The underlying indicators of good governance in Viet Nam

VNU Journal of Science: Policy and Management Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2020) 35-47 
 35 
Review Article 
The Underlying Indicators of Good Governance in Vietnam 
Bui Phuong Dinh , Nguyen Thi Hoai Thu 
Institute of Sociology and Development, Ho Chi Minh Academy of Politics, 
135 Nguyen Phong Sac, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam 
Received 24 August 2020 
Revised 05 November 2020; Accepted 05 November 2020 
Abstract: The concept of "Good governance" was brought to the world in the 1990s in the context 
of increasing globalization and expanding democratization worldwide. It can be seen that the 
common factors needed to implement good governance include: (i) Capacity of the state - the degree 
of problem-solving by governments and leaders religion; (ii) Responsiveness - whether public 
policies and institutions meet the needs of citizens and uphold their rights; (iii) Accountability - the 
ability of citizens, civil society and the private sector to monitor the responsibilities of public and 
governmental institutions. 
In Vietnam, from the first decade of the twenty-first century, efforts have been made to set up 
indicators and measure the effectiveness of the public authority aligning to the principles of "good 
governance". Using data from the four sets of indicators in Vietnam namely PAR, SIPAS, PCI, and 
PAPI, this article reviews the process of developing the good governance’s indicators, compares the 
areas where each set of indicators measures and assesses the effectiveness, analyzes the strengths 
and weaknesses of each set of indicators, and reviews some local government efforts in using the 
measurement and evaluation results of the four sets of indicators to improve the quality of 
governance in their respective localities. The article also asserts that these four sets of indicators 
reflect a large part of the content to be measured according to the principle of "good governance", 
and presents some recommendations to improve the four sets of indicators themselves to better 
reflect the principles of "Good governance" in the near future. 
Keywords: Good governance, governance indicators, satisfaction. 
________ 
 Corresponding author. 
 Email address: bpdinh2010@gmail.com 
 https://doi.org/10.25073/2588-1116/vnupam.4260 
B.P. Dinh, N.T.H. Thu / VNU Journal of Science: Policy and Management Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2020) 35-47 
36 
1. Summary of Good Governance 
Originating in the 90s of the twentieth 
century, the New Public Management - NPM [1] 
movement led to major reforms in the public 
sector in many countries, including Vietnam. 
Approach towards outputs; management 
efficiency and effectiveness; applying market 
factors to public administration has become a 
significant tendency of developed countries, 
followed by developing countries. The 
application of NPM principles not only brings 
major changes in the functioning of the public 
authority but also changes the society's 
perceptions of the role of the public sector and 
how the nation is governed. Over 30 years of 
development, the NPM model has brought 
certain success in developed nations and has 
made strong adjustments for other countries, 
especially developing ones such as Vietnam. In 
the context of globalization and the internet era 
since the early 2000s, the NPM model is also 
subject to strong variation effects. A new 
approach namely New Public Governance – 
NPG [2] reflects the need to reform the 
performance of the state apparatus from 
institutional development, planning and 
implementation of public policy, public 
administration, and capacity of civil servants, to 
State - citizen relations 
What does mean Good governance? 
The term "governance" has been in use 
since the 1990s, in association with the process 
of public sector reform in countries and the 
implementation of a new public management 
model. The researchers point out that 
governance is the aspect of exercising power 
through formal or informal institutions to 
manage the resources assigned by the state. A 
range of topics include i) How to choose a leader, 
how to monitor them and when to replace them; 
ii) The government's capacity to formulate and 
implement well-established policies and provide 
public services; iii) The respect of the people and 
the state for institutions regulating economic 
interaction. 
A shift from "state’s management" to 
"state’s governance" is not a simple change of 
terminology, but also shows the thinking 
progress in public management theory. If 
"state’s management" is understood as the state's 
management over a society in which the state 
plays the role of the managing entity, and the rest 
of the society plays the role of the managed 
object. With the connotation of "state’s 
governance", the state appears as dual roles in 
governance activities: the state is both the 
subject of social management; and object of the 
management and supe ...  implemented activities related to the use of 
PAPI in improving the efficiency of local 
governance. Notably, there are 146 directives from 
local authorities on the implementation of an action 
plan to improve and enhance the PAPI index or 
combine the three PAR, PCI, and PAPI indicators. 
4. Vietnam’s Ranking in Some International 
Indexes 
Besides the Vietnam domestic indexes, 
there are some international indexes which also 
provide a more diverse and objective perspective 
on the current governance’s state in Vietnam. 
The results of these international indexes help 
Vietnam identify its position when compared 
with other countries in the world and countries 
with similar development background. At the 
same time, it provides quantitative and accurate 
assessment bases to offset the limitations that 
domestic indicators still have. 
The Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 
(GCI) [8]: Covering 141 economies, the GCI 
measures national competitiveness – defined as 
the set of institutions, policies, and factors that 
determine the level of productivity. The GCI is 
the product of an aggregation of 103 individual 
indicators, derived from a combination of data 
from international organizations as well as from 
the World Economic Forum's Executive Opinion 
Survey. Indicators are organized into 12 pillars: 
Institutions; Infrastructure; ICT adoption; 
Macroeconomic stability; Health; Skills; 
Product market; Labour market; Financial 
system; Market size; Business dynamism and 
Innovation capability. 
In 2019, Vietnam ranked 67/141 countries. 
Compared to 2018, Vietnam has the highest 
increasing score, rose 3.5 points, and ranked 
second in the increasing level (up 10 places) 
worldwide. 
The highest-ranking of 12 pillars belongs to 
"Market size", showing the attractiveness of 
market development potential for international 
investors in Vietnam. As a pillar directly related 
to the effectiveness of public administration and 
directly affecting the rest of the pillars, 
Institutions with a score of 50 and ranked 89/141 
countries shows quite a lot of room for growth in 
both scores and ranking. Some indicators are 
similar in the GCI survey and Vietnam's indexes, 
showing in detail: 
- Transparency and Corruption 
GCI measures Transparency by the only 
component indicator is "Incidence of 
corruption", score on the Corruption Perceptions 
Index, which aggregates data from several 
different sources that provide perceptions of 
experts and business executives of the level of 
corruption in the public sector. According to a 
GCI survey, Vietnam's transparency index 
decreased compared to 2018 and fell to 101/141 
countries in 2019. 
B.P. Dinh, N.T.H. Thu / VNU Journal of Science: Policy and Management Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2020) 35-47 
44 
Figure 4. Global Competitiveness Index of Vietnam in 2019. 
Source: The Global Competitiveness Report 2019 (World Economic Forum)
On the other hand, the PCI assesses 
"Transparency" with 12 sub-criteria related to 
the ability to receive information, bidding 
process, budget,... to evaluate from the 
perspective of businesses (operating on 
Vietnamese territory), which has recorded 
positive changes gradually. PAPI assesses the 
content of "Transparency" through people's 
perception of 4 sub-criteria related to access to 
information, poverty lists, communal budget and 
expenditures, land-use plans/price frames. The 
indicator "Transparency" measured by PAPI 
also showed signs of improvement in scores 
(from 5.19 points in 2018 to 5.28 points in 2019). 
Regarding corruption, PAPI also measures a 
separate indicator, "Control of corruption in the 
public sector". In the period 2016-2019, this 
index rose steadily every year with the sub-
indicators related to the control of corruption in 
local governments, in the public services 
delivery, and the local government's willingness 
to fight corruption. 
 This result has acknowledged the efforts of 
local authorities, bringing better feelings from 
businesses and people recently. However, to 
meet the transparency of international 
measurement standards, Vietnam still needs to 
be more proactive and determined by the entire 
political system from the central to local levels 
in the fight against corruption. 
- Security 
GCI's 2019 survey of Institutions and 
Security in Vietnam has grown in both scores 
and rankings (Institutions: 89/141, Security: 
61/141). This result is similar to the assessment 
from people and businesses in Vietnam through 
PAPI and PCI. According to PAPI, the sub-
dimension score of "Law and order" according 
to the evaluation of people with the residential 
area has steadily increased from 2016-2019. 
According to PCI, the assessment of enterprises 
with "Security and order" has maintained at a 
stable level in the past 2 years (this index has just 
been applied to the survey since 2018). 
- Requirements for starting a business 
The GCI and PCI survey results both 
positively measure the government's efforts to 
improve market access conditions in Vietnam. 
GCI measured through the two indexes "Cost of 
B.P. Dinh, N.T.H. Thu / VNU Journal of Science: Policy and Management Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2020) 35-47 
45 
starting a business" and "Time to start a 
business" both showed an increase compared to 
2018, although the ranking is not quite high 
(respectively, the ranking is 66/141 and 96/141). 
According to GCI survey data, “Time to start a 
business" of an enterprise engaging in the 
Vietnam market is an average of 17 days. This 
result is also consistent with the PCI survey on 
"Time to complete enterprise registration 
procedures". Accordingly, in 2019, 56% of firms 
completed their business registration procedures 
in less than 1 month, this is the highest level 
since 2011. Even 11% of FDI companies said 
they only take less than a week to get all the 
necessary documents to officially operate. 
Worldwide Governance Indicators – 
WGI [9] reports aggregate and individual 
governance indicators for over 200 countries and 
territories over the period 1996–2018, for six 
dimensions of governance: i) Voice and 
Accountability; ii) Political Stability and 
Absence of Violence/Terrorism; iii) 
Government Effectiveness; iv) Regulatory 
Quality; v) Rule of Law; vi) Control of 
Corruption. 
These aggregate indicators combine the 
views of a large number of enterprises, citizens, 
and expert survey respondents in industrial and 
developing countries. They are based on over 30 
individual data sources produced by a variety of 
survey institutes, think tanks, non-governmental 
organizations, international organizations, and 
private sector firms [10]. 
Instead of the usual ranking among 
countries, the WGI index classifies the nation in 
percentile rank from 0 (lowest) to 100 (highest) 
rank. 
Figure 5. The trend of sub-indicators of Vietnam's WGI 2014-2018 period. 
[Source: https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/Home/Reports] 
The chart above describes the trend of 
changing 6 WGI sub-indicators of Vietnam from 
2014 to 2018 with the following results: 
Voice and Accountability is the value with 
the lowest percentile rank and almost no 
improvement in the past 5 years. The results of 
this indicator showed that the level of people's 
participation in selecting their government, as 
well as freedom of expression, freedom of 
association, and free media in Vietnam is 
limited. Although the content and subject of the 
survey differ, the results of Vietnam's PAPI also 
show the similarity in the accountability 
assessment of the local authorities to the people. 
On a scale of 1-10, the index of PAPI's 
"Accountability " tends to decrease (2014: 5.73 
points, 2019: 4.87 points) shows that local 
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Voice and Accountability
Political Stability and Absence of Violence
Government Effectiveness
Regulatory Quality
Rule of Law
Control of Corruption
P
er
ce
n
ti
le
R
an
k
B.P. Dinh, N.T.H. Thu / VNU Journal of Science: Policy and Management Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2020) 35-47 
46 
authorities have less effort been made in 
improving the level and efficiency of contacting 
and answering complaints and denunciations of 
the people. 
Control of Corruption has an unstable, up 
and down percentile rank and has a decrease at 
the end of the evaluation period compared to the 
beginning. Control of Corruption captures 
perceptions of the extent to which public power 
is exercised for private gain, including both petty 
and grand forms of corruption, as well as 
"capture" of the state by elites and private 
interests. With the under-median score, this 
index result is commensurate with the 
“Incidence of corruption” result in the GCI 
survey as analyzed above. An interesting finding 
is that the two international assessments of 
corruption in Vietnam (GCI, WGI) adversely 
demonstrate the contrary between the 
assessment of Vietnamese businesses and people 
to the government (via PCI and PAPI). In 
addition to the differences in the evaluation 
perspective, there is another reason that is the 
local government's determination to fight against 
corruption, which has a positive spillover effect 
and is encouraged by businesses and people, 
recorded through the review score constantly 
increasing every year. This element of political 
determination has not been clearly assessed in 
two international indicators. 
The three indicators that had a percentile 
rank increase during the study period (2014-
2018) and reached the median level were: 
Political Stability and Absence of 
Violence/Terrorism; Government Effectiveness; 
Rule of Law, which shows positive signs in 
creating a stable political and institutional 
environment as well as improving the 
performance of the public authority in Vietnam. 
From the objective evaluation of the 
international index (WGI) and the perspective of 
subjective assessment from within the 
Vietnamese government system (PAR-Index), it 
shows the consistency in the final results. 
Despite the gradual improvement every 
year, the Regulatory Quality indicator has not 
yet reached the median (50) of the percentile 
rank. This result leads to the perception that: The 
ability of the government to formulate and 
implement sound policies and regulations that 
permit and promote private sector development 
still has room for improvement in a more 
positive direction 
5. Discussion 
In the second phase of the Master Program 
on Public Administration Reform 2011 – 2020 
[5], Vietnam has built and implemented four sets 
of indicators to measure and evaluate the 
performance of public authorities from central to 
provincial levels. With many component 
indicators and hundreds of different sub-
indicators, these 4 sets reflect the dimensions of 
the Good governance model that the United 
Nations announced at the end of the twentieth 
century. With the combination of both internal 
(PAR, SIPAS) and external assessment (PCI, 
PAPI), four sets of indicators have taken on the 
role of overseeing the administrative and 
institutional reform process and managing the 
development domains at provincial and 
municipal levels. On the other hand, the results 
of these sets of indicators have attracted the 
attention of management leaders, as well as 
policy advisory research agencies to perform in-
depth analysis, from which Policy 
recommendations are pragmatic, aiming at the 
long-term cumulative (non-breakthrough or 
speedy) improvement in the activities of 
provincial-level public agencies. 
In international comparison, the two sets of 
Global Competitiveness index - GCI and 
Worldwide Governance index - WGI are 
employing different methods of data collection, 
analysis, and evaluation from those of the 4 
indexes of Vietnam. GCI and WGI are integrated 
indicators from many other international 
organizations, while four Vietnamese sets of 
indicators are based on direct surveys of citizens 
and businesses. However, the results of both the 
international and Vietnam's 4 indexes show 
B.P. Dinh, N.T.H. Thu / VNU Journal of Science: Policy and Management Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2020) 35-47 
47 
general trends in improving the quality of 
Vietnam's national governance following the 
direction of good governance: a clear 
improvement in the Transparency; Rule of Law; 
Government Efficiency and Effectiveness; but 
slow and unstable improvement in the aspect of 
Participatory; Accountability; Control of 
Corruption. 
The Covid-19 pandemic showed that the 
response and control of disease prevention in 
particular, abnormal incidents and crises in 
general, is a very important capacity in national 
governance. However, both the Vietnamese and 
international indicators related to good 
governance do not yet have component 
indicators on crisis handling capacity. With the 
prospect of the world’s changing geo-political 
and geo-economy, unpredictable climate and 
ecological environment change, it is necessary to 
study and develop additional indicators of crisis 
management force in the indexes of international 
governance and each country. 
References 
[1] C. Hood, A public management for all seasons? 
Public Administration -An International Quarterly 
69 (1) (1991) 3-19, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-
9299.1991.tb00779.x 
[2] S. Osborne, The New Public Governance. 
Emerging perspectives on the theory and practice 
of public governance, Routledge Publications, 
2006. 
[3] World Bank, Governance – The World Bank 
experience, 1994, 
71468765285964/pdf/multi0page.pdf (accessed 10 
May 2020) 
[4] UNDP, Governance for Sustainable Human 
Development, 
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3831662, 1997 
(accessed 10 May 2020) 
[5] Ministry of Home Affairs, Socialist Republic of 
Vietnam, Public Administration Reform Index 
2019 – PAR Index 2019, 
https://www.moha.gov.vn/danh-
muc.html?cateid=560, 2020 (accessed 10 May 
2020). 
[6] UNDP and CECODES, Provincial Administration 
and Governance Index 2019 – PAPI 2019, 
 2020 (accessed 10 May 
2020). 
[7] Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 
Provincial Competitiveness Index 2019 - PCI 
2019, https://www.pcivietnam.vn/en, 2020 
(accessed 10 May 2020). 
[8] World Economic Forum The Global 
Competitiveness Report 2019, 2020. 
[9] Worldwide Governance Indicators, 
https://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/Home/
Reports, 2020. 
[10] D. Kaufmann, Governance Indicators: Where Are 
We, Where Should We Be Going? The World 
Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4370, 
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2355036
8_Governance_Indicators_Where_are_We_Where
_Should_We_Be_Going, 2008 (accessed 10 May 
2020).