Topic

Vietnam’s Transformation in ASEAN from the Neo-institutionalist Perspectives

Abstract

Vietnam’s accession to ASEAN in 1995 marked the end of nearly one decade of regional isolation and represented a pivotal step toward realizing ASEAN’s aspiration of “One Southeast Asia”. The transformation from a communist state historically at odds with ASEAN’s founding members into an active and responsible participant raises a central question: Why and how did Vietnam successfully integrate into ASEAN despite prior ideological antagonism and political differences?

Although existing scholarship, dominated by IR theories, highlights Vietnam’s foreign policy pragmatism, economic integration, and ASEAN’s accommodative norms, systematic analysis on how Vietnam’s institutions evolved and adapted to ASEAN remains very limited. To fill this gap, this study advances an integrated theoretical framework applied to the Vietnamese case that combines three traditional strands of Neo-institutionalism, namely Historical Institutionalism (HI), Rational Choice Institutionalism (RCI), and Sociological Institutionalism (SI).

Two core assumptions are:

1) Following the end of the Cold War, Vietnam adopted pragmatic foreign policies that leveraged ASEAN’s institutions to secure strategic autonomy and legitimacy. Through sustained participation in ASEAN’s rules and forums, Vietnam progressively aligned national priorities with regional objectives, evolving from a norm taker to a selective norm entrepreneur that contributes proactively to ASEAN’s collective agenda.

2) Vietnam’s transformation was driven by the interaction of three kinds of institutional mechanisms – critical junctures, path dependency, and gradual institutional change shaped by historical legacies (HI), strategic adaptation driven by incentives and cost-benefit calculations (RCI), and normative learning through sustained socialization, identity reconstruction, norm localization, and legitimacy (SI). Over time, these mechanisms not only explain how ASEAN influenced Vietnam’s institutional behavior but also how Vietnam, through its active participation and evolving leadership role, contributed to the evolution and refinement of ASEAN’s norms and practices, reflecting a process of mutual institutional adaptation.

Empirically, this study triangulates elite statements, ASEAN and national documents, and secondary sources, supplemented by fieldwork and expert interviews to trace how historical legacies, institutional incentives, and normative scripts interacted to shape Vietnam’s integration trajectory.

The study contributes:

(1) a theoretically coherent account of Vietnam’s institutional evolution in ASEAN;

(2) a demonstration of causal complementarities across HI – RCI – SI;

(3) empirical insights that refine debates on regional integration, institutional change, strategic leadership, and norm entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia.

Key Words: Vietnam, ASEAN, Historical Institutionalism, Rational Choice Institutionalism, Sociological Institutionalism

Research Note

This dissertation is currently under development and therefore the full manuscript is not yet available for public release. However, the author will periodically share selected analyses, reflections, and research findings from a Neo-institutionalist perspective on Vietnam’s integration into ASEAN.

Readers interested in this topic are warmly invited to follow future updates and publications related to this research project.