Author
Prof Hoàng Thị Minh Phương
Organisation/Institution
Hanoi Law University
Country
VIETNAM
Panel
Constitutional and Admin Law
Title
Institutional Lock-in: Path Dependence and the Inertia of Vietnam’s Land Law Reform
Abstract
Despite decades of iterative legislative revisions, Vietnam’s legal framework governing land tenure remains fraught with significant inefficiencies, persistent rent-seeking, and market dysfunctions. Prevailing scholarship, largely dominated by doctrinal legal analysis, has extensively chronicled these statutory changes but often fails to adequately diagnose the profound inertia hindering substantive reform. Such analyses overlook why successive amendments, including the most recent Land Law, consistently fail to resolve core ambiguities surrounding land valuation, revocation, and the security of land use rights (LURs). This article departs from conventional legal exegesis by employing an institutional economics framework—specifically, Douglass North’s theory of path dependence—to analyze this persistent reform deficit. We posit that these enduring challenges are not merely technical failings but are symptoms of a deep-seated institutional “lock-in”. We argue this lock-in originates from a critical juncture: the initial reform compromises of the early 1990s. The 1993 Land Law, while revolutionary for its time, forged a sub-optimal equilibrium by attempting to reconcile market aspirations with the ideological legacy of collective ownership. This compromise—retaining universal state ownership while granting alienable LURs—created a specific institutional matrix. This matrix subsequently generated powerful increasing returns for vested interests (both state and private) who benefit from the system’s inherent ambiguities. This inherited path now severely constrains the “choice set” for contemporary reformers. Our analysis demonstrates that subsequent legal reforms remain ineffective precisely because they operate within this locked-in path, focusing on technical adjustments rather than confronting the foundational structure itself. The article concludes that meaningful efficacy demands not merely statutory tinkering, but a structural confrontation with the institutional equilibria established three decades prior.
Biography
I am a legal academic and Senior Lecturer at Hanoi Law University, specializing in Constitutional Law and Law and Society. My academic foundation includes a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Kyushu University, Japan (2023), where my thesis analyzed electronic voting under constitutional law. I also hold a Master of Laws (2013) and a Bachelor of Laws (2011) from Hanoi Law University, supplemented by a Bachelor of English Studies from Hanoi University. I am an active researcher, having led a project on local government in economic-administrative units. I served as an author and editorial member for the Handbook of Constitutional Law (2021). My research has been published in journals such as the Journal of People’s Court and the Journal of Democracy and Law. I am fluent in both Vietnamese and English
