The neoliberal 'order'in Cambodia: political violence, democracy, and the contestation of public space (original) (raw)

Neoliberal economics have emerged in this post-Cold War era as the predominant ideological tenet applied to the development of the Third World. For many Third World countries, however, the promise that the market will bring emancipation from tyranny and increased standards of living has been an empty one. Instead, the free market has increased the gap between rich and poor and unleashed a firestorm of social ills. In Cambodia, the promotion of unfettered and intense marketisation is the foremost causal factor in the country’s inability to consolidate democracy following a United Nations sponsored transition. Neoliberal policies further explain why authoritarianism remains the principal mode of governance among Cambodia’s ruling elite, an inclination that is often elicited through the execution of state violence. In this paper, neoliberalism is conceived as effectively acting to suffocate an indigenous burgeoning of democratic politics in Cambodia. Such asphyxiation is brought to bear under the neoliberal rhetoric of ‘order’ and ‘stability’, which can be read through Cambodia’s geography, and specifically through the production of the country’s public space. The preoccupation with ‘order’ and ‘stability’ in Cambodia serves the interests of capital at the global level, and political elites at the level of the nation-state; however, Cambodians themselves fiercely contest these particular interests. This contestation is strongly evidenced in the burgeoning geography of protest that has emerged in Cambodian public spaces in the post-transition era. Recognition of the ‘unmediated interaction’ vision of public space many Cambodian’s have championed allows a more ‘radical’ democracy to emerge, and hence a more just and equitable social order.