Politics

The political history of Cambodia between 1945 and 1979, which culminated in the devastating revolutionary excesses of the Pol Pot regime, is one of unrest and misery. This book by David P. Chandler is the first to give a full account of this tumultuous period. Drawing on his experience as a foreign service officer in Phnom Penh, on interviews, and on archival material. Chandler considers why the revolution happened and how it was related to Cambodia's earlier history and to other events in Southeast Asia.

In the tragic recent history of Cambodia—a past scarred by a long occupation by Vietnamese forces and by the preceding three-year reign of terror by the brutal Khmer Rouge—no figure looms larger or more ominously than that of Pol Pot. As secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK) since 1962 and as prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea (DK), he has been widely blamed for trying to destroy Cambodian society.

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.

The study has assessed the reconstruction programs in the post-conflict societies of Cambodia and Rwanda in the context of existing security challenges to women compared to their pre-conflict role and status. It has examined the causes of violence against women and how much the political stability, democratic form of government and economic progress helps to ensure security to women.

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.

This book is an account and analysis of the United Nations peacekeeping operation mounted in Cambodia between 1991 and 1993 in fulfillment of the 1991 Paris Peace Settlement. Though jeopardized by lack of Khmer Rouge cooperation, the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (U.N.T.A.C.) successfully guided Cambodia back to democracy and relative peace. Findlay reveals the successes and failures of U.N.T.A.C. and draws useful lessons for future U.N. peacekeeping operations.

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.

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.