Developing Fiduciary Culture in Vietnam

This Article examines Vietnam’s efforts during the past two and a half decades to build up its legal infrastructure during its transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. In particular, this Article will focus on the development of legal and regulatory infrastructure to support the development of the corporate sector and fiduciary culture in Vietnam. In thinking about corporate law, I do not intend to single out this particular area of law as somehow special in the context of transition. In fact, its commonness and generality are what makes the experience of the development of corporate law and corporate culture so useful in thinking about the rule of law, law and development, and the role of culture in the development of legal systems.

This Article is written with some degree of humility; the source of this humility is a recognition that the legal and regulatory infrastructure at the center of the new rule of law movement is not an unbending prerequisite for successful development of the corporate sector, and that development of fiduciary culture requires more than law in books.