This paper reconceptualizes corruption as a lived experience embedded in everyday governance, using province-level evidence from Vietnam. Drawing on data from the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) and the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI), the study examines how informal payments manifest across administrative procedures, healthcare, education, and firm–state interactions. The descriptive analysis documents substantial cross-provincial variation in corruption, indicating that corruption is shaped by localized governance environments rather than being uniformly distributed. Sectoral patterns show that administrative procedures and public services constitute the primary arenas of everyday corruption. By integrating descriptive evidence with political philosophy, particularly theories of justice and capability, the paper interprets corruption as a territorially differentiated form of governance that conditions access to public authority. The findings suggest that corruption in Vietnam operates less as an isolated institutional failure and more as a routine feature of state–society interaction across provinces.
This paper reconceptualizes corruption as a lived experience embedded in everyday governance, using province-level evidence from Vietnam. Drawing on data from the Vietnam Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI) and the Provincial Competitiveness Index (PCI), the study examines how informal payments manifest across administrative procedures, healthcare, education, and firm–state interactions. The descriptive analysis documents substantial cross-provincial variation in corruption, indicating that corruption is shaped by localized governance environments rather than being uniformly distributed. Sectoral patterns show that administrative procedures and public services constitute the primary arenas of everyday corruption. By integrating descriptive evidence with political philosophy, particularly theories of justice and capability, the paper interprets corruption as a territorially differentiated form of governance that conditions access to public authority. The findings suggest that corruption in Vietnam operates less as an isolated institutional failure and more as a routine feature of state–society interaction across provinces.
