The Forging and Unravelling of a Socialist Political Settlement

This chapter sets out the comparative evolution of the political settlement in Tanzania and Vietnam from the colonial period to the period of socialism and its ultimate demise. A description of the dominant political institutions and the evolution of the underlying distribution of power is traced through an historical exploration of the evolving structure of production and the important political struggles between contending groups in society. This chapter examines their comparative socialist experiences from the perspectives of the routes to power of the ruling parties, their success in consolidating power within the party, the creation of socialist economic institutions, and the attempts to redistribute economic power away from capitalists towards collective economic institutions. The crises of the 1970s and 1980s drove a significant change within the prevailing political settlement in both countries, that opened up the space for clientelism and informal processes of accumulation working within state institutions.