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This paper discusses possible conceptual foundations of formal models of endogenous change processes, understood here as movements between market and non-market transactions at the level of the national economy. It links but does not merge movements of resources with shifts in the pattern of transaction types. In focussing on transaction types, it deploys insights from Commons, Coase, and Godelier, to discuss how framing transaction types as the fundamental 'thing to be explained' points to the value of choices about how activity may best be organised, which requires a general concept, which can be found in Commons' 'going concern', applicable to transactions focussing on markets or not. It entails the possibility of institutional change and shifts in the location of economic resources without formal policy change. It suggests that the main requirement for such change processes are dualistic incentive patterns that operate upon institutional choice and/or development, which derive at root from experienced contrasts between the realities of existing and normatively privileged systems, and others, normatively initially deemed inferior, that offer key actors greater economic efficiency. Moves of institutional activity from one to the other are thus conceptually processes of endogenous systemic change. System in this sense is thus viewed as a coexistence of alternatives. The motivation comes directly from consideration of two very different historical moments: endogenously driven shifts 'from plan to market' in countries attempting central planning, and contemporary pressures in market economies from areas of the economy, such as services, where joint production and/or own consumption imply irremediable market failure and so non-market based economic institutions offer greater economic efficiency and may therefore attract both resources (factors of production) and investment in development of suitable transactions and their organisation.

This paper discusses possible conceptual foundations of formal models of endogenous change processes, understood here as movements between market and non-market transactions at the level of the national economy. It links but does not merge movements of resources with shifts in the pattern of transaction types. In focussing on transaction types, it deploys insights from Commons, Coase, and Godelier, to discuss how framing transaction types as the fundamental 'thing to be explained' points to the value of choices about how activity may best be organised, which requires a general concept, which can be found in Commons' 'going concern', applicable to transactions focussing on markets or not. It entails the possibility of institutional change and shifts in the location of economic resources without formal policy change. It suggests that the main requirement for such change processes are dualistic incentive patterns that operate upon institutional choice and/or development, which derive at root from experienced contrasts between the realities of existing and normatively privileged systems, and others, normatively initially deemed inferior, that offer key actors greater economic efficiency. Moves of institutional activity from one to the other are thus conceptually processes of endogenous systemic change. System in this sense is thus viewed as a coexistence of alternatives. The motivation comes directly from consideration of two very different historical moments: endogenously driven shifts 'from plan to market' in countries attempting central planning, and contemporary pressures in market economies from areas of the economy, such as services, where joint production and/or own consumption imply irremediable market failure and so non-market based economic institutions offer greater economic efficiency and may therefore attract both resources (factors of production) and investment in development of suitable transactions and their organisation.

In a contribution to the political analysis of contemporary Vietnam - a single-party state often wrongly assumed to be an author of reform and deploying considerable and varied powers - this paper seeks to provide an understanding of the Vietnamese term ‘authority’ (uy) and its relationship to power. Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan serves as a reference to the notion of authority in Vietnam and is compared to data: what the Vietnamese thought their word best translated as authority meant. The paper concludes that in the ‘two-way street’ of social contracts, the ruling Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) actually has little authority. This helps to explain the chronic problems the VCP has faced in securing state capacity and generalised ability to implement policy. It high-lights gaps between the current anachronistic use of Soviet-style power in Vietnam and what could be done if the regime deployed new powers based on authority. The authors conclude that, given the identified lack of authority, the VCP is no real Leviathan. Although more research is needed, this conclusion implies that proactive political tactics in Vietnam may move towards a search for acquiring authority in a ‘two-way street’ relationship within the Vietnamese political community. Enhanced state capacity and Party authority could follow.

The article presents results from a survey of Vietnamese Farmers’ Organisations. This covered both official and private bodies, and so permits comparison between various Party-sponsored cooperatives and other organisations. The sample covered provinces in the north, centre and south of the country, and generated a database with information from interviews with 1,800 households. This was complemented by extensive qualitative work, both through interviews and focus groups. Orthodox Leninist collectivisation occurred in north Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and, after Reunification in 1975-76, in the south. Successful in southcentral Vietnam in the late 1970s, cooperatives were never firmly established in the Mekong delta. After partial reforms in 1981, 1988 saw more far-reaching measures widely labelled ‘decollectivisation’. However, by the late 1990s many cooperatives remained. Passage of the Cooperative Law in 1996, which inter alia introduced ‘new– style’ cooperatives as a vehicle for Party-sponsored rural development as well as requiring all cooperatives to operate under it, was widely ignored. The research shows that regional differences remain considerable. In the south, farmers’ organisations reflect a neo-institutional economic logic, with forms reflecting varying issues, such as those to do with market failure in a technical sense. In the centre, whilst official forms are largely de rigueur they are managed with a high officially advocated degree of ‘managed democracy’. In the north, complex political manoeuvres use the shells of formal structures as a theatre for conflict and negotiation, within which economic issues play a certain part.