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Southeast Asia
Individual Paper
Many scholars have documented three contradictory theoretical and empirical outcomes of multiparty elections in authoritarian regimes: stabilizing, destabilizing, and democratizing authoritarian rule. The three consequences unfold divergently depending upon two dominant factors: domestic balance of power (strength of the ruling party and the opposition) and external balance of power (the struggle for influence and interests between Western democratic donors and emerging authoritarian donors primarily China). This paper assesses the outcomes of Cambodia’s (local and national) elections organized for 25 years from 1993 to date, and seeks to explain the effects. Drawing on the long-term observations of the author as a local Cambodian, secondary data, 7.5 months’ fieldwork conducted in 2016 and 2017, 52 elite interviews, and a case study of a commune, this paper argues the following: Repeated elections have stabilized the authoritarian regime led by the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) given its immense capacity to steal elections and undermine the opposition, weak opposition, declining Western democratic donors’ leverage, and authoritarian China’s recent growing leverage countering the West’s. However, despite the ruling party’s durability, repetitive multiparty elections have also empowered and emancipated voters considerably across the country over the past 2.5 decades. As well continuous elections have recently severely pressured the CPP to deliver more public services and make various significant concessions that have improved living conditions of ordinary citizens. As such uninterrupted multiparty elections have propelled a long-term power negotiation between the authoritarian rulers and the ruled, creating mutual returns and benefiting both leaders and citizens.
Sivhuoch Ou
University of Guelph, Canada