This paper explores land policy for socioeconomic development in Vietnam. The research is based on field work, discussions with officials and scholars and background research, and highlights topics critical to the formulation and implementation of land policy. These topics – land as an asset, complementary public investments that raise the efficiency of land use, land conversion, food security, land consolidation, land and property taxation, and environmental sustainability – have been examined within a law and economics framework.

This paper compares the Hoa Binh (constructed 1979-1994) and Son La dams (under construction since 2005) to investigate how Vietnam’s resettlement policies and programmes have evolved over time. The comparison between a dam built in 1970s-80s and one now under construction shows that improvements in policy may bring only limited improvements in Vietnam’s dam development planning and practices.

This book, essentially an “anarchist history,” is the first-ever examination of the huge literature on state-making whose author evaluates why people would deliberately and reactively remain stateless. Among the strategies employed by the people of Zomia to remain stateless are physical dispersion in rugged terrain; agricultural practices that enhance mobility; pliable ethnic identities; devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders; and maintenance of a largely oral culture that allows them to reinvent their histories and genealogies as they move between and around states.