This report analyses prominent features of policy directions and development models as evidenced by five Vietnam’s Constitutions (1946, 1959, 1980, 1992, 2013) with a focus on the current one (the 2013 Constitution), thus providing recommendations to programs of Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS) in Vietnam during the period of 2015-2020.

The report begins by describing briefly Vietnam’s national history and its constitution-making history (Section II) as a background for changes of policy directions and development models through Vietnam’s Constitutions in more than sixty years. In the next section (III), the report in turn analyzes core contents of the previous Constitutions of Vietnam (1946, 1959, 1980, 1992), providing a general explanation of the causes and pointing out dynamics of the changes in the political line and state policies in each Constitution. Section IV of the report is dedicated to describe and comment on the rationale, process, and outcome of the amendments of the 1992 Constitution, the most important political and legal event of Vietnam during the past two years. In Section IV, the most important changes in the 2013 Constitution will be described and assessed in details, laying the basis for comments on the prospects for change and challenges for implementing the Constitution in Section V.