SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter shows how the emergence of new international poverty reduction strategies at the turn of the 2000s put governance issues and their key principles at the forefront of the development agenda. It analyzes the transposition and customization of global stance with respect to the specific circumstances of Vietnam. The chapter focuses on ethnic communes to explicitly consider better governance as a way to overcome the deceiving economic performances of ethnic groups. It examines the primary quantitative and anthropological data, and aims to assess the effectiveness of participation and ownership principles applied by P135 program. The chapter presents the emblematic program P135 with a special focuses on its participatory component. It presents the qualitative and quantitative assessment of the participatory approach. The chapter draws on the 2007 baseline survey conducted by the General Statistics Office (GSO) using an impact evaluation protocol and then anthropological field work implemented over the years in the northern areas of the program.