SOAS Research Online

Abstract

As the central feature of a long-advocated reorganization of the governmental hierarchy initiated by the Saigon regime in the spring of 1966, a new 117-article Constitution was promulgated on April 1, 1967. This democratization process, or the "Constitutional Experiment", extended well beyond the legal and somewhat theoretical innovations associated with the drafting and ratification of the document, however, In the course of fourteen months, some five national elections were staged in the G.V.N. (Government of Viet-Nam) controlled regions of the country. The constitutional measures thereby also had a considerable impact on the practical aspects of political activity in South Viet-Nam, by encouraging the expression, articulation, and formalization of a wide range of political ideas and behavioral patterns within the Nationalist movement itself. This thesis is primarily concerned with an assessment of the response of these disparate socio-political factions to the challenge afforded by the initiation of the Constitutional Experiment. For the success of the implementation and the legitimation of the institutionalization of politics in the Second Republic was to depend primarily on two principal considerations: the degree to which the measures incorporated within the Constitution could prove relevant to the realities of Nationalist politics; and at the same time, the extent to which these innovations might prevail over the traditional political forces in the country-forces which had long posed a greater threat to the Nationalist movement from within than had the presence of the National Liberation Front, from without.