In United Front: Projecting Solidarity through Deliberation in Vietnam’s Single-Party Legislature, Paul Schuler uncloaks the Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA), the vaunted emblem of democratic representation within the country’s single-party communist system. Outside observers of this five-hundred-seat legislature have fixated upon its national elections, its publicly televised question-and-answer sessions, and its audacious votes of no-confidence in high-ranking party and government officials. But the central role of the VNA, Schuler argues, is to legitimate party rule by signaling strength and deflecting blame. This argument, which Schuler presents as “simple and intuitive” (145) and “perhaps not particularly controversial” (14), exhibits an empirical richness and theoretical depth that illuminate the significance of both the VNA and single-party legislatures more generally. The book is a must-read for students of Vietnamese studies as well as scholars of authoritarian politics and comparative politics.
Consisting of an introduction, conclusion, and seven chapters, the book introduces theories of...