Politics

Neoliberal economics have emerged in the post-Cold War era as the predominant ideological tenet applied to the development of countries in the global south. For much of the global south, however, the promise that markets will bring increased standards of living and emancipation from tyranny has been an empty one. Instead, neoliberalisation has increased the gap between rich and poor and unleashed a firestorm of social ills.

Memories of violence, suffering and atrocities in Cambodia are today being pulled in different directions. A range of transitional justice practices have been put to work in the name of redressing, restoring and renewing memory. At the centre of this stage is the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid tribunal established to prosecute the leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, under which 1.6 million Cambodians died of hunger or disease or were executed.

Describes and analyses the propaganda and violence of the four Cambodian parties to the 1991 Paris peace agreements. This volume explores Cambodia during the UNTAC period and sets the events within the larger context of Khmer politics, history and culture.

This book seeks to explain why international donors may succeed in putting war-torn countries on the path of democratic transition and negative peace, but fail to consolidate the gains they make.

Diplomatic relations between Cambodia and Britain at the height of the Cold War provide unique insights into the overall foreign policies of both nations. King Norodom Sihanouk's strategy of preserving the independence and integrity of Cambodia through a policy of neutrality grew ever more challenging as the Cold War heated up in Indochina and conflict in Vietnam became a proxy war between the superpowers.

Watching Cambodia opens with a visit to the Khmer Rouge zone in 1972, the only one by a western observer before Pol Pot's victory in 1975. But legwork in the rice fields was not enough. Understanding Cambodia is not an easy matter. It requires sifting through mountains of documents, from Angkorian stone inscriptions to Khmer Rouge radio transcripts, as well as reading and evaluating piles of books written by scholars, travelers, journalists, and technicians.

International development efforts have increasingly focussed on governance and institutional reform as a means to address poverty and accountability, in particular decentralisation reform wherein public officials are held accountable for their decisions and responses to the voices and demands of the people through local elections, and key public services are provided locally.

While international criminal courts have often been declared as bringing ‘justice’ to victims, their procedures and outcomes historically showed little reflection of the needs and interests of victims themselves. This situation has changed significantly over the last sixty years; victims are increasingly acknowledged as having various ‘rights’, while their need for justice has been deployed as a means of justifying the establishment of international criminal courts. However, it is arguable that the goals of political and legal elites continue to be given precedence, and the ability of courts to deliver ‘justice to victims’ remains contested.

No details are available about this book yet.

Cambodia underwent a triple transition in the 1990s: from war to peace, from communism to electoral democracy, and from command economy to free market. This book addresses the political economy of these transitions, examining how the much publicised international intervention to bring peace and democracy to Cambodia was subverted by the poverty of the Cambodian economy and by the state's manipulation of the move to the free market.