Development and Legitimacy

This chapter advances the argument that development, in general, can function as a source of regime legitimacy for the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party. Since 1986, the country has been at a crossroads between promoting a market economy and governance reforms advocated by the international community, on the one hand, and maintaining its communist ideology, on the other. However, this chapter argues that communist ideology and (capitalist) development are not always contradictory. In the first part, it investigates regime legitimacy in Laos since 1986. The party has relied on two pillars of legitimacy since then: ideology-based legitimation and development-based legitimation or legitimation by development. The party has legitimised itself through Marxist-Leninist and nationalist ideologies, but at the same time has also claimed its leadership role in national development as another source of legitimacy. The second part of the chapter investigates the notion of party-led development and how it works in practice. More specifically, it draws attention to the formation and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and Laos’s goal of graduating from Least Developed Country status. The last part of the chapter considers how the global Covid-19 pandemic plunged the party’s legitimacy into crisis and what the party has done in response.