political restructuring. In this sense "development doctrines" are perhaps less exotic and more indigenous than elsewhere in SEA. This facilitates relatively harmonious political adaptation and is the key to understanding change. For example, wide rural land access, with a collective tinge in the most densely populated areas, has a strong and pervasive effect upon the macro political economy. "Voice and exit" are enhanced. Thus we see rather high levels of migration, and risk bearing be farmers. Rural GDP has grown fast through the 1990s. Also, real wages in urban areas tend to be higher and the labor regime less brittle. What are the political implications of such a land regime? At the end of the day, one reason for the lack of extensive state violence against the population seems to be that the party/state has sufficient sources of support and power for tense economic issues in the rural areas to be fought out without property rights needing violence to enforce them. These issues are fought out locally (within cooperatives and communes) and in macro contexts (access to world markets). But in the rural areas the state does not, apparently, need to support particular economic interests for its survival. One reason for this is that the "land issue" has been addressed through the adaptation of socialist models, so that large-scale land property is not (yet?) a major issue. Dominant groups in the rural areas do not depend upon land access for their incomes. Adam Fforde is a development economist. He holds an Oxford MA (Engineering Science and Economics), a London MSc (Economics) and a Cambridge PhD (Economics). He studied Vietnamese in Hanoi during 1978/79 and was a visiting scholar at the National Economics University (Hanoi) in 1985Ð86. He lived in Vietnam from 1987 to 1992 while working as an advisor to the Swedish aid program, and in Australia from 1992 to 1999, where he was a visiting fellow at the ANU and Chairman of Aduki Pty Ltd (Consultants). He is now senior fellow at the SEA Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has published on topics including the economic development of north Vietnam prior to 1975, agricultural cooperatives, and the transition from plan to market. He is currently working on class formation and the emergence of factor markets in the 1990s, industrial reform since the early 1960s, and Vietnamese development doctrine.

Among heads of state, Indonesia's is unique--and uniquely challenged. Aburrahman Wahid ("Gus Dur") is virtually blind and has suffered two strokes. His country, the world's fourth most populous, is bedeviled by political and economic crises. Momentum toward secession in several outlying regions, notably Aceh and Irian Jaya, threatens to unravel the republic. In Maluku province, intercommunal violence has accelerated. Prospects for continued recovery from the devastating recession of 1998 are uncertain. As impatience mounts over the inability of Gus Dur's government to date to solve such problems, fragile stability and nascent democratization are at risk of reversal, especially if elements in the army decide to intervene. Who is the man in the eye of this hurricane? What does his background tell us about his ability to cope with his country's manifold problems? Is he up to the task? Will he be ousted by his rivals? Or, in Indonesia's post-authoritarian political climate, do Gus Dur's weaknesses amount to a kind of strength? Donald K. Emmerson is a senior fellow at the Asia/Pacific Research Center. His edited book, Indonesia beyond Suharto, has just been published. Other recent writings include pieces in the Journal of Democracy and the National Interest--the former on political change in Southeast Asia, the latter on Western moralpolitik in East Timor. In June and August 1999 he helped to monitor Indonesia's national elections in Maluku and the UN's plebiscite on sovereignty in East Timor, respectively. His talk on Gus Dur will include information obtained during a three-hour interview with the new president in Jakarta in December 1999.