Suchergebnisse

There has long been a keen interest from countries around the world in Australia's experience in creating an evaluation system to support evidence-based decision making and performance-based budgeting. Australia's evaluation system lasted from 1987 to 1997, and during that time it was used to systematically evaluate all government programs every three to five years; these evaluation findings were used heavily by officials, ministers and the cabinet in the annual budget process. The uses of these findings included the policy advice prepared by departments including the preparation of ministers' new policy proposals and departments' savings options submitted to the cabinet for its consideration. More importantly, these findings were highly influential on the cabinet's ultimate policy decisions. Finally, evaluation findings were also used widely within line departments in support of their ongoing management. This paper updates two previous World Bank papers that reviewed the Australian experience with monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and other performance-related initiatives. These papers (Mackay 1998, 2004) focused on the first two time periods addressed in this paper.

The relatively extensive analysis of political values, attitudes and political participation of youth enables us to better explain the existing trends in the relationship of youth towards politics. Especially helpful in this regard is the comparison with adults, as well as the longitudinal tracking of changes within the young population. Here, we will reflect on the important tendencies and try to understand their wider and far-reaching implications. When we look at all the obtained results, it is evident that there are differences between youth and adults, but only a smaller part of them is significantly pronounced. Thus, the results indicate that the young express a higher level of trust in the media. Furthermore, they are more tolerant towards a number of social phenomena and groups causing debates in the Croatian and the European public, they are more sensitive to ethnic inequalities, they also perceive the war as the main cause of existing difficulties more, they have considerably more faith in their own generation as the social strength which can initiate positive trends, they express a greater readiness for joining different civil activities, and trust that television and youth associations might mobilize them to actively participate in social affairs. At the same time, the young less than the adults accept the values of a democratic order, but are less inclined towards the harmonious conception of politics, they are less socially sensitive, express less trust in the institutions of power, they more rarely express socio-economic goals and preservation of tradition among the political priorities, they choose immorality and crime in privatization as the causes of today's problems less, they perceive less corruption in all areas of social life (aside from the school system), they have less faith in the positive contribution of experts and entrepreneurs in overcoming the crisis trends, they are less interested in politics and participate in political parties less, and their trust in the mobilizing role of democratic education, volunteer work, political parties and nongovernmental organizations, as well as in the contribution of the family and educational system in the stimulation of the social engagement of youth, is much lower. The enumerated differences between the youth and adults can primarily be interpreted from the discourse of the life cycle theory. This means that the witnessed differences are mostly the product of a different total social status of youth and adults, which presumes that most of the young have yet to take over their permanent social roles, and that their immediate experience is limited to some social areas. It follows that with their maturing and their full social integration, most differences from the adults will be erased. The common experience of a time in history, that is, life in a specific socio-historic period with a tendency to equalize differences, contributes to the convergence of youth and adults. The potential generational differences – which, as a rule, occur with the different reception of the same events and processes – are not very visible, and will be unambiguously detected only when today's generation of youth is in its mature age and when their attitudes are then compared with the attitudes of new young generations. Then, it will be more clear how much the existing differences between the young and the adults are a consequence of the fact that most adults gained their experience in a different social order, which, to a degree, forms their existing system of political values, which in some elements, especially related to the social dimensions, are different from the system of political values of youth. The absence of deep inter-generational divides indicates that, in spite of the radical changes taking place in the dissolution of the old and the establishment of a new social and political order, the mechanism of transferring political values from the adult generations to the young functions considerably, along with the faults that exist in the constructed political awareness of adults. Here, we must notice that the adults are more resistant to the potentially unfavorable influences from the environment, which is especially evident in their better understanding of the democratic rules. This statement also suggests that Croatia is now in a more stable period of social development, which is expected when the early phase of transition is replaced by the democratic consolidation phase. Therefore, it was demonstrated that the young in Croatia accept traditional values somewhat less than the adults, but also that in some areas they are just as more conservative compared to their European peers. Pointing to this is the greater orientation of Croatia youth towards family and the lower level of tolerance for some phenomena and groups in the modern society. Also, the social participation of Croatian youth is at a lower level, which testifies less to their lack of interest, and more to the inability of the Croatian society to meet the needs of youth for realizing its social necessities. The third comparative level includes the tracking of changes occurring within the Croatian youth between 1999 and 2004. The recapitulation of the obtained results indicates that in the observed period of time there has been an increase in the already relatively high level of acceptance of all the constitutional principles, as well as in the harmonious perception of politics and institutional trust, while the lack of work, discipline and irresponsibility are now more perceived as a social problem than before. The recent data also indicate that the young today perceive the existence of educational, gender and age related differences more, as well as the worsening political representation of all marginal groups. On the other hand, the understanding of conflicts and democratic rules (especially the role of the opposition) is weaker, the emphasis of crime in transformation of ownership and privatization as problems is smaller, the young now perceive the existence of social and religious differences less, their social activism and political participation is reduced, and the perception of joining political party youths and establishing autonomous youth parties as forms of activities that might contribute to a more active participation of youth in society decreased. The mentioned changes tend to lead to a further social, especially political, (self)passivity and marginalization of youth, and it is especially intriguing that it does not sufficiently understand political competition and its importance. If this was understandable in the first phase of transition, considering the war, stimulating homogenization, and the absence of a democratic tradition and the monopolization of power by one political party – the obtained results are no longer as understandable after spending more than 15 years in a multiparty democratic system. Therefore, we can presume that some elements of a functional political system and behavior of political protagonists is such that they convince the young that democracy, immanently inclined toward a conflict between political interests, is simply a less important form without obligating rules and procedures. This certainly points to faults in the process of political socialization of youth, which especially raises the issue of the need for an institutionalized education for democracy. In other words, if the adult generations, socialized in a different social order, still cannot optimally transfer their values in new generations, and if the functioning of political institutions is still marked by numerous " child illnesses" , than education, which can develop civil competence, is necessary. Anyway, in the countries that do not lack a democratic tradition, education for civil rights and democracy is a permanent process which takes place through appropriate school programs. The data also show that there has been a certain decrease in the social sensitivity of youth, which must be a consequence of socialization in a society aiming at market competitiveness and maximizing profit. The accompanying consequences are – especially with the lack of developed instruments of a social state, and after the poorly implemented restructuring of economy – the deepening of social inequalities and the decrease of the living standards of a large portion of the population. Thus, maturing in a society that suppresses social sensitivity, the young also become insufficiently sensitive to the issue of social justice in the (re)distribution of significantly limited resources. The young are raised in an environment in which their immediate and indirect experience tells that personal success is important, and the responsibility for achieving or not achieving it, is also personal. The emphasized orientation on competition and individualization of achievements weakens the social sensitivity and solidarity with the losers of social transformation. However, during the past several years the acceptance of the Constitutionally outlined basic political values has increased. This is a very important finding because such a high, and increased validation of liberal-democratic principles, leads us to assume that the Croatian society is overcoming the anomy it was in since the transitional period began. Leaving aside many events from the social and political practice that are witnesses to the recurrent violation, disregard or reduction of the interpretation of constitutional principles, we are left with an extremely high convergence of the political value systems of youth (as well as adults) and the officially proclaimed political values. This, of course, is no guarantee of a harmonized and appropriate behavior of those in power and of citizens, but it certainly represents the necessary level of consensus about the principles a pluralistic society and a democratic political order should be built on. The continuity of the tendencies established in the previous research is confirmed by the findings that youth is not a monolithic group, regarding the acceptance of political values, expression of political attitudes and level of political participation. The systemized data indicate, however, that the young tend to be homogenous in their acceptance of constitutional values and democratic attitudes, the common perception of social and socio-cultural inequalities, the extreme perception of their political status as marginal, and their average readiness to join different civil actions. At the same time, the greatest level of differentiation occurs regarding the not especially present tolerance toward most of the observed social phenomena and groups, the perception of unemployment as the most important social problem and the cause of existing difficulties, the average perception of the existence of political inequalities, and the expression of a weak interest in politics as well as the perception of the role of the " Diaspora" in Croatian political life. Looking at these results generally, it turns out that the young are mostly different regarding the level of achieved education and socio-professional status. The education level usually has the position of the attribute that affects the participants' attitudes the most in every social research, and it is interesting here because this is true even in the young population, many of which are still in the process of obtaining an education. Certainly, the basic division occurs between those with the lowest and highest qualifications, where a part of youth with high school education tends to get the same results as the academically educated youth. These are primarily students, and the fact is that education is very linked to the socio-professional position of youth, which has the same scope of influence on their differentiation. The results have manifested that students are usually on the one side, and pupils and the unemployed youth on the other in most situations. While with pupils we can assume that there will be a change with their maturing, the issue of the unemployed participants remains, because they seem to be a subgroup of youth that is placed more permanently on the social and political margins. A significant influence on the differentiation of youth is played by party affiliation, gender, age, regional status and the father's level of education. This group of attributes points to the influence of different types of socialization, along with a degree of (im)maturity of youth. In other words, being raised in families with different social statuses and in regions with different levels of development and cultural traditions, results in the formation of different attitudes of youth. It is also obvious that in the area of relationships towards politics, the differentiated models of socialization of women and men are still at work, contributing to the survival of the commonly known gender differences. As is logical when the political sphere is involved, party affiliation is an important element of polarization because it consists both of different ideological orientations, and of differences in the social profile of party supporters. The least influential attributes are the residential status, provenience and religiousness. These trends indicate a certain weakening of the influence of rural-urban differences, which is to be expected in a modern society, where the media override the transportation, infrastructural, cultural and other differences. The poor influence of religiousness indirectly testifies to the weakening of the correlation between the adoption of religious beliefs and the manifestation of religious affiliation, resulting in the loss of certain differences between the religious and the non-religious youth. However, the share of religious believers is such that their attitudes predominantly determine the main direction of youth orientations, which then points to a strengthening of the influence of religious on a general level. It is therefore questionable if the weakest influence of religion on political attitudes of youth may be seen as an indicator of a weakening correlation between politics and religion, traditionally present in this area. All the mentioned differentiation of youth can be summarized by sketching out two large, relatively polarized groups. One group consists of youth with higher education and social origin (an above averagely educated father, urban environment, and developed regions), students, averagely older, mostly non-religious and supporters of HNS and SDP – that is, the socially more competent youth, inclined to the left center ideological-political options. The other group consists of averagely younger participants, especially pupils and the unemployed with a lower education and social background (a father with lower qualifications, rural milieu, less developed regions), declared believers and sympathizers of HDZ, as well as HSP and HSS. In this case, we are profiling a socially more inferior youth inclined toward parties positioned at the right-wing pole of the ideological-political spectrum. The socially more competent youth is more liberal, critical toward social reality and political protagonists, and it manifests a greater consideration for democratic procedures and institutions, which is an indicator of the importance of more favorable circumstances in the process of political socialization. Since some of these circumstances are impossible to change by focused actions and campaigns, education is again the most appropriate channel of adopting knowledge and information that can contribute to the making of aware citizens, who are more difficult to manipulate and objectify for certain dubious particular political goals. The changes in the polarization of youth indicate that the territorial-cultural and ideological-cultural cleavages deepened in the past several years, and there are indications that the socio-economic cleavage will grow stronger as well. The unequal access to existing social resources of today's youth will generate an unequal status in their mature age, that is, the advantages achieved at the start (youth), are a guarantee of achieving better social positions in the future. Therefore, we can expect a widening and deepening of the process of social differentiation, which, if it is not corrected through mechanisms aimed at ensuring equal access, at least in the process of enabling youth to take over the permanent social roles, in the approach to social resources (primarily education), can be disastrous for the optimal development of a relatively undeveloped nation with a small population. What we mean is that human capital is what such countries, including Croatia, need to treat with a lot of thought and responsibility and invest in maximally. Among other things, by stimulating as many citizens as possible, especially the young, to actively participate in the social processes and institutions. Finally, the results obtained in this research may be summarized into tendencies and statements of a wider nature. Firstly, the political culture of youth testifies in a number of aspects that we are approaching democratic standards – especially regarding the acceptance of basic liberal-democratic values and the principle readiness for social engagement – but also that its social power and social capital are low. Secondly, the young are aware of their social and political marginalization, and recognize an entire spectrum of measures which might contribute to them achieving a certain amount of power and become active citizens, which is desirable in a democratic society, but they insufficiently use the channels of social and political promotion at their disposal. And thirdly, the young are not that different from the adults to enable us to mention a generational gap, let alone a conflict. However, the young did turn out to be somewhat more liberal, flexible and tolerant, which is certainly an argument in favor of them gaining and/or winning adequate social space for expressing their attitudes and desires. Their similarity to the adults might appease those social structures which fear that youth activation might end up in the radicalization of political life, which is difficult to control. This same inter-generational resemblance could be disappointing to those social structures that have high hopes regarding the innovative potential of youth and its ability to carry out the necessary changes. Independent of the potential fears and desires of the adults, one should assume that there is enough latent potential in the young population, which, in a more favorable social environment, might be more pronounced. The establishment of such an environment might be helped by the knowledge that the Croatian society, on its way to the European Union, needs the activity of all social resources, as well as the potential of youth, as the most vital segment of the society, which is most open to changes.

Defence date: 8 January 2015 ; Examining Board: Professor Pepper Culpepper, European University Institute (Supervisor); Professor E. Scott Adler, University of Colorado, Boulder (External Supervisor); Professor Stefano Bartolini, European University Institute; Professor Peter John, University College London. ; Who sets lawmakers' priorities? The aim of the thesis is to provide a convincing theoretical argument able to identify what are the policy problems that demand lawmakers' attention, but also to test this empirically for France, Denmark, Spain and the United Kingdom between 1980 and 2008. This research shows how accounting for the way in which lawmakers deal with competing policy problems integrate two major accounts of the way in which governments set their priorities: party mandate approaches and public policy approaches. The thesis does so by suggesting that given their double role of representatives and administrators, lawmakers have to deliver policies consistent both with electoral and non-electoral mandates. In this framework, parties' promises, administrative commitments, and the priorities of the public originate policy problems that compete for lawmakers' attention to enter the policy agenda. Compared to classic party mandate approaches, this research does not conceive parties as being the key actors of the game or the major agenda-setters. Compared to public policy approaches, the study does not dismiss the role of parties. The theory argues that a problem-solving approach is key to account for lawmakers' priorities and for the way in which lawmakers select policy problems that need to be addressed in the policy agenda. In this framework, different policy problems demand lawmakers' attention and problems-solving scholars have illustrated that the types of issues that need to be addressed are different in "nature". Existing accounts of the composition of policy agendas distinguish between problems ranging from "compulsory" to "discretionary" concerns (Walker 1977; Adler and Wilkerson 2012) where the former derive from "periodically recurring demands " and the latter from "chosen problems" (Walker 1977:425). Building on these contributions, the theoretical model of the dissertation discusses the "nature" of different policy problems by identifying some 'ideal types' that originate from the double functions that lawmakers shall perform in contemporary democracies as "representatives" of voters' interests and as "responsible" administrators (Mair 2009). In this sense, the dissertation contends that different policy problems emerge from the electoral promises of the governing parties, from commitments related to the responsibility of being in office, and from the 'external world', and that the balance between them determines the composition of the policy agenda. 13 There are four propositions of this study to existing knowledge in the field of policy agendas. The first is that the content of the policy agenda is stable across countries with different institutional settings. Lawmakers' priorities are no less stable in institutional systems that are more 'open' to accommodating policy problems brought by the electoral promises of the parties. At the same time stability persists even when elections approach, questioning the long-lasting assumption that lawmakers may manipulate policies to their will in order to assure re-election. The second is that policy problems brought by the electoral promises of the governing parties impact lawmakers' priorities, but this is only half of an old story. The results show that the policy problems originating from the electoral promises of the opposition influence the content of the policy agenda confirming that the agenda-setting power of parties is not limited to those who are in office. The third proposition is a theoretical effort and empirical contribution to conceptualise and measure "policy commitments". Studies of public policy have stressed the importance of inherited commitments in everyday law making (Rose 1994; Adler and Wilkerson 2012) since some decisions take longer than a legislature to be realised. Classic analyses have emphasised the importance of budgetary constraints on policy agendas, but the thesis suggests that there is also another striking case of policy commitments for European polities: EU integration, since decisions on EU affairs and delegation of powers taken from previous governments are hard (if not impossible) to reverse by their successors. In this sense, EU decisions are inherited by all governments, and they add complexity to the problem-solving capacity of Member States because they produce extra policy problems that require lawmakers' attention. For lawmakers respecting legally binding EU decisions, this is a way to avoid "reckless and illegal decision making" (Mair 2009). The results highlight that when reflecting on the divisions of competences between the Union and its Member States (MSs), policy commitments derived from the EU directives are concentrated on a narrow set of policy areas. The results show that in most fields where commitments are higher, the agenda-setting power of parties' electoral promises is weakened. Finally, this research suggests that policy problems originating from the agenda of the public (as approximated by media coverage) are another explanatory factor of policy priorities, but in a very narrow set of policy areas. Media effects appear to be limited to policy areas with the special characteristics of newsworthiness and sensationalism (Soroka 2002) that contribute to boost their policy appeal. In addition, the findings highlight that the agenda-setting power of the media is mediated by the interaction with the electoral promises of the opposition, probably as a result of a blame avoidance game to discredit incumbents. 14 Chapter 1 introduces the concepts of policy agenda and policy problem before summarising existing accounts of the content of policy agendas. Two theoretical traditions are identified. The first one is the "partisan account" highlighting the importance of partisan preferences for lawmakers' priorities. The second is made up of the "public policy accounts" proposing incrementalist and agenda-setting approaches to representatives' priorities. Chapter 2 sets up the theoretical framework that will be tested in this research. Drawing upon theories of "representative and responsible" government (Mair 2009) the research provides an encompassing model of how different policy problems compete for attention in order to enter the agendas of lawmakers. The thesis highlights that different agenda-setters have to be considered as creating policy problems: the electoral promises of the governing parties, the demands addressed to lawmakers by the EU agenda, and the issues that are important for the public as reported by the media. Starting from existing typologies of problems that must be addressed in the policy agenda (Walker 1977; Adler and Wilkerson 2012), the research roughly distinguishes between discretionary and compulsory policy problems, discussing how the three agenda-setters considered in this study fit into those ideal types, as well as the incentives for lawmakers to prioritise one over the other. Chapter 3 presents the data, models and methods that are used to test the theoretical framework. The dissertation relies on data from the Comparative Agendas Project modelled in the form of time series cross sectional models. Chapter 4 introduces the empirical investigation of the content of the policy agenda. It focuses on stability and change in lawmakers' priorities, to understand the extent to which priorities change (or remain the same) across elections. Chapter 5 moves a step further and will assess the connection between policy problems brought by parties' electoral promises and the content of the policy agenda. Chapter 6 will account for one of the most debated sources of policy problems among public policy scholars: policy commitments. This chapter will test the agenda-setting power of policy commitments deriving from the content of the EU directives on lawmakers' priorities and proposing an "EU acquiescence index" to shed light on the 'overlaps' between EU and domestic policy agendas. Finally, Chapter 7 aims at analysing the connection between lawmakers' priorities and media coverage (in terms of print and, where appropriate, audio media) and each of the two relevant types of policy problems competing for lawmakers' attention identified in the previous chapters. In sum the thesis offers a theory of the composition of policy agendas grounded in a problem-solving understanding of politics, and an empirical assessment of its validity. In this sense the study is about how policy problems originating from the dual role of lawmakers in 15 contemporary democracies (representation and administration) affect everyday policy making. More precisely the thesis considers the impact of different agenda venues (parties, EU commitments, and the media) on the way in which lawmakers deliver policies.

It's only been six years since thousands of Google employees forced their employer to pull out of an AI contract with the U.S. military. At the time, it seemed like a watershed moment: Despite long historical links to the Pentagon, Silicon Valley appeared poised to shake off its ties with the world's most powerful military.
But a lot can change in half a decade, as Palantir CEO Alex Karp gleefully reminded his audience in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday. "I historically would have been one that would rage against Silicon Valley venture [capitalists]," Karp said, joking that he used to have "all sorts of fantasies of using drone-enabled technology to exact revenge."
Now, patriotic investors and officials are "coming together around some obvious truths," he argued. In Karp's telling, these principles include a realization that Western values must be protected against burgeoning threats from America's adversaries in China and Russia as well as the dangerous "pagan" forces behind pro-Palestinian protests.
Karp's free-wheeling presentation was the most entertaining of Wednesday's Hill and Valley Forum, a four-hour-long event featuring a who's-who of the growing defense tech ecosystem. But, rhetorical flourishes aside, the series of talks gave a unique window into the increasingly porous border between Silicon Valley's most hawkish entrepreneurs and their ideological allies in Washington.
Above all, the two groups came together around their shared hatred for the Chinese Communist Party and its various nefarious doings. Panelists called for everything from slashing regulation of the weapons industry to fielding fully autonomous weapons, lest our enemies get a chance to do it first.
"Technology is moving extremely quickly, and you have your adversaries that are moving super quickly as well," remarked Alex Wang of Scale AI. "We're in a moment where we have to act really quickly."
The conduit for this growing collaboration is Jacob Helberg, the event's baby-faced organizer. In recent years, Helberg has shed his more conventional think tank background to become Silicon Valley's man in Washington. He's convened countless meetings between policymakers and tech leaders where attendees pitch policies to stick it to China.
Helberg now works both as an adviser to Palantir and a member of a congressional commission on U.S.-China relations. Some say this dual-hatting amounts to a conflict of interests given that he now "stands to benefit from ever-frostier relations between the two countries," a claim that Helberg strenuously denies.
Some of Helberg's efforts, like the campaign to ban TikTok, have already paid off. But he has his sights set on something bigger, according to the Washington Post, which reported Wednesday that the young hotshot has already started drafting an executive order for a potential future Trump administration that would strip away President Joe Biden's AI regulations (limited as they may be).
Helberg's convening powers were on full display Wednesday: Some of Washington's most powerful politicians graced the stage, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), as well as Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who holds an important position on the House Appropriations Committee.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — who, you may remember, is currently fighting for his political life — took time out of his schedule to warn the crowd about the threat China poses to our very way of life. "We must make clear that if America and American companies lose, that means China wins," Johnson said.
Even Donald Trump made an appearance, if only in the form of a brief, pre-recorded statement filmed on what appeared to be the ex-president's private jet. "Our country's going through a lot of problems right now, but we're going to make it bigger, better, and even stronger than before," Trump said, noting that he'd had a "very productive" meeting about AI with Helberg.
The day's panels had an odd quality to them, possibly because none of the journalists in attendance were invited to moderate. Instead, the audience was treated to a series of largely unstructured conversations between politicians and the kind of people who can buy an island.
Graham warned the audience that Chinese cars could be little more than "roving spy labs" meant to gather information on American patriots. Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) argued that Americans will have to come around to the idea of AI drones that make "life and death decisions" because our enemies will surely do the same.
The growing bonds between Silicon Valley and Washington are "recreating a culture that says it is great to be American," remarked Josh Wolfe, a VC at Lux Capital, adding that "we do have adversaries with malicious aims" that can only be countered with good old-fashioned American capitalism.
The funhouse mirror aspects of the event, plentiful as they were, are a distraction from the fundamental problem: A growing part of Silicon Valley is ready to unshackle AI from most if not all oversight, and Congress is more than happy to help them.There is perhaps no greater evidence of this fact than the effusive praise Sen. Booker lavished on his fellow panelists, all of whom lead various AI firms. "Often unsung heroes are those that are the innovators and the scientists and those who are creating systems and opportunities that we now in our generation take for granted," the lawmaker said. "You three are frontline players in ways that have me humbled and in awe."

Ukraine would consider inviting Russian officials to a peace summit to discuss Kyiv's proposal for a negotiated end to the war, according to Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff."There can be a situation in which we together invite representatives of the Russian Federation, where they will be presented with the plan in case whoever is representing the aggressor country at that time will want to genuinely end this war and return to a just peace," Yermak said over the weekend, noting that one more round of talks without Russia will first be held in Switzerland.The comment represents a subtle shift in Ukrainian messaging about talks. Kyiv has long argued that it would never negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin, yet there is no reason to believe Putin will leave power any time soon. That realization — along with Ukraine's increasingly perilous position on the battlefield — may have helped force Kyiv to reconsider its hard line on talking with the widely reviled Russian leader.Zelensky hinted at a potential mediator for talks following a visit this week to Saudi Arabia. The leader "noted in particular Saudi Arabia's strivings to help in restoring a just peace in Ukraine," according to a statement from Ukrainian officials. "Saudi Arabia's leadership can help find a just solution."Russia, for its part, has signaled that it is open to peace talks of some sort, though both Kyiv and Moscow insist that any negotiations would have to be conducted on their terms. The gaps between the negotiating positions of the two countries remain substantial, with each laying claim to roughly 18% of the territory that made up pre-2014 Ukraine.Ukraine's shift is a sign of just how dire the situation is becoming for its armed forces, which recently made a hasty retreat from Avdiivka, a small but strategically important town near Donetsk. After months of wrangling, the U.S. Congress has still not approved new military aid for Ukraine, and Kyiv now says its troops are having to ration ammunition as their stockpiles dwindle.Zelensky said Sunday that he expects Russia to mount a new offensive as soon as late May. It's unclear whether Ukrainian troops are prepared to stop such a move.Even the Black Sea corridor — a narrow strip of the waterway through which Ukraine exports much of its grain — could be under threat. "I think the route will be closed...because to defend it, it's also about some ammunition, some air defense, and some other systems" that are now in short supply, said Zelensky.As storm clouds gather, it's time to push for peace talks before Russia regains the upper hand, argue Anatol Lieven and George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft."Complete victory for Ukraine is now an obvious impossibility," Lieven and Beebe wrote this week. "Any end to the fighting will therefore end in some form of compromise, and the longer we wait, the worse the terms of that compromise will be for Ukraine, and the greater the dangers will be for our countries and the world."In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— Hungary finally signed off on Sweden's bid to join NATO after the Swedish prime minister met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest, according to Deutsche Welle. What did Orban get for all the foot dragging? Apparently just four Swedish fighter jets of the same model that it has been purchasing for years. The prime minister blamed his party for the slow-rolling, saying in a radio interview prior to the parliamentary vote that he had persuaded his partisans to drop their opposition to Sweden's accession.— French President Emmanuel Macron sent allies scrambling Tuesday when he floated the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, according to the BBC. Leaders from Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, and other NATO states quickly swatted down the idea that the alliance (or any individual members thereof) would consider joining the war directly. Russia said direct conflict with NATO would be an "inevitability" if the bloc sent troops into Ukraine.— On Wednesday, Zelensky attended a summit in Albania aimed at bolstering Balkan support for Ukraine's fight against Russia, according to AP News. The Ukrainian leader said all states in the region are "worthy" of becoming members of NATO and the European Union, which "have provided Europe with the longest and most reliable era of security and economic development."— Western officials were in talks with the Kremlin for a prisoner swap involving Russian dissident Alexei Navalny prior to his death in a Russian prison camp in February, though no formal offer had yet been made, according to Politico. This account contrasts with the one given by Navalny's allies, who claimed that Putin had killed the opposition leader in order to sabotage discussions that were nearing a deal. Navalny's sudden death has led to speculation about whether Russian officials may have assassinated him, though no proof has yet surfaced to back up this claim. There is, however, little doubt that the broader deterioration of the dissident's health was related to the harsh conditions he was held under.
U.S. State Department news:In a Tuesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the situation on the frontlines in Ukraine is "extremely serious." "We have seen Ukrainian frontline troops who don't have the ammo they need to repel Russian aggression. They're still fighting bravely. They're still fighting courageously," Miller said. "They still have armor and weapons and ammunition they can use, but they're having to ration it now because the United States Congress has failed to act."

Europe's top diplomats made history this week when they made a surprise trip to Kyiv for a meeting aimed at projecting a unified front in support of Ukraine's war with Russia and bid to join the European Union.
"It is the first time that we met in a candidate country," said Josep Borrell, the bloc's top foreign policy official. "And unfortunately, it was also the first time that the foreign ministers of the European Union met in a country at war."
"The EU remains united in its support to Ukraine," Borrell continued. "I don't see any member state folding on their engagement."
Shortly after the summit, which included 23 of the EU's 27 foreign ministers, Ukraine got another piece of good news when reports emerged that Kyiv could start official accession talks by the end of this year.
But, far away from the spotlight, a number of obstacles remain before Ukraine joins the powerful bloc. The first challenge is to meet the EU's standards for democracy and good governance. As of August, Ukraine had only met two out of seven legal benchmarks, and it remains unclear how Kyiv will make progress on the remaining five amid a brutal, all-out war with Russia.
If Ukraine manages to surpass that hurdle, it will face the arduous task of convincing each and every member of the consensus-driven bloc that Kyiv should become a member.
Slovakia will have little appetite for making concessions to Ukraine given the results of the country's recent elections, in which a leftist party opposed to arming Kyiv returned to power. Robert Fico, Slovakia's likely new prime minister, said last month that it is "illusory to deal with" the question of Ukraine joining the EU amid a "sharp military conflict."
There is, however, one factor working in Ukraine's favor: Fico had a history of pragmatism during previous stints as prime minister, leaving open the possibility that he could change his tack on Kyiv for the right price.
Reports also indicate that Hungary, led by firebrand Prime Minister Viktor Orban, will not back Ukraine's bid for free. In fact, EU officials are now considering unlocking as much as $13 billion in handouts that the bloc has withheld from Budapest due to concerns that Orban has reduced the independence of the country's courts. In return, EU officials hope Hungary will approve aid to Ukraine and back the effort to open accession talks.The final obstacle will be convincing the EU's smaller states to accept a fundamental shift in the economic balance of the bloc. Ukraine would get nearly $200 billion from the bloc over seven years, forcing some member states to go from net receivers of EU largesse to net payers, according to an EU report leaked to the Financial Times. Kyiv would also become the largest recipient of agricultural subsidies, dropping payments for all other states by about 20 percent.
Despite the long odds, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains determined to help his country achieve EU membership. "Our key integration goal is to hammer out a decision to start membership negotiations this year," Zelensky said. "Today, I heard once again at the meetings and negotiations that this is absolutely possible."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— The end of Rep. Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) term as speaker of the House could mean the end of U.S. aid to Ukraine, according to Blaise Malley of RS. As Malley notes, all of McCarthy's likely successors have been critical of American aid, and options for bypassing the speaker and forcing a vote on more Ukraine funding would require some Republicans to either break with leadership or do some clever horse trading to convince Kyiv's skeptics. The news comes as public support for aid continues to fall, according to a new Reuters/ Ipsos poll, which found that only 41% of Americans want to continue arming Ukraine, while 35% were opposed and the rest were unsure.
— NATO's top military official warned that "the bottom of the barrel is now visible" when it comes to Western stocks for arming Ukraine, according to CNN. "We give away weapons systems to Ukraine, which is great, and ammunition, but not from full warehouses," said Adm. Rob Bauer.
— Zelensky met with European leaders in Granada, Spain, on Thursday in an effort to bolster support for Ukraine, according to Reuters. "Our joint goal is to ensure the security and stability of our common European home," he said on X, formerly known as Twitter. "We are working together with partners on enhancing the European security architecture, particularly regional security. Ukraine has substantial proposals in this regard."
— Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday that U.S. aid for Ukraine is "irrational," marking a shift in the controversial leader's rhetoric about the war, according to Reuters. "I was just looking at how now they're not authorizing aid for the war in Ukraine," AMLO said. "But how much have they destined for the Ukraine war? $30 to $50 billion for the war, which is the most irrational thing you can have. And damaging." AMLO has previously called for peace talks to end the conflict.
U.S. State Department news:In a Wednesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel called on Congress to pass new aid for Ukraine. "We cannot under any circumstances allow America's support for Ukraine to be interrupted," Patel said. "A lapse in support for even a short period of time could make all the difference in the battlefield."

Yesterday may have marked the NHS's 75th birthday, but there was no reason to celebrate. Whilst children's choirs sing happy birthday and the country raises a 'cuppa', I kept my party hat away. For, the system is no longer "fit for heroes". The NHS does not work.Waiting lists sit at a record high of 7.4 million, whilst median A&E wait time is a dangerous 3 hours 2 minutes. Ambulance services repeatedly miss their targets, causing half of those who need rapid treatment to die. Occupied beds sit at a worrying level of 92%, reducing overall capacity. And in December 2022, only 54.4% of cancer patients waited under 62 days for treatment, in contrast to the target of 85%. In short, the NHS is not just in crisis, it has essentially collapsed. The NHS is no longer the envy of the world, rather it is fast becoming a laughing stock. It is no wonder no other countries have followed suit in our system. Indeed, the only comparable systems were in the Soviet Union and Cuba, where hospitals were in a similarly dire state.Why is there a crisis?The left would have you believe that it is wholly situational. They blame the pandemic, Conservative "underfunding" (despite record spending) and Brexit. The system is not the problem they claim, rather poor governance and recent events have made it impossible for the NHS to act the way it should. This is plain wrong. The NHS is systematically flawed, and the only real solution is a complete overhaul of our healthcare system. Of its systemic flaws, none is more prevalent than its sheer size. The NHS is the fifth largest employer in the world and the largest state-owned employer in the free world. Its goliath size comes with challenges, one of which is management. Currently the NHS is managed top-down and with Trusts; policies, however, remain Westminster centred. The current system can be characterised by excessive bureaucracy and micro-management, held back by short-term political priorities. Indeed, there are more bureaucrats in the NHS then there are beds.Socialists like to lecture us on the dangers of private monopolies. Yet, the NHS is the largest monopoly of them all. Monopolies are terrible for productivity and give the consumers no choice. Patients have little choice within the system. Many cannot choose their doctor's surgeries. And patients are unable to see a specialist without a GP referral, which all too often involves further immense bureaucracy and long waiting times, such as waits up to seven years for an ADHD pre-assessment.Meanwhile our infrastructure is constantly on red alert for the threat of strikes loom. The NHS can keep certain costs down, but it does this by suppressing wages and creating less than ideal working conditions. If we want our NHS to remain competitive and for the best doctors not to quadruple their income on fixed salaries at London's new Cleveland Clinic, the NHS must radically change.The alternative –Simply more tax and spend won't fix it. Sweeping structural change is needed.Common rhetoric suggests there is but one alternative to the NHS: America's bankrupting system. This is not the case. No rational individual would argue in favour of this, for it is mind-numbingly ineffective as a healthcare system. Other options exist which may be far more effective.The government should pursue a competing social insurance scheme, similar to the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, as we have proposed previously . This system will separate government from providers and patients. The government would have no direct management role, ending the health service's known problem of limitless bureaucracy and unstable policy direction. In this system it would be compulsory for universal enrolment for social insurance, and insurers would be banned from refusing service. Premiums would be calculated by income, with the poorest paying nothing. This system would be fair, for it would be a one-tiered system where all receive the same (exceptionally high) level of care. And, crucially, all services would be free at the point of access, unless the consumers choose to pay in order to have lower premiums.Short-term bandages –Clearly in the current political climate the above is a stretch. Thus, it may be helpful to explore things we can do in the short term to make the crisis slightly less bad. This could be through outsourcing. Despite what Julia Grace Patterson or WeOwnIt would like you to believe, outsourcing does not mean privatisation. As Kristian Niemietz of the Institute of Economic Affairs puts it, it is a "failed conspiracy theory that never dies." Outsourcing means hiring private firms to do certain jobs within the NHS, typically non-medical such as IT. And for all the fear-mongers out there, rest assured that it will continue to be free at the point of receipt. Let's face it, private companies are likely to be better than NHS bureaucrats at delivering certain services. Remember that terrible NHS app? If this was outsourced to a tech firm rather than developed in house, maybe it would have been a success. Conclusions –Our medical professionals are heroes. They do a stellar job, especially given the terrible environments they are made to work in. The system is letting them and their patients down. In the interim, more outsourcing should occur. In the long term, the government should completely overhaul our health system and replace it with a social insurance scheme. That way we will finally have a system "fit for heroes" as Attlee and Bevan envisaged. Oliver Ind is a Summer Intern at the Adam Smith Institute

The digital identity has become one of the most important immaterial values in everyday life, the personal and academic reputation, the professional profile, but even more than that, the freedom to be on the web without to be afraid of the usurpation of our identity is the inspiration of this thesis work. In the digital world, borders no longer exist, interactions with people around the world are becoming more common, e-commerce, social networks, online procedures, information exchange between countries and governments, and also personal relationships in mobile applications, this is also the reason for being a comparative law study between Mexican, French and American law. In the first part, we develop the elements of digital identity, the personal data included in the whole of this concept which is both misunderstood and therefore poorly protected but also very important in the development of the digital economy. The second part, understands the interpretations of digital identity in the field of criminal law administrative law and civil and commercial law. In particular, there are differences between the interpretation of the criminal law of identity as protected legal property; in comparison with interpretations of the administrative law that protects the digital identity as personal data, the implementation of international recognition of the right to the protection of personal data and becomes the regulation that defines the rules of their treatment, thus imposing sanctions on the unlawful treatment and on the other side the civil right which a party recognizes the right of the personality and the right to the personal image. The third part is dedicated to the study of digital identity as a source of evolution of the law, as well as to the attacks on all the elements that are part of this identity. Law is always behind innovation and yet, alongside the evolution of humanity, inventions, technology and development, there is the evolution of illicit acts and means of committing crimes in the world digital environment. Even though the phenomenon of identity theft is not new, it has overcome in the world in the last five years thanks to new technologies that allow to create, modify, alter, falsify, reproduce and disseminate personal data, photos and identifiers in a very fast and global way, which allows to sell in the deep web full of personal data for later to make different types of illegal use, including identity theft. As the new technology is used for the sophistication of illicit activities, there is a work of computer security companies to fight technically against attacks on information systems, networks and information, especially data breaches of personal data, so at the end of this part we do a study of digital tools created for this purpose. ; L'identité numérique des personnes est devenue une des plus importantes valeurs immatérielles dans la vie quotidienne, la réputation personnelle, académique, le profil et le déroulement de la carrière professionnelle, mais encore plus que ça, la liberté d'être sur la toile sans avoir peur de l'usurpation de notre identité est l'inspiration de ce travail de thèse. Dans le monde numérique les frontières n'existent plus, les interactions avec les personnes de tout le monde sont de plus en plus courantes, le commerce électronique, les réseaux sociaux, les démarches administratives en ligne, l'échange d'information entre pays et gouvernements, et aussi les rapports romantiques dans les applications mobiles, c'est aussi la raison d'être une étude de droit comparé entre le droit mexicain, français et américain. Dans la première partie nous développons les éléments de l'identité numérique, les données personnelles comprises dans l'ensemble de ce concept qui est à la fois mal compris et en conséquence mal protégé mais aussi très importante dans le développement de l'économie numérique. La deuxième partie, comprend les interprétations de l'identité numérique dans le domaine du droit pénal du droit administratif et du droit civil et commercial. Il y a notamment des différences entre l'interprétation qui fait le droit pénal de l'identité en tant que bien juridique protégé ; en comparaison avec les interprétations du droit administratif qui protège l'identité numérique en tant que donnée personnelle, la mise en œuvre de la reconnaissance internationale du droit à la protection des données à caractère personnel et devient la régulation qui définit les règles de leur traitement, ainsi qui impose les sanctions au traitement illicite et de l'autre côté le droit civil qui d'une part reconnait le droit de la personnalité et le droit à l'image. La troisième partie est dédiée à l'étude de l'identité numérique comme source d'évolution du droit, ainsi qu'aux atteintes à l'ensemble des éléments qui font partie de cette identité. Le droit est toujours derrière l'innovation et malgré tout, à côté de l'évolution de l'humanité, des inventions, de la technologie et du développement, il existe l'évolution des actes illicites et de moyens de commission des délits dans l'endroit numérique. Même si le phénomène de l'usurpation d'identité n'est pas nouveau, il a surmonté dans le monde dans les cinq dernières années grâce aux nouvelles technologies qui permettent de créer, modifier, altérer, falsifier, reproduire et diffuser les données personnelles, photos et identifiants de façon très rapide et au niveau mondial, ce qui permet de vendre dans le marché noir plein de données personnelles pour après faire différents types d'utilisation illicite, notamment l'usurpation d'identité. Ainsi comme la nouvelle technologie sert à la sophistication des activités illicites, il existe un travail des entreprises de sécurité informatique pour lutter de façon technique contre les atteintes aux systèmes d'information, aux réseaux et à l'information, en particulier les atteintes aux données personnelles, donc, à la fin de cette partie on fait une étude des outils numériques crées à cet effet.

It has been widely recognized that poor health is an important cause of poverty, especiallyamong the low- and middle- income countries. One of the reasons is the absence of publicfinancial protection against the medical consumption risk in these countries. This Phd dissertationis dedicated to discern the role that health insurance could play in the organization of healthfinancial protection system. The dissertation is composed of two parts. The first part discusses theproblems linking to the financing to medical consumption from a global point of view. Chapter 1brings theoretical discussions on three topics: 1) the specialties of medical consumption risks andthe difficulties in using private health insurance to manage medical consumption risks. 2) Therole of government and market in the distribution of health resources. 3) The options for theorganization of health financing system. Chapter 2 conducts a statistical comparison on theperformance of health financing systems in the countries of different social-Economic background.The discussion is carried out around three aspects of health financing: the availability of resources,the organization of health financing, and the coverage of financial protection. The second part ofthe dissertation studies the evolution of heath financing system in a specific country: China. Threechapters are assigned to this part. Chapter 3 introduces the history of Chinese health financingsystem since 1950s. It helps us to understand the challenges in health financing brought byeconomic reform. Chapter 4 carries out an empirical study on the distribution of health financingburden in China in the 1990s. It illustrates the direct results of the decline of public financing andincrease of direct payment. Chapter 5 presents health insurance reform that launched by thegovernment since the end of 1990s. An impact analysis is conducted on an original dataset of 24township hospitals in Weifang prefecture in the north of the China. The objective is to estimatethe impact of the implementation of New Rural Medical Cooperation System (NRMCS) on theactivities and financial structure of township hospitals. At last, we conclude that social healthinsurance (SHI) permits a sharing of health financial responsibilities between the service provider,the patient-Consumer, and the service purchaser. It can not only involve both public and privateagents into the collection of funds for health financing system, but also make each party moreaccountable due to the risks they bear from the result of medical consumption. Meanwhile it isnecessary to note that SHI is just one option among others to organize health financing system.The implementation of SHI requires a certain level of social-Economic development. SHI does notsystematically bring better performance on health financing if it is not accompanied by thereforms on provider payment or on service delivery system. Government commitment andinstitutional capacity are also key factors for the good function of the system. ; Il est admis qu'avoir une mauvaise santé est une des causes principales de pauvreté,particulièrement dans les pays à faible et moyen revenus. Une des raisons de ce constat est une absence de protection financière. L'objectif de cette thèse est de discerner le rôle que l'assurance maladie pourrait jouer dans l'organisation du système de protection financière de la santé. La thèse se compose de deux parties. La première partie aborde les problèmes liés au financement de santé d'un point de vue global. Le chapitre 1 apporte des discussions théoriques sur trois thèmes: 1) les spécificités des risques de la consommation médicale qui rendent la gestion du risque par l'assurance maladie privé difficile, 2) le rôle du gouvernement et du marché dans la répartition des ressources de santé. 3) les options pour l'organisation du financement de la santé. Le chapitre 2 présente une comparaison statistique sur la performance des systèmes de financement de la santé entre des pays à contextes socio-Économique différents. Les discussions sont menées autour de trois aspects du financement de la santé: la disponibilité des ressources,l'organisation du financement de la santé, et la couverture de la protection financière. La deuxième partie qui comporte trois chapitres étudie l'évolution du système de financement de la santé dans un pays donné: la Chine. Le chapitre 3 présente l'histoire du système de financement de la santé en Chine depuis 1950. Il nous aide à comprendre les défis dans le financement de la santé suscités par la réforme économique. Le chapitre 4 porte sur une étude empirique de la répartition de la charge financière de la santé en Chine dans les années 1990. Il illustre les résultats directs de la baisse du financement public et de l'augmentation des paiements directs sur le bienêtre de la population. Le chapitre 5 présente la réforme de l'assurance maladie lancée par le gouvernement depuis la fin des années 1990. L'objectif est d'estimer l'impact de la mise en oeuvre du nouveau système rural d'assurance médical (NRMCS) sur les activités et la structure financière de ces hôpitaux. Une analyse d'impact est réalisée sur un échantillon de 24 hôpitaux dans la préfecture de Weifang, au Nord de la Chine. Nous concluons que le système d'assurance maladie permet un partage des responsabilités financières entre prestataires de services, patient consommateurs et acheteurs de services. Elle inclut à la fois les agents publics et privés dans la contribution au financement de santé, ce qui rend chaque partie plus responsable vis-À-Vis de son comportement en raison des risques qu'il doit assumer du fait de la consommation médicale.Cependant, il est nécessaire de noter que l'assurance maladie sociale n'est qu'une option parmi d'autres systèmes de financement de la santé. La mise en oeuvre de ce système exige un certain niveau de développement socio-Économique. L'assurance maladie ne conduit pas systématiquement à une meilleure performance du financement de la santé si elle n'est pas accompagnée de réformes quant au paiement au fournisseur ou au système de prestation de services. L'engagement du gouvernement et des capacités institutionnelles sont également des facteurs clés pour le bon fonctionnement du système.

One of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese land system is the existence of a 'zero state' withregard to land institutions: all the country's existing land institutions were put in place in the last25 to 30 years. However, this does not mean that there is no history of such bodies; indeed, thosethat are now emerging carry the traces of each past period. The many local customary institutionsreflect the principles underpinning previous systems regulating the social and spatial distributionof resources, and elements of the French land tenure system can be seen in the decision to registerland ownership certificates rather than follow the more Anglo Saxon system of using the titlesthemselves as proof of ownership. Nevertheless, there is a clear synchronic dimension to theprocess of putting land institutions in place, which is reflected in the role it has played in theprofound transformation of the Vietnamese State and society.In the first stage of this process, between 1979 and 1993, one of the primary concerns in designingland institutions was to respond to the high expectations of a deeply rural society without makingland an autonomous domain. This period saw the progressive dissolution of the cooperativesthrough the withdrawal of their land prerogatives. Moving in incremental stages, the State firstrecognised individuals and households as potential land users (with Decree 100, Decree 10 andthe Land Law of 1989), although land use rights were still limited and defined within cooperativesthrough temporary contracts between the cooperatives, which still held delegated managementrights, and these new users. This stage ended with the Land Law of 1993 which, while not openlychallenging the cooperatives, paved the way for their disappearance by recognising thatindividuals and households had fundamental derived management rights in addition to the right touse agricultural lands (rights to exchange, assign, rent, bequeath and mortgage land) for relativelylong fixed periods. This gave them significant control over land while dispossessing thecooperatives of any real land management capacities. Since these rights are associated with userights, it was not the land that could be transferred or mortgaged, but the right to use it and enjoyits produce. However, the very existence of these rights and their fairly long-term allocation tohouseholds meant that a land market could develop, and that land tenure seemed to function onthe basis of private ownership, even if it was not characterised as such.The second stage was a transition facilitating the 'smooth' passage from a land tenure systemdesigned to meet the needs of the rural population to one that could support the drive to makeVietnam a modern industrial and urban country. This stage roughly corresponded to the decadeseparating the land laws of 1993 and 2003. In this period, the State did little to the rights assignedto individuals and households and hardly changed agricultural land tenure. It did, however,endeavour to put in place the land administration, for which it created an independent organ at theministerial level in 1994, the General Department of Land Administration (GDLA). For the firsttime, this brought together its decision-making, operational and technical dimensions (the formerGeneral department of land management created in 1979, and the former National department ofsurveys and cartography), demonstrating the government's willingness to make this anautonomous domain that carried some weight. The State also progressively regulated modes ofaccess to urban, industrial and commercial lands and increased the rights assigned to privateenterprise, thus paving the way for the changes in the next period (albeit rather haphazardly bygenerating a growing number of texts).The third stage started with a reform of the land administration in 2002 and the publication of anew Land Law in 2003. Land was now becoming a tool to develop the territory forindustrialisation and urbanisation. This was made clear by the law of 2003, which incorporatedregulations from the previous period and barely touched on rural affairs. Little was done tomodify access to agricultural and forest lands, which had been regulated in 1993, or provide moreflexible access for rural households. But the other categories of land and land users – some ofwhom appeared in legislation for the first time – occupied a growing and even dominant place inthe law. Thus, the new legislation was full of arrangements to facilitate industrial and commercialinvestments by private and foreign enterprises, and allowed for the development of markets forland and land use rights. It also specified procedures for cataloguing and planning land use. Whileland use planning remained a top-down procedure steered by the Land Office at different levels,the legislation made the planning process much more flexible by extending the provinces'prerogatives and enabling the infra-provincial administrative authorities to change the status oflands.Since 2002, land issues have both multiplied and intensified on several levels. The partial andpoorly managed decentralisation of land management increased the shortcomings and tensionsbetween the central and provincial levels. On the one hand, the Land Office, which had beensubstantially modernised and was responsible for planning at every level, had never had as muchpotential power. This certainly rattled the central government and probably prompted its demotionin 2002 from a ministry to part of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE).On the other hand, the provinces have used even greater rifts within the administrative system tolessen the constraints of centralised planning and work very broadly with the legislation in orderto respond to local expectations, and especially those of private interests. The increasingprivatisation of land has been another point of tension. Since the Constitution of 1959, the Statehas owned all land in the name of the entire population, and while individual land rights haveconstantly been extended, individuals are assigned rights of use and management. However, thegrowing number of recognised users, more flexible conditions of access to land and theprogressive extension of rights associated with use rights have allowed private national andforeign enterprises to become dominant land actors – hence the spectacular growth in the numberand size of landholdings reserved for industrial, commercial, real-estate and leisure projects,especially in peri-urban areas.The creation of 'land fund development organisations' in 2004 is symptomatic of the problemsposed by redefing the role of the provinces and private investors. Modes of expropriation are arecurrent problem with investments, and especially compensation for those whose use rights havebeen expropriated. This issue was only settled recently, and has been treated on a case-by-casebasis by the provinces or the Land Office. The Law of 2003 still presents the State as the principalactor in land distribution insofar as it is the authority that requisitions land in order to immediatelyreallocate it to investors. However, the State has disengaged from transactions since 2004,creating a new, State-mandated body to intervene when lands are repossessed: 'land funddevelopment organisations' whose task is to simplify procedures for investors by offering them asingle interface, managing the funds from land recovered by the State in accordance withdecisions by the competent bodies, and preparing these lands for reallocation to investors.However, the exact status of these organisations, which are not commercial but also not totallypublic, is somewhat unclear. They are not financially autonomous, they are not mandatory, andtheir form and level of competence fluctuates as they can operate at the district or the provinciallevel. This lack of clarity, which results in the creation of bodies whose nature varies fromprovince to province, suggests that the State is trying to divest itself of the highly sensitiveproblem of expropriations at the expense of their beneficiaries, rather than seeking to resolve it inthe long term.What is the explanation for this disengagement, given that the problems created by the way thatland is expropriated for investment projects are some of the thorniest and most intractable for theauthorities in Hanoi? One reason is probably the increasing complexity of land management, andthe human and financial resources that can be devolved to the administration to carry out the tasksit habeen assigned. These are very substantial needs, especially at the lowest echelons(communes, districts) where staff usually have little or no training. But the State's disengagementcannot be entirely ascribed to these technical and financial challenges; it is also a manifestation ofthe difficulties of addressing two very different priorities: leading Vietnam towards modernity bytransforming it into an industrial and urban country, and organising a fragile and numericallysuperior rural population with a long habit of socialist values. One of the factors currentlyexecerbating the question of expropriation is the fact that agricultural and forested lands havebeen kept in a relatively isolated state of suspension for the last 15 years. One would assume thatthe State has a duty to protect these lands (and their users), but it is actually making them morevulnerable to the dynamics of urban and/or non-agricultural land use (industrial and commercial,leisure, etc.).Agricultural land has been subject to various changes since 1993, but access to such land is stillhighly regulated. Maintaining a ceiling on the amount of land and duration of the rights allocatedlimits the process of land accumulation and ensures that the rural population has egalitarian accessto land. By the same token, households that have been allocated rights to agricultural land by theState do not have to pay tax on this land, whose value is set according to the value of itsagricultural produce rather than the price of adjacent lands (market price). Although this shouldmean that such land remains accessible even to poor rural households, this specific status, andespecially that of highly protected rice-producing land, works against rural households bytrapping them in small, low-value farms and weakening their position when private and/or nonagriculturalinterests come into play. It seems that rather than being protected, agriculturalhouseholds – along with agriculture itself – are being sacrificed to industrialisation andurbanisation.However, things are not as simple as the last few lines suggest. On the one hand, ruralhouseholds' situations vary greatly from region to region, and there are cases where they may beprotected by modes of access to agricultural and forested land, especially the most vulnerablehouseholds. Recent events, and the global food crisis in particular, have reminded Vietnam thatthere is still a role for agriculture and rural producers, and once again put the question of ruralland under the spotlight. In response to this crisis (and soaring rice prices), the governmentdecided to freeze more than one million hectares of rice fields and launch a campaign reaffirmingthe value of rural areas in relation to urban areas (the 'three nong'). It is too early to know whetherthe return to 'rural values' in 2008 will have a lasting impact on agricultural land, and exactlywhat this impact will be. But the decisions that have been taken show that agricultural land stillconstitutes a lever that the government will not hesitate to use when the need arises. For certainnational officials, agricultural land remains a strong symbol of socialism, and its regulation acrucial element of social peace in what is still a largely rural society with close attachments to theland. Agricultural land is also an issue that raises questions about the State's role in the movetowards 'market socialism', and the legitimacy of the Communist Party. While the State'sindecision (or approximations) with regard to land matters could be interpreted as evidence of acertain pragmatism and determination to work with the legacy of the socialist period, recentdevelopments in this domain are testing the very foundations of the Communist Party'slegitimacy, and it could try to deflect this threat by getting the government to maintain the specificstatus of rural land. So is Vietnam heading towards a two-tier system where some land – the vastblock of agricultural and forest lands allocated free of charge – continues to be managed bycentral government in the nation's interest, while other agricultural land can be mobilised atleisure and managed under a liberal regime in order to support the country's economicdevelopment?In order to answer this question we needed to turn to the land actors and seek their opinions. Themajority of foreign actors (who were historically excluded from this sensitive strategic domainand whose involvement is therefore relatively recent) view the reform as incomplete and thus amajor cause of corruption. They are pushing to divest the law of these 'socialist archaisms' andmake it even more liberal. As recently as March 2008 the World Bank, which some see as theglobal symbol of liberalism, and which had until then deliberately avoided land matters, signed upto the highly ambitious Land Administration Project, making it the lead foreign actor in thisdomain and giving a strong indication of the direction in which land affairs are heading. However,the positions expressed by various national land actors are much less clear. On the one hand,officials in the land administration in particular take a fairly technical approach to land: their mainconcern is the effectiveness of the administration and legislation, and making land an autonomousdomain. Officials working directly with foreign experts tend to take a 'top-down' approach,looking at the development of the whole country and seeing the constraints associated with theprocesses of urbanisation, industrialisation and increasing openness. On the other hand, some ofthe actors we spoke to from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) see landas something that cannot be detached from local and sectoral contexts. Therefore, they believethat agricultural land should respond to the needs of agriculture and rural populations, while forestland should primarily respond to environmental protection objectives. At the moment the firstgroup of actors is much more influential because of their strategic position within the landadministration and support from international cooperation; however, in the current economicclimate the question of agriculture and rural areas and populations has re-emerged as a priorityand is slowing the pace of liberalisation.So far there is no indication that agricultural land will be able to take account of the specificitiesand great diversity of rural areas, whether or not it is prioritised, planned or liberalised.Agricultural land tenure is controlled by the State, and characterised more by the numerousconstraints that it imposes (categories, temporal and spatial limits, etc.) than its capacity to adaptto the problems facing the country's rural populations, agricultural practices and environment.Liberalising agricultural land tenure would bring it closer to a system of individual ownership,which would make land legislation more onerous in many settings where local rights of access toresources are not managed in this way. The Land Law of 2003 introduced several innovations thatare helpful in this respect, mainly by creating a new category of users, 'residential communities',which allows groups to collectively hold use rights to unlimited amounts of agricultural and forestland that they are allocated free of charge for unlimited periods. However, this new measure isitself very restrictive in terms of what constitutes a 'community', the procedures it entails and theframework it imposes on collective management. So what place do customary land tenure systemshave in the emerging land system? Vietnamese land institutions seem to have made little or noattempt to plan for this; and the main reason why there are still such diverse local situationsappears to be the government's hesitant approach to agricultural land tenure. The co-existence ofactors with divergent positions on this question and on the role of the State, and the relativeabandonment of the rural world (especially remote rural areas) because it is not consideredimportant as long it doesn't challenge the objectives of urbanisation and industrialisation have lefta gap where customary systems can continue to function. The recent resurgence of interest in thisdomain could revive the debate about systems that are considered incompatible with theestablishment of a modern State, either because of agricultural practices such as slash-and-burn orthe functioning of longstanding local power systems, but customary systems will continue tosurvive as long as efforts to develop intensive, industrial-type agriculture are not sustainedeffectively across the country.

One of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese land system is the existence of a 'zero state' withregard to land institutions: all the country's existing land institutions were put in place in the last25 to 30 years. However, this does not mean that there is no history of such bodies; indeed, thosethat are now emerging carry the traces of each past period. The many local customary institutionsreflect the principles underpinning previous systems regulating the social and spatial distributionof resources, and elements of the French land tenure system can be seen in the decision to registerland ownership certificates rather than follow the more Anglo Saxon system of using the titlesthemselves as proof of ownership. Nevertheless, there is a clear synchronic dimension to theprocess of putting land institutions in place, which is reflected in the role it has played in theprofound transformation of the Vietnamese State and society.In the first stage of this process, between 1979 and 1993, one of the primary concerns in designingland institutions was to respond to the high expectations of a deeply rural society without makingland an autonomous domain. This period saw the progressive dissolution of the cooperativesthrough the withdrawal of their land prerogatives. Moving in incremental stages, the State firstrecognised individuals and households as potential land users (with Decree 100, Decree 10 andthe Land Law of 1989), although land use rights were still limited and defined within cooperativesthrough temporary contracts between the cooperatives, which still held delegated managementrights, and these new users. This stage ended with the Land Law of 1993 which, while not openlychallenging the cooperatives, paved the way for their disappearance by recognising thatindividuals and households had fundamental derived management rights in addition to the right touse agricultural lands (rights to exchange, assign, rent, bequeath and mortgage land) for relativelylong fixed periods. This gave them significant control over land while dispossessing thecooperatives of any real land management capacities. Since these rights are associated with userights, it was not the land that could be transferred or mortgaged, but the right to use it and enjoyits produce. However, the very existence of these rights and their fairly long-term allocation tohouseholds meant that a land market could develop, and that land tenure seemed to function onthe basis of private ownership, even if it was not characterised as such.The second stage was a transition facilitating the 'smooth' passage from a land tenure systemdesigned to meet the needs of the rural population to one that could support the drive to makeVietnam a modern industrial and urban country. This stage roughly corresponded to the decadeseparating the land laws of 1993 and 2003. In this period, the State did little to the rights assignedto individuals and households and hardly changed agricultural land tenure. It did, however,endeavour to put in place the land administration, for which it created an independent organ at theministerial level in 1994, the General Department of Land Administration (GDLA). For the firsttime, this brought together its decision-making, operational and technical dimensions (the formerGeneral department of land management created in 1979, and the former National department ofsurveys and cartography), demonstrating the government's willingness to make this anautonomous domain that carried some weight. The State also progressively regulated modes ofaccess to urban, industrial and commercial lands and increased the rights assigned to privateenterprise, thus paving the way for the changes in the next period (albeit rather haphazardly bygenerating a growing number of texts).The third stage started with a reform of the land administration in 2002 and the publication of anew Land Law in 2003. Land was now becoming a tool to develop the territory forindustrialisation and urbanisation. This was made clear by the law of 2003, which incorporatedregulations from the previous period and barely touched on rural affairs. Little was done tomodify access to agricultural and forest lands, which had been regulated in 1993, or provide moreflexible access for rural households. But the other categories of land and land users – some ofwhom appeared in legislation for the first time – occupied a growing and even dominant place inthe law. Thus, the new legislation was full of arrangements to facilitate industrial and commercialinvestments by private and foreign enterprises, and allowed for the development of markets forland and land use rights. It also specified procedures for cataloguing and planning land use. Whileland use planning remained a top-down procedure steered by the Land Office at different levels,the legislation made the planning process much more flexible by extending the provinces'prerogatives and enabling the infra-provincial administrative authorities to change the status oflands.Since 2002, land issues have both multiplied and intensified on several levels. The partial andpoorly managed decentralisation of land management increased the shortcomings and tensionsbetween the central and provincial levels. On the one hand, the Land Office, which had beensubstantially modernised and was responsible for planning at every level, had never had as muchpotential power. This certainly rattled the central government and probably prompted its demotionin 2002 from a ministry to part of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE).On the other hand, the provinces have used even greater rifts within the administrative system tolessen the constraints of centralised planning and work very broadly with the legislation in orderto respond to local expectations, and especially those of private interests. The increasingprivatisation of land has been another point of tension. Since the Constitution of 1959, the Statehas owned all land in the name of the entire population, and while individual land rights haveconstantly been extended, individuals are assigned rights of use and management. However, thegrowing number of recognised users, more flexible conditions of access to land and theprogressive extension of rights associated with use rights have allowed private national andforeign enterprises to become dominant land actors – hence the spectacular growth in the numberand size of landholdings reserved for industrial, commercial, real-estate and leisure projects,especially in peri-urban areas.The creation of 'land fund development organisations' in 2004 is symptomatic of the problemsposed by redefing the role of the provinces and private investors. Modes of expropriation are arecurrent problem with investments, and especially compensation for those whose use rights havebeen expropriated. This issue was only settled recently, and has been treated on a case-by-casebasis by the provinces or the Land Office. The Law of 2003 still presents the State as the principalactor in land distribution insofar as it is the authority that requisitions land in order to immediatelyreallocate it to investors. However, the State has disengaged from transactions since 2004,creating a new, State-mandated body to intervene when lands are repossessed: 'land funddevelopment organisations' whose task is to simplify procedures for investors by offering them asingle interface, managing the funds from land recovered by the State in accordance withdecisions by the competent bodies, and preparing these lands for reallocation to investors.However, the exact status of these organisations, which are not commercial but also not totallypublic, is somewhat unclear. They are not financially autonomous, they are not mandatory, andtheir form and level of competence fluctuates as they can operate at the district or the provinciallevel. This lack of clarity, which results in the creation of bodies whose nature varies fromprovince to province, suggests that the State is trying to divest itself of the highly sensitiveproblem of expropriations at the expense of their beneficiaries, rather than seeking to resolve it inthe long term.What is the explanation for this disengagement, given that the problems created by the way thatland is expropriated for investment projects are some of the thorniest and most intractable for theauthorities in Hanoi? One reason is probably the increasing complexity of land management, andthe human and financial resources that can be devolved to the administration to carry out the tasksit habeen assigned. These are very substantial needs, especially at the lowest echelons(communes, districts) where staff usually have little or no training. But the State's disengagementcannot be entirely ascribed to these technical and financial challenges; it is also a manifestation ofthe difficulties of addressing two very different priorities: leading Vietnam towards modernity bytransforming it into an industrial and urban country, and organising a fragile and numericallysuperior rural population with a long habit of socialist values. One of the factors currentlyexecerbating the question of expropriation is the fact that agricultural and forested lands havebeen kept in a relatively isolated state of suspension for the last 15 years. One would assume thatthe State has a duty to protect these lands (and their users), but it is actually making them morevulnerable to the dynamics of urban and/or non-agricultural land use (industrial and commercial,leisure, etc.).Agricultural land has been subject to various changes since 1993, but access to such land is stillhighly regulated. Maintaining a ceiling on the amount of land and duration of the rights allocatedlimits the process of land accumulation and ensures that the rural population has egalitarian accessto land. By the same token, households that have been allocated rights to agricultural land by theState do not have to pay tax on this land, whose value is set according to the value of itsagricultural produce rather than the price of adjacent lands (market price). Although this shouldmean that such land remains accessible even to poor rural households, this specific status, andespecially that of highly protected rice-producing land, works against rural households bytrapping them in small, low-value farms and weakening their position when private and/or nonagriculturalinterests come into play. It seems that rather than being protected, agriculturalhouseholds – along with agriculture itself – are being sacrificed to industrialisation andurbanisation.However, things are not as simple as the last few lines suggest. On the one hand, ruralhouseholds' situations vary greatly from region to region, and there are cases where they may beprotected by modes of access to agricultural and forested land, especially the most vulnerablehouseholds. Recent events, and the global food crisis in particular, have reminded Vietnam thatthere is still a role for agriculture and rural producers, and once again put the question of ruralland under the spotlight. In response to this crisis (and soaring rice prices), the governmentdecided to freeze more than one million hectares of rice fields and launch a campaign reaffirmingthe value of rural areas in relation to urban areas (the 'three nong'). It is too early to know whetherthe return to 'rural values' in 2008 will have a lasting impact on agricultural land, and exactlywhat this impact will be. But the decisions that have been taken show that agricultural land stillconstitutes a lever that the government will not hesitate to use when the need arises. For certainnational officials, agricultural land remains a strong symbol of socialism, and its regulation acrucial element of social peace in what is still a largely rural society with close attachments to theland. Agricultural land is also an issue that raises questions about the State's role in the movetowards 'market socialism', and the legitimacy of the Communist Party. While the State'sindecision (or approximations) with regard to land matters could be interpreted as evidence of acertain pragmatism and determination to work with the legacy of the socialist period, recentdevelopments in this domain are testing the very foundations of the Communist Party'slegitimacy, and it could try to deflect this threat by getting the government to maintain the specificstatus of rural land. So is Vietnam heading towards a two-tier system where some land – the vastblock of agricultural and forest lands allocated free of charge – continues to be managed bycentral government in the nation's interest, while other agricultural land can be mobilised atleisure and managed under a liberal regime in order to support the country's economicdevelopment?In order to answer this question we needed to turn to the land actors and seek their opinions. Themajority of foreign actors (who were historically excluded from this sensitive strategic domainand whose involvement is therefore relatively recent) view the reform as incomplete and thus amajor cause of corruption. They are pushing to divest the law of these 'socialist archaisms' andmake it even more liberal. As recently as March 2008 the World Bank, which some see as theglobal symbol of liberalism, and which had until then deliberately avoided land matters, signed upto the highly ambitious Land Administration Project, making it the lead foreign actor in thisdomain and giving a strong indication of the direction in which land affairs are heading. However,the positions expressed by various national land actors are much less clear. On the one hand,officials in the land administration in particular take a fairly technical approach to land: their mainconcern is the effectiveness of the administration and legislation, and making land an autonomousdomain. Officials working directly with foreign experts tend to take a 'top-down' approach,looking at the development of the whole country and seeing the constraints associated with theprocesses of urbanisation, industrialisation and increasing openness. On the other hand, some ofthe actors we spoke to from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) see landas something that cannot be detached from local and sectoral contexts. Therefore, they believethat agricultural land should respond to the needs of agriculture and rural populations, while forestland should primarily respond to environmental protection objectives. At the moment the firstgroup of actors is much more influential because of their strategic position within the landadministration and support from international cooperation; however, in the current economicclimate the question of agriculture and rural areas and populations has re-emerged as a priorityand is slowing the pace of liberalisation.So far there is no indication that agricultural land will be able to take account of the specificitiesand great diversity of rural areas, whether or not it is prioritised, planned or liberalised.Agricultural land tenure is controlled by the State, and characterised more by the numerousconstraints that it imposes (categories, temporal and spatial limits, etc.) than its capacity to adaptto the problems facing the country's rural populations, agricultural practices and environment.Liberalising agricultural land tenure would bring it closer to a system of individual ownership,which would make land legislation more onerous in many settings where local rights of access toresources are not managed in this way. The Land Law of 2003 introduced several innovations thatare helpful in this respect, mainly by creating a new category of users, 'residential communities',which allows groups to collectively hold use rights to unlimited amounts of agricultural and forestland that they are allocated free of charge for unlimited periods. However, this new measure isitself very restrictive in terms of what constitutes a 'community', the procedures it entails and theframework it imposes on collective management. So what place do customary land tenure systemshave in the emerging land system? Vietnamese land institutions seem to have made little or noattempt to plan for this; and the main reason why there are still such diverse local situationsappears to be the government's hesitant approach to agricultural land tenure. The co-existence ofactors with divergent positions on this question and on the role of the State, and the relativeabandonment of the rural world (especially remote rural areas) because it is not consideredimportant as long it doesn't challenge the objectives of urbanisation and industrialisation have lefta gap where customary systems can continue to function. The recent resurgence of interest in thisdomain could revive the debate about systems that are considered incompatible with theestablishment of a modern State, either because of agricultural practices such as slash-and-burn orthe functioning of longstanding local power systems, but customary systems will continue tosurvive as long as efforts to develop intensive, industrial-type agriculture are not sustainedeffectively across the country.

One of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese land system is the existence of a 'zero state' withregard to land institutions: all the country's existing land institutions were put in place in the last25 to 30 years. However, this does not mean that there is no history of such bodies; indeed, thosethat are now emerging carry the traces of each past period. The many local customary institutionsreflect the principles underpinning previous systems regulating the social and spatial distributionof resources, and elements of the French land tenure system can be seen in the decision to registerland ownership certificates rather than follow the more Anglo Saxon system of using the titlesthemselves as proof of ownership. Nevertheless, there is a clear synchronic dimension to theprocess of putting land institutions in place, which is reflected in the role it has played in theprofound transformation of the Vietnamese State and society.In the first stage of this process, between 1979 and 1993, one of the primary concerns in designingland institutions was to respond to the high expectations of a deeply rural society without makingland an autonomous domain. This period saw the progressive dissolution of the cooperativesthrough the withdrawal of their land prerogatives. Moving in incremental stages, the State firstrecognised individuals and households as potential land users (with Decree 100, Decree 10 andthe Land Law of 1989), although land use rights were still limited and defined within cooperativesthrough temporary contracts between the cooperatives, which still held delegated managementrights, and these new users. This stage ended with the Land Law of 1993 which, while not openlychallenging the cooperatives, paved the way for their disappearance by recognising thatindividuals and households had fundamental derived management rights in addition to the right touse agricultural lands (rights to exchange, assign, rent, bequeath and mortgage land) for relativelylong fixed periods. This gave them significant control over land while dispossessing thecooperatives of any real land management capacities. Since these rights are associated with userights, it was not the land that could be transferred or mortgaged, but the right to use it and enjoyits produce. However, the very existence of these rights and their fairly long-term allocation tohouseholds meant that a land market could develop, and that land tenure seemed to function onthe basis of private ownership, even if it was not characterised as such.The second stage was a transition facilitating the 'smooth' passage from a land tenure systemdesigned to meet the needs of the rural population to one that could support the drive to makeVietnam a modern industrial and urban country. This stage roughly corresponded to the decadeseparating the land laws of 1993 and 2003. In this period, the State did little to the rights assignedto individuals and households and hardly changed agricultural land tenure. It did, however,endeavour to put in place the land administration, for which it created an independent organ at theministerial level in 1994, the General Department of Land Administration (GDLA). For the firsttime, this brought together its decision-making, operational and technical dimensions (the formerGeneral department of land management created in 1979, and the former National department ofsurveys and cartography), demonstrating the government's willingness to make this anautonomous domain that carried some weight. The State also progressively regulated modes ofaccess to urban, industrial and commercial lands and increased the rights assigned to privateenterprise, thus paving the way for the changes in the next period (albeit rather haphazardly bygenerating a growing number of texts).The third stage started with a reform of the land administration in 2002 and the publication of anew Land Law in 2003. Land was now becoming a tool to develop the territory forindustrialisation and urbanisation. This was made clear by the law of 2003, which incorporatedregulations from the previous period and barely touched on rural affairs. Little was done tomodify access to agricultural and forest lands, which had been regulated in 1993, or provide moreflexible access for rural households. But the other categories of land and land users – some ofwhom appeared in legislation for the first time – occupied a growing and even dominant place inthe law. Thus, the new legislation was full of arrangements to facilitate industrial and commercialinvestments by private and foreign enterprises, and allowed for the development of markets forland and land use rights. It also specified procedures for cataloguing and planning land use. Whileland use planning remained a top-down procedure steered by the Land Office at different levels,the legislation made the planning process much more flexible by extending the provinces'prerogatives and enabling the infra-provincial administrative authorities to change the status oflands.Since 2002, land issues have both multiplied and intensified on several levels. The partial andpoorly managed decentralisation of land management increased the shortcomings and tensionsbetween the central and provincial levels. On the one hand, the Land Office, which had beensubstantially modernised and was responsible for planning at every level, had never had as muchpotential power. This certainly rattled the central government and probably prompted its demotionin 2002 from a ministry to part of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE).On the other hand, the provinces have used even greater rifts within the administrative system tolessen the constraints of centralised planning and work very broadly with the legislation in orderto respond to local expectations, and especially those of private interests. The increasingprivatisation of land has been another point of tension. Since the Constitution of 1959, the Statehas owned all land in the name of the entire population, and while individual land rights haveconstantly been extended, individuals are assigned rights of use and management. However, thegrowing number of recognised users, more flexible conditions of access to land and theprogressive extension of rights associated with use rights have allowed private national andforeign enterprises to become dominant land actors – hence the spectacular growth in the numberand size of landholdings reserved for industrial, commercial, real-estate and leisure projects,especially in peri-urban areas.The creation of 'land fund development organisations' in 2004 is symptomatic of the problemsposed by redefing the role of the provinces and private investors. Modes of expropriation are arecurrent problem with investments, and especially compensation for those whose use rights havebeen expropriated. This issue was only settled recently, and has been treated on a case-by-casebasis by the provinces or the Land Office. The Law of 2003 still presents the State as the principalactor in land distribution insofar as it is the authority that requisitions land in order to immediatelyreallocate it to investors. However, the State has disengaged from transactions since 2004,creating a new, State-mandated body to intervene when lands are repossessed: 'land funddevelopment organisations' whose task is to simplify procedures for investors by offering them asingle interface, managing the funds from land recovered by the State in accordance withdecisions by the competent bodies, and preparing these lands for reallocation to investors.However, the exact status of these organisations, which are not commercial but also not totallypublic, is somewhat unclear. They are not financially autonomous, they are not mandatory, andtheir form and level of competence fluctuates as they can operate at the district or the provinciallevel. This lack of clarity, which results in the creation of bodies whose nature varies fromprovince to province, suggests that the State is trying to divest itself of the highly sensitiveproblem of expropriations at the expense of their beneficiaries, rather than seeking to resolve it inthe long term.What is the explanation for this disengagement, given that the problems created by the way thatland is expropriated for investment projects are some of the thorniest and most intractable for theauthorities in Hanoi? One reason is probably the increasing complexity of land management, andthe human and financial resources that can be devolved to the administration to carry out the tasksit habeen assigned. These are very substantial needs, especially at the lowest echelons(communes, districts) where staff usually have little or no training. But the State's disengagementcannot be entirely ascribed to these technical and financial challenges; it is also a manifestation ofthe difficulties of addressing two very different priorities: leading Vietnam towards modernity bytransforming it into an industrial and urban country, and organising a fragile and numericallysuperior rural population with a long habit of socialist values. One of the factors currentlyexecerbating the question of expropriation is the fact that agricultural and forested lands havebeen kept in a relatively isolated state of suspension for the last 15 years. One would assume thatthe State has a duty to protect these lands (and their users), but it is actually making them morevulnerable to the dynamics of urban and/or non-agricultural land use (industrial and commercial,leisure, etc.).Agricultural land has been subject to various changes since 1993, but access to such land is stillhighly regulated. Maintaining a ceiling on the amount of land and duration of the rights allocatedlimits the process of land accumulation and ensures that the rural population has egalitarian accessto land. By the same token, households that have been allocated rights to agricultural land by theState do not have to pay tax on this land, whose value is set according to the value of itsagricultural produce rather than the price of adjacent lands (market price). Although this shouldmean that such land remains accessible even to poor rural households, this specific status, andespecially that of highly protected rice-producing land, works against rural households bytrapping them in small, low-value farms and weakening their position when private and/or nonagriculturalinterests come into play. It seems that rather than being protected, agriculturalhouseholds – along with agriculture itself – are being sacrificed to industrialisation andurbanisation.However, things are not as simple as the last few lines suggest. On the one hand, ruralhouseholds' situations vary greatly from region to region, and there are cases where they may beprotected by modes of access to agricultural and forested land, especially the most vulnerablehouseholds. Recent events, and the global food crisis in particular, have reminded Vietnam thatthere is still a role for agriculture and rural producers, and once again put the question of ruralland under the spotlight. In response to this crisis (and soaring rice prices), the governmentdecided to freeze more than one million hectares of rice fields and launch a campaign reaffirmingthe value of rural areas in relation to urban areas (the 'three nong'). It is too early to know whetherthe return to 'rural values' in 2008 will have a lasting impact on agricultural land, and exactlywhat this impact will be. But the decisions that have been taken show that agricultural land stillconstitutes a lever that the government will not hesitate to use when the need arises. For certainnational officials, agricultural land remains a strong symbol of socialism, and its regulation acrucial element of social peace in what is still a largely rural society with close attachments to theland. Agricultural land is also an issue that raises questions about the State's role in the movetowards 'market socialism', and the legitimacy of the Communist Party. While the State'sindecision (or approximations) with regard to land matters could be interpreted as evidence of acertain pragmatism and determination to work with the legacy of the socialist period, recentdevelopments in this domain are testing the very foundations of the Communist Party'slegitimacy, and it could try to deflect this threat by getting the government to maintain the specificstatus of rural land. So is Vietnam heading towards a two-tier system where some land – the vastblock of agricultural and forest lands allocated free of charge – continues to be managed bycentral government in the nation's interest, while other agricultural land can be mobilised atleisure and managed under a liberal regime in order to support the country's economicdevelopment?In order to answer this question we needed to turn to the land actors and seek their opinions. Themajority of foreign actors (who were historically excluded from this sensitive strategic domainand whose involvement is therefore relatively recent) view the reform as incomplete and thus amajor cause of corruption. They are pushing to divest the law of these 'socialist archaisms' andmake it even more liberal. As recently as March 2008 the World Bank, which some see as theglobal symbol of liberalism, and which had until then deliberately avoided land matters, signed upto the highly ambitious Land Administration Project, making it the lead foreign actor in thisdomain and giving a strong indication of the direction in which land affairs are heading. However,the positions expressed by various national land actors are much less clear. On the one hand,officials in the land administration in particular take a fairly technical approach to land: their mainconcern is the effectiveness of the administration and legislation, and making land an autonomousdomain. Officials working directly with foreign experts tend to take a 'top-down' approach,looking at the development of the whole country and seeing the constraints associated with theprocesses of urbanisation, industrialisation and increasing openness. On the other hand, some ofthe actors we spoke to from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) see landas something that cannot be detached from local and sectoral contexts. Therefore, they believethat agricultural land should respond to the needs of agriculture and rural populations, while forestland should primarily respond to environmental protection objectives. At the moment the firstgroup of actors is much more influential because of their strategic position within the landadministration and support from international cooperation; however, in the current economicclimate the question of agriculture and rural areas and populations has re-emerged as a priorityand is slowing the pace of liberalisation.So far there is no indication that agricultural land will be able to take account of the specificitiesand great diversity of rural areas, whether or not it is prioritised, planned or liberalised.Agricultural land tenure is controlled by the State, and characterised more by the numerousconstraints that it imposes (categories, temporal and spatial limits, etc.) than its capacity to adaptto the problems facing the country's rural populations, agricultural practices and environment.Liberalising agricultural land tenure would bring it closer to a system of individual ownership,which would make land legislation more onerous in many settings where local rights of access toresources are not managed in this way. The Land Law of 2003 introduced several innovations thatare helpful in this respect, mainly by creating a new category of users, 'residential communities',which allows groups to collectively hold use rights to unlimited amounts of agricultural and forestland that they are allocated free of charge for unlimited periods. However, this new measure isitself very restrictive in terms of what constitutes a 'community', the procedures it entails and theframework it imposes on collective management. So what place do customary land tenure systemshave in the emerging land system? Vietnamese land institutions seem to have made little or noattempt to plan for this; and the main reason why there are still such diverse local situationsappears to be the government's hesitant approach to agricultural land tenure. The co-existence ofactors with divergent positions on this question and on the role of the State, and the relativeabandonment of the rural world (especially remote rural areas) because it is not consideredimportant as long it doesn't challenge the objectives of urbanisation and industrialisation have lefta gap where customary systems can continue to function. The recent resurgence of interest in thisdomain could revive the debate about systems that are considered incompatible with theestablishment of a modern State, either because of agricultural practices such as slash-and-burn orthe functioning of longstanding local power systems, but customary systems will continue tosurvive as long as efforts to develop intensive, industrial-type agriculture are not sustainedeffectively across the country.