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“Looking back at history, any wise people—who know how to rely on their own strength and independence, and who strive to secure their common interests—will steadily move toward a path of prosperity. But foolish people, who sit still and rely on heaven, who wait and depend on officials, who hand over all their rights to a single person or a government to do as it pleases while they themselves take no action and conduct no oversight, will suffer misery in every way.” [1]

When Phan Châu Trinh issued this warning in 1925, he could not have known how accurately it would describe his country a century later. Today, the people of Việt Nam continue to adapt to an authoritarian regime. Citizens dismiss news of arrested officials and corrupt businesspeople as “just another day in the district,” actively choosing silence and shielding the state from criticism.

This pervasive self-censorship dictates every facet of life. Social science teachers regurgitate the “revolutionary spirit” from approved textbooks, university lecturers neuter their own research, and parents instruct their children to “stay out of politics.” With state-run media heavily censored, citizens must bypass digital firewalls to find independent journalism.

On the streets, people ignore bureaucratic harassment and readily pay “lubrication money” to the police for basic conveniences. Indifference and resignation have effectively been weaponized into survival instincts.

Reversing this societal stagnation demands a comprehensive vision for a progressive Việt Nam. This entails cultivating a truly free press that treats citizens as respected individuals deserving of diverse information.

It requires a liberal educational system that encourages debate and explores history from multiple perspectives, allowing future generations to reconcile the hatreds of the past. It also demands that Vietnamese people everywhere—regardless of their allegiances during the tragic war—collaborate to build a democratic nation.

This vision necessitates a system where citizens select their leaders through fair, competitive elections and where public administration is driven by a genuine desire to serve. In such a society, devoted idealists like Phạm Đoan Trang and Trần Huỳnh Duy Thức would not be imprisoned, but rather given a platform to freely contribute to the nation. Furthermore, political commentators and advocates would be free to write openly under their real names.

While these aspirations provide a roadmap for change, they only materialize when society finds the courage to confront its current reality. No nation secures its freedom through silence. Democracy in South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, South Africa, and Chile was not born from cautious living.

Despite government fearmongering about “color revolutions” and “peaceful evolution,” history demonstrates that democratization brings progress when executed with careful preparation and a sincere mandate for reform.

If the populace continues to “sit still and rely on heaven,” Phan Châu Trinh’s grim prophecy will curse future generations. True social transformation requires a collective awakening to demand fundamental rights : freedom of thought, freedom of expression, the right to vote, and the right to form political organizations. [2]

Should Việt Nam embark on democratic reforms, the critical question is not just “when,” but “how.” As a latecomer to democracy, Việt Nam has the distinct advantage of studying the triumphs and failures of other nations to forge a political framework tailored to its reality.

A substantive democracy must accomplish two primary objectives: fostering healthy political competition without fracturing into extreme partisanship and safeguarding the nascent system against coups or populist authoritarianism.

Identifying the optimal framework to secure these objectives requires a rigorous analysis of three distinct models: a presidential republic, a parliamentary republic, and a semi-presidential republic.

By evaluating the practical experiences of post-communist Eastern Europe, established global governance indicators, and the historical lessons of the Second Republic of Vietnam (1967–1975), a concrete regime model and a robust electoral system can be proposed for Việt Nam's democratic future.

Freedom House and Regime Models

More than 30 years after the Soviet Union's dissolution, the divergence between democratic and authoritarian post-Soviet regimes has become increasingly pronounced.

Photo: Map of countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Source: Afew.org .

To objectively evaluate the level of democracy across these states, analysts rely on reputable assessment models such as the Freedom House Freedom Rankings. This widely trusted tool evaluates countries based on two primary criteria:

Political rights (maximum 40 points), which assesses electoral freedom, political pluralism, and citizen participation

Civil liberties (maximum 60 points), which examines freedoms of expression, association, religion, property rights, and personal autonomy.

Based on their total scores, countries are classified into three distinct categories:

“Free” (fully democratic)

“Partly Free” (incomplete democracies or hybrid regimes)

“Not Free” (authoritarian or non-democratic regimes).

Data detailing regime types and scores for post-communist countries compared with Việt Nam is derived from the Freedom House 2025 report. [3]

Nation Political freedom Civil liberties Total score Rating Polity model Estonia 39 57 96 Free Congress Slovenia 39 57 96 Free Congress Czech Republic 37 58 95 Free Congress Latvia 37 52 89 Free Congress Lithuania 38 51 89 Free Semi-presidential Slovakia 36 53 89 Free Congress Poland 34 48 82 Free Semi-presidential Romania 34 48 82 Free Semi-presidential Croatia 34 48 82 Free Congress Bulgaria 32 45 77 Free Congress Montenegro 27 42 69 Partial freedom Semi-presidential Albania 28 40 68 Partial freedom Congress North Macedonia 28 39 67 Partial freedom Congress Hungary 24 41 65 Partial freedom Congress Moldova 25 35 60 Partial freedom Congress Kosovo 28 32 60 Partial freedom Congress Serbia 18 38 56 Partial freedom Congress Georgia 21 34 55 Partial freedom Congress Armenia 23 31 54 Partial freedom Congress Bosnia-Herzegovina 17 35 52 Partial freedom Congress Ukraine 23 28 51 Partial freedom Semi-presidential Kyrgyzstan 4 22 26 Not free President Kazakhstan 5 18 23 Not free Semi-presidential Russia 4 8 12 Not free Semi-presidential Uzbekistan 2 10 12 Not free Semi-presidential Belarus 1 6 7 Not free Semi-presidential Azerbaijan 0 7 7 Not free Semi-presidential Tajikistan 0 5 5 Not free President Turkmenistan 0 1 1 Not free President Vietnam 4 16 20 Not free Single party Democracy status in post-communist countries, 2025. Source: Freedom House, Global Freedom Scores 2025 .

When analyzing regime structures, roughly one-third of post-communist countries utilize a semi-presidential model, where executive power is shared between a president and a prime minister.

However, the application of this model is not uniform. Political scientist Robert Elgie categorizes semi-presidential systems into two distinct types based on the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches: [4] [5]

First, president-parliamentarism (the strong-president type) dictates that the prime minister and cabinet are accountable to both the president and parliament, granting the president unilateral authority to appoint and dismiss the prime minister.

Second, premier-presidentialism (the strong-parliament type) ensures the prime minister and cabinet are accountable solely to parliament, which retains the power to dismiss the government via a vote of no confidence. In this system, the president possesses limited powers, typically restricted to foreign policy.

Professor Elgie asserts that the strong-president model is inherently more susceptible to power conflicts between the executive and legislative branches, rendering democracy far more fragile. In practice, presidential-parliamentarism frequently allows authoritarian-leaning leaders to consolidate presidential power while obscuring accountability. During political crises, such presidents can easily deflect blame to the prime minister and carry out cabinet reshuffles to maintain control.

Free or Partly Free Countries

Historically, the most successful democratic transitions have materialized in Central Europe (Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) and the Baltic region (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia). Classified as “Free” by Freedom House, these nations boast high democracy and human development indices.

With the exception of Lithuania—which operates a semi-presidential system leaning toward parliamentarism—these countries function as parliamentary republics. Their success is rooted in strong pre-communist traditions of civil society and the rule of law, alongside historical ties to Western Europe. Currently, all are member states of the European Union, actively adopting EU standards to foster democratic growth. [6]

Within the subset of semi-presidential countries, those utilizing the strong-parliament model, such as Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, have achieved significant institutional progress. Since the 2000s, both Poland and Lithuania have systematically enhanced the authority of their prime ministers and parliaments, effectively aligning their governance structures closer to purely parliamentary models.

Conversely, among "Partly Free" countries, Ukraine serves as a highly complex case study of institutional fragility. Between 1991 and 1994, an ambiguous distribution of power within its semi-presidential framework generated a volatile “triumvirate” comprising the president, the prime minister, and the speaker of parliament. [7]

While democratic conditions temporarily improved following the 2004 Orange Revolution against electoral fraud, the country experienced severe democratic backsliding from 2010 to 2013. During President Viktor Yanukovych's tenure, freedom sharply declined amidst corruption, opposition repression, and targeted restrictions on the press, culminating in the 2014 Maidan Revolution that ultimately ousted him and catalyzed renewed democratic reforms.

Despite these revolutionary corrections, Ukraine’s semi-presidential system remains a structural obstacle to democratization due to its ambiguous division of executive powers. This structural flaw has fueled chronic conflicts between presidents and prime ministers.

Bitter confrontations—such as those between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, Yushchenko and Yanukovych, and later Poroshenko and Yatseniuk—laid bare deep national divisions over economic policy and the geopolitical friction between pro-Russia and pro-Western factions. [8] This prolonged era of institutional instability was further exacerbated when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.

Countries Where Democratization Failed

Democratization has consistently failed in post-Soviet countries that operate under strong-president semi-presidential systems, including Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Belarus, and Azerbaijan.

In Russia, constitutional efforts by Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s to fortify executive power inadvertently laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin to construct an authoritarian regime after 2000. What was nominally a semi-presidential system effectively devolved into “super-presidentialism.”

With absolute power concentrated in Putin’s hands, the prime minister, parliament, and judiciary were stripped of their capacity to provide systemic checks and balances. Consequently, opposition forces face severe repression; independent political movements are banned, and dissidents are routinely imprisoned, culminating in events such as the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Presidential election results in Russia, March 2024. According to Russia’s Central Election Commission, Vladimir Putin was re-elected with 87.3 percent of the vote. Source: Reuters.

Similarly, Belarus formally identifies as a semi-presidential system but functions as a “super-presidential” regime analogous to Russia. Since 1994, Alexander Lukashenko has maintained absolute concentration of power by tightly controlling the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. This has allowed him to dismantle institutional checks, restrict political freedoms, and systematically repress political opposition.

Belarus presidential election results in 2025: Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected with more than 86% of the vote, marking his seventh consecutive term since 1994. Photo: @BelarusEmb_IDN.

Furthermore, stable democratization remains entirely absent in post-Soviet countries utilizing purely presidential systems. Centralized presidential states, such as Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, are prototypical authoritarian regimes that rank among the lowest globally for democratic freedom.

Leaders such as Emomali Rahmon of Tajikistan and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow of Turkmenistan have ruled for decades with abysmal records regarding human rights and democratic norms. These regimes harshly suppress political opposition through imprisonment, forced exile, and disappearances. Due to its extreme authoritarian rule, pervasive personality cults, strict societal control, and international isolation, Turkmenistan is frequently characterized as the “North Korea of Central Asia.

Turkmenistan’s current president, Serdar Berdymukhamedov, won the 2022 election with 73 percent of the vote—a far more modest result than the overwhelming margins achieved by his father, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, who received 98 percent and 97 percent in two previous presidential elections. Photo: Alexander Vershinin/AP .

The Cradle of “Super Presidents”

An analysis of post-Soviet states naturally raises the question of whether the adoption of a specific regime model—parliamentary, presidential, or semi-presidential—is determined by a nation's historical circumstances prior to political transition. In their study Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation, Kitschelt and his coauthors argue that a direct correlation exists. [9]

The research identifies that countries such as Romania, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan share a historical legacy defined as “patrimonial communism.”

During the communist era, these states shared distinct socioeconomic and political traits:

Their economies were heavily agrarian, employing the majority of the workforce and leaving the urban middle class inherently weak.

Political power was deeply concentrated within individual leaders and entrenched patronage networks, supported by a bureaucracy that was highly corrupt and lacked professionalism.

The state maintained control through severe repression; civil society was virtually nonexistent, democratic forces were marginalized, and nationalism was heavily promoted.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, political reforms in these patrimonial communist states were predominantly orchestrated by factions of the former ruling elite. To preserve their dominance, these elites favored the creation of a strong presidency.

They designed constitutions that granted the executive sweeping powers to issue decrees, veto legislation, and unilaterally appoint or dismiss senior officials, as demonstrated by Kazakhstan under Nursultan Nazarbayev and Tajikistan under Emomali Rahmon.

Furthermore, they implemented majoritarian electoral systems with single-member districts, enabling large, well-organized successor parties of the communist regime to maintain their political monopoly.

Operating within this restrictive environment, democratic forces remained structurally weak. They were often relegated to forming small, fragmented parties centered around individual personalities. Occasionally, these fragmented opposition parties even supported constitutions that centralized presidential power, operating under the naive hope that their own leaders might eventually capture the presidency.

Despite this legacy, several nations formerly defined by “patrimonial communism” have successfully reformed their political institutions since the 2000s. Armenia in 2019 and Georgia in 2018 transitioned entirely to parliamentary systems, transferring executive power to the prime minister and parliament while reducing the presidency to a ceremonial role.

Similarly, Moldova shifted toward a parliamentary-leaning framework in 2000, though this dynamic was slightly altered in 2016 when direct popular elections for the presidency were reinstated.

Ukraine has also navigated complex institutional shifts. Following the 2014 Maidan Revolution, the nation adopted a premier-presidential model, significantly increasing legislative and prime ministerial authority.

However, since the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukraine’s political and civil liberty scores have temporarily declined , as the government has been forced to restrict certain rights under intense wartime conditions. [10]

Conversely, countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan have retained centralized presidential or strong semi-presidential systems.

Long-serving autocrats like Putin, Lukashenko, and Rahmon continue to concentrate power in their hands. Consequently, these highly personalized political systems rank among the lowest for democratic progression according to Freedom House.

The historical legacy of patrimonial communism directly incentivized the creation of centralized institutions designed to amplify presidential power and protect ruling elites. For many of these nations, this structural choice simply facilitated a transition from party-based authoritarianism to personalist authoritarianism, severely obstructing the path to sustainable democracy.

Exploring Global Political Systems with AI

The advent of artificial intelligence tools—such as ChatGPT, Grok, DeepSeek, and Gemini—provides readers with unprecedented accessibility to analyze the political systems of Việt Nam and other nations globally. We encourage readers to ask these AI platforms the following questions to foster critical thinking, improve analytical skills, and practice information verification:

Understanding Regime Instability: What constitutes a military coup? Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, have coups occurred more frequently in presidential, semi-presidential, or parliamentary republics, and in which global regions are they most concentrated?

Comparative Historical Frameworks: In the 1999 study Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation , Herbert Kitschelt and his coauthors classify post-communist states into three categories based on their communist-era socioeconomic and political structures: bureaucratic communism (e.g., the Czech Republic, East Germany), national-accommodative communism (e.g., Hungary, Slovenia, Poland), and patrimonial communism (e.g., Russia, Belarus, Romania, Tajikistan). Based on this framework, which of these three categories most accurately reflects present-day Việt Nam?

Designing Democratic Transitions: When transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy, do parliamentary or presidential models yield a higher success rate? Should Việt Nam undergo future democratization, which model would best promote democratic consolidation while mitigating the risk of authoritarian relapse?

The Authoritarian Thought Experiment: Assume the persona of an authoritarian leader attempting to consolidate power following a national political transition. Would you implement a parliamentary republic, a presidential republic, or a semi-presidential system? Furthermore, if selecting a semi-presidential framework, would you opt for president-parliamentarism (strong-president) or premier-presidentialism (strong-parliament), and what is the strategic rationale?

Mechanisms of Autocracy: Through what specific mechanisms have Vladimir Putin and the United Russia party manipulated the electoral framework to sustain political dominance for over two decades?

Freedom House continuously tracks the democratic trajectories of post-communist countries in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from 1989 to the present, categorizing their levels of freedom into three distinct groups.

Utilizing this classification data, readers can prompt AI with the following analytical tasks:

Case Study Analysis: Select a specific post-communist country and utilize Freedom House assessments to analyze the primary factors driving the increase or decrease in its freedom score over time.

Democratic Backsliding: Identify post-communist nations that previously achieved a “Free” designation from Freedom House but subsequently experienced a downgrade, and detail the specific institutional failures that caused this decline.

Việt Nam’s Trajectory: Where does Việt Nam currently rank within the Freedom House framework? Hypothetically, what would the visual trajectory of Việt Nam’s freedom level resemble over the past decade, and what specific institutional reforms are required to elevate its score?

Group of “Free” Countries:

Group of “Partly Free” Countries:

Group of “Not Free” Countries:

Figures: Levels of freedom in post-communist countries from 1989–2023. Freedom levels are divided into three categories: “Free” (2 points), “Partly Free” (1 point), and “Not Free” (0 points). Source: Freedom House (2024) and Our World in Data .

While previous analysis posited that parliamentary systems in post-communist Eastern Europe facilitate more stable and successful democratization than presidential models, notable exceptions exist. For instance, why has Hungary—a fundamentally parliamentary system—experienced severe democratic backsliding? Furthermore, how have Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz party successfully manipulated this political framework to consolidate power?

These contradictions raise several important questions regarding institutional design. Is the parliamentary model genuinely the most viable option for Việt Nam? Ultimately, what concrete lessons must be drawn from the Hungarian experience to prevent a similar authoritarian relapse?

Hoàng Dạ Lan wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on Nov. 11, 2025. Đàm Vĩnh Hằng translated it into English for The Vietnamese Magazine.

References: +

1. Phan Châu Trinh (1925). Quân trị chủ nghĩa và dân trị chủ nghĩa [Bài thuyết trình] (“Militarism and Civilian Governance [Presentation]”). http://triethoc.edu.vn/vi/chuyen-de-triet-hoc/tu-tuong-viet-nam/quan-tri-chu-nghia-va-dan-tri-chu-nghia_61.html

2. Tập hợp Dân chủ Đa Nguyên. (2015). Khai sáng kỷ nguyên thứ hai – Dự án chính trị dân chủ đa nguyên (“Enlightening the Second Era – A Pluralist Democratic Political Project”) . https://thongluan-rdp.org/images/khai-sang-ky-nguyen-thu-hai.pdf

3. Việc phân loại mô hình chính thể của một quốc gia mang tính tương đối và có thể gây tranh cãi. Chẳng hạn như tại Montenegro, tổng thống được bầu trực tiếp qua phổ thông đầu phiếu, đặc trưng của cộng hòa tổng thống/bán tổng thống. Tuy nhiên, tổng thống chủ yếu đảm nhận vai trò biểu tượng và nghi lễ, trong khi quyền lực hành pháp tập trung ở thủ tướng, người chịu trách nhiệm trước quốc hội. Do đó, Montenegro có thể được phân loại là cộng hòa đại nghị hoặc bán tổng thống. (“The classification of a country’s system of government is often relative and can be subject to debate. For example, in Montenegro, the president is elected by direct popular vote, a feature typically associated with presidential or semi-presidential systems. However, the president largely performs symbolic and ceremonial duties, while executive power is concentrated in the prime minister, who is accountable to parliament. As a result, Montenegro may be classified either as a parliamentary republic or as a semi-presidential system.”)

4. Elgie, R. (2011). Semi-presidentialism: Sub-types and democratic performance . Oxford University Press, USA.

5. Trong các biến thể của mô hình bán tổng thống, thiết chế có quyền lực lớn hơn – tổng thống (president) hoặc thủ tướng (premier) – sẽ được đặt ở vị trí đầu tiên trong tên gọi. (“In the various forms of the semi-presidential model, the institution holding greater power—either the president or the prime minister—is placed first in the system’s designation.”)

6. O’Neil, P. H., Fields, K., Share, D. (2021) Essentials of Comparative Politics with Cases (7 th Edition). W. W. Norton & Company.

7. Linz, J. J., & Stepan, A. (1996). Problems of democratic transition and consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and post-communist Europe . The Johns Hopkins University Press, page 399.

8. Averchuk, R. (2016, April 14). 5 reasons to believe that Ukraine needs a parliamentary system of government . Vox Ukraine. https://voxukraine.org/en/5-reasons-to-believe-that-ukraine-needs-a-parliamentary-system-of-government-en

9. Kitschelt, H., Mansfeldova, Z., Markowski, R., & Tóka, G. (1999). Post-communist party systems: Competition, representation, and inter-party cooperation . Cambridge University Press.