The Historical State, Local Collective Action, and Economic Development in Vietnam

This study examines how the historical state conditions long-run development, using Vietnam as a laboratory.Northern Vietnam (Dai Viet) was ruled by a strong centralized state in which the village was the fundamental administrative unit.Southern Vietnam was a peripheral tributary of the Khmer (Cambodian) Empire, which followed a patron-client model with weaker, more personalized power relations and no village intermediation.Using a regression discontinuity design across the Dai Viet-Khmer boundary, the study shows that areas historically under a strong state have higher living standards today and better economic outcomes over the past 150 years.Rich historical data document that in villages with a strong historical state, citizens have been better able to organize for public goods and redistribution through civil society and local government.This suggests that the strong historical state crowded in village-level collective action and that these norms persisted long after the original state disappeared.