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.

Behind the Facade examines the question of why authoritarian regimes in Southeast Asia bother holding elections. Using comprehensive case studies of Cambodia, Myanmar, and Singapore, Lee Morgenbesser argues that elections allow authoritarian regimes to collect information, pursue legitimacy, manage political elites, and sustain neopatrimonial domination.

Cambodia’s long-time opposition leader and former finance minister Sam Rainsy is committed to establishing democracy in his homeland. He is in exile in France to avoid a twelve-year prison sentence on politically motivated charges and is banned from contesting the July 2013 elections.

No details are available about this book yet.

The widespread destruction of Cambodia’s forests in recent decades saw the loss of the last major area of pristine tropical forest in South-east Asia. The proceeds of often indiscriminate logging and sale of forest and plantation concessions have enriched the country’s ruling elite but cost its rural population dearly. It was, moreover, a process in which foreign aid donors were deeply involved, even if the outcome was contrary to their intentions.

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.

On October 23, 1991, four Cambodian factions and many external powers signed a UN Permanent Five-initiated peace agreement to end the Cambodian conflict. This book explains the UN role in turning the Cambodian battlefield into a ballot box.

This book contributes to the ongoing debate on the complex transition in weak states from war to peace and from authoritarianism to liberal democracy. The analysis assesses the impact of foreign intervention on Cambodia's state and societal structures.

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.