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Is the Decentralisation of Water Management for Agriculture in Vietnam’s Red River Delta a Break a Break from Tradition? Decisions taken in the 1980s to establish decentralised local pumping stations in the Red River Delta continue to influence the transformation of its water management system to this day. These technical changes resulted in the fragmentary decision making, financing and regulation of water management in the delta region as a whole. The current intensification of agriculture in the Red River Delta has benefited from these changes, although further decentralisation is limited by the size and the hierarchical organisation of large scale water management works and by the State’s desire to maintain its power over the population through the control of water resources. Today, cooperatives and hydraulics companies are competing for financial resources, which creates differences amongst farmers depending on the availability and price of water. The State appears to sway on a fine political line, facing contradictory pressure from international investors and from internal rivalries within the Vietnamese Communist Party, which rules the country. The example of the Red River Delta demonstrates that water management is typified by the fluctuation of its institutions, which are under constant alteration, as is the society they stem from.