The Institution of Members of Parliament in the United States, Germany, and China: Some Implications for Legal Provisions on Members of the National Assembly of Vietnam

The article approaches the institution of members of parliament from the perspective of political representation theory and institutional design. On that basis, it conducts a comparative analysis of core features of members of parliament in the United States, Germany, and China to draw implications for improving Vietnam’s legal framework on members of the National Assembly. The article conceptualises members of parliament as actors who exercise political representation, shaped by institutional “variables”, including: the degree of constraint in the mandate, the scope and object of representation, the level of professionalisation, and mechanisms of accountability and control. It then examines the institution of members of Vietnam’s National Assembly within the framework of the 2013 Constitution and relevant statutes, highlighting Vietnam’s combined model of full-time and part-time members. Building on a comparison of the three representative models along the axes of legal status and representative model; electoral mechanisms and delegation structure; working conditions and accountability, the article proposes four sets of implications for Vietnam: strengthening the all-people (nationwide) representative status of members; recalibrating the full-time/part-time member model; refining transparency mechanisms and conflict-of-interest control; and enhancing support infrastructure for representative activities in the process of building a socialist rule-of-law state.