Cambodia's Hun Manet On A Long, Hard Road To Legitimacy

In 2018, when the UMNO–BN coalition was decisively defeated by Pakatan Harapan, the CPP took all seats in the National Assembly in an election without the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP).

Cambodia has tavoided“embittered authoritarianism ,” a paralyzing situation where a regime is not expected to succeed, that political scientists Dan Slater and Joseph Wong think Cambodia has found itself in since 2008. In reality, the regime survives and thrives, and a once-in-a-generation power transition has been sanctioned.

If competitive elections died to pave the way for the leadership change, they may be given a new life in Hun Manet's Cambodia. It is likely that Western democracies, particularly the United States, will continue to have a role to play in reinstalling competitive elections in Cambodia.

But, as it strives to strike a delicate balance between geopolitical competition and democracy promotion, the United States may need to adopt persuasive rather than coercive strategies to nudge Cambodia to roll back its repression of political opposition.

Another possibility, drawing on Slater and Wong's democracy through strength theory which argues that Asia's authoritarian regimes concede democracy to preserve power, is Cambodia liberalizing on its own terms.

This would require the new government to achieve significant developmental success as a pre-condition for liberalization. Hun Manet's government will need to deliver results.

If Hun Sen's legitimacy was built on his claims of liberating Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge regime, Hun Mneeds to build his legitimacy on modernizing the country with a narrowing wealth gap, rather than mere rosy GDP growth figures, as the barometer.

That might be the only source of legitimacy left for him to attain because he cannot tap into the state-building legitimacy that his father could.

By defeating armed resistance waged by remnants of the previregimes and assimilating the military force loyal to the rival FUNCINPEC party, Hun Sen and the CPP succeeded in monopolizing the use of force over Cambodia's territory by 1998. It was an accomplishment of“stateness” that had eluded Cambodia for centuries.

Hun Mhas no part in this historical legacy and cannot use it to justify his right to rule. What he can do is demonstrate that the CPP deserves to run the state - not because it built it, but because it can run it better than other parties.

Competitive elections might be countenanced when a political opening is needed to renew political legitimacy and Hun Mand Hun Sen are confident that performance legitimacy would bestow the CPP sufficient strength to compete with the opposition for majority support.

But much would also depend on how enthusiastic Cambodia's youthful population is in the return of competitive elections. Authoritarian leaders do not just allow competitive elections because they are strong.

Pressure for liberalization will need to come from Cambodia's young people, who are expected to become more demanding as their living conditions improve.

They need to signal that disenfranchising popular opposition parties cannot continue and that the CPP's legitimacy would be contingent on both the degree of political contestation and the level of economic development that it provides.

Even if competitive elections return, the electoral playing field is likely to remain heavily skewed in favor of the CPP as it was before the dissolution of the CNRP in 2017.

The difference is that, if it achieves a high level of economic development, the CPP could deploy performance legitimacy in combination with unfair elections as its new ruling strategy – a strategy that served Malaysia's UMNO well for four decades and continues to serve the
People's Action Party in Singapore .

Mun (Mark) Vong is Lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University.

This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.