Communicating a historic shift: Policy transparency and public sentiment on Vietnam's 2025 provincial merger and public sector downsizing

This study examines the relationship between policy communication transparency and public sentiment during Vietnam's historic 2025 administrative reform, which involved a large‐scale provincial merger and public sector downsizing. It investigates how the communicated transparency of employee downsizing policies influences public perceptions of procedural and distributive injustice versus support for the reform's efficiency goals. A quantitative content analysis was conducted on 2296 public comments from 96 articles published on the major online news platform VnExpress. The results reveal a significant paradoxical effect. While overall transparency regarding the reform was associated with increased public optimism, greater clarity on the specific ‘Process for Redundancy’ and ‘Compensation and Support’ backfired, leading to a significant increase in comments alleging procedural injustice and a marked decrease in support for the reform's efficiency rationale. The findings suggest that transparency acts as a magnifying glass: when a policy's substance is perceived as flawed, transparent communication can fuel public critique rather than build legitimacy.

Points for practitioners

Designing substantively fair and defensible downsizing procedures should be prioritised before being communicated, as transparency will magnify public criticism of any perceived flaws.