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Outlawing Opposition, Imposing Rule of Law: Authoritarian Constitutionalism in Cambodia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2021

Benjamin LAWRENCE
Benjamin LAWRENCE*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, National University of Singaporelawbgl@nus.edu.sg
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Abstract

Cambodia's Constitution, promulgated in September 1993, was to be the foundation of a transition to liberal, multiparty democracy. Yet, despite the document's seeming commitment to those very principles, constitutional provisions are frequently used to undermine liberal rule of law and to impose restrictions on political processes, freedoms, and rights. Focusing on the events of 2016–2017, including the jailing of opposition politicians, controversial legal reforms, and the dissolution of the country's foremost opposition party, this article demonstrates how authoritarian practices in Cambodia are framed in terms of adherence – even fidelity – to the Constitution. Further, it explores how ideas of ‘stability’ and ‘law and order’ often elide with those of rule of law in discourses and practices that simultaneously exalt and hollow out the normative power of the Constitution. This article posits that a socio-legal approach that pays particular attention to discourse can shed new light on the empirical fact of authoritarian constitutionalism, but also the processes of meaning-making that accompany, facilitate, and legitimize its practice. Far from merely a sham, then, Cambodia's Constitution – like many others – is imbricated in a complex web of contestation and legitimation that extends far beyond the walls of any courtroom.

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Article
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Asian Journal of Comparative Law , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 225 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the National University of Singapore

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Footnotes

*

PhD (University of Victoria, Canada). Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Asian Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore (NUS). I would like to thank Victor Ramraj, Simon Springer, and Pooja Parmar for their supervision and advice, as well as Neil Loughlin and the anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this paper. I am also grateful to the Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) and the Leverhulme Trust for their support at various stages of this research.

References

1. This was the poignant headline of the last print version of the independent English language newspaper, the Cambodia Daily, on 4 September 2017. The newspaper went to print on the morning immediately after the midnight arrest of opposition leader and MP, Kem Sokha. For reporting, see Reuters, ‘Cambodia Daily Shuts with “Dictatorship” Parting Shot at Prime Minister Hun Sen’ The Guardian (4 Sep 2017) <www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/04/cambodia-daily-shuts-with-dictatorship-parting-shot-at-prime-minister-hun-sen> accessed 22 May 2020; Joseph Hincks, ‘Cambodia's Democracy in Question as Independent Paper Closes’ Time (4 Sep 2017) <https://time.com/4926317/cambodia-daily-opposition-kem-sokha-arrested/> accessed 22 May 2020.

2. Caroline Hughes, ‘Understanding the Elections in Cambodia 2013’ [2015] Aglos: Journal of Area-Based Global Studies 1–20.

3. Ven Rathavong, ‘Interior Ministry Files Complaint to Dissolve Opposition’ Khmer Times (6 Oct 2017) <https://www.khmertimeskh.com/85066/interior-ministry-files-complaint-dissolve-opposition/> accessed 22 May 2020.

4. Namely the royalist party, FUNCINPEC and the Cambodian Youth Party. See Ben Sokhean & Andrew Nachemson, ‘Parties File Separate Suits for Dissolution of CNRP’ The Phnom Penh Post (2 Oct 2017) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/parties-file-separate-suits-dissolution-cnrp> accessed 22 May 2020.

5. The Permanent Committee is the highest internal decision-making body of the ruling party. See Mech Dara & Daphne Chen, ‘Analysis: Judge Who Will Decide the Fate of the CNRP Is a Trusted Member of the CPP’ The Phnom Penh Post (15 Nov 2017) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national-post-depth-politics/analysis-judge-who-will-decide-fate-cnrp-trusted-member-cpp> accessed 22 May 2020.

6. Menzel, Jörg, ‘Cambodia: From Civil War to a Constitution to Constitutionalism?’, in Hill, Clauspeter & Menzel, Jörg (eds), Constitutionalism in Southeast Asia (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung 2009) 9–32Google Scholar.

7. Tushnet, Mark, ‘Authoritarian Constitutionalism’ (2015) 100 Cornell Law Review 391Google Scholar; Landau, David, ‘Abusive Constitutionalism’ (2013) 47 UC Davis Law Review 189Google Scholar.

8. Cheesman, Nick, Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar's Courts Make Law and Order (Cambridge University Press 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Biddulph, Sarah, The Stability Imperative: Human Rights and Law in China (University of British Columbia Press 2016)Google Scholar.

9. Dressel, Björn & Mietzner, Marcus, ‘A Tale of Two Courts: The Judicialization of Electoral Politics in Asia’ (2012) 25 Governance 391CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dressel, Björn & Inoue, Tomoo, ‘Megapolitical Cases Before the Constitutional Court of Indonesia Since 2004: An Empirical Study’ (2018) 4 Constitutional Review 157CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dressel, Björn & Inoue, Tomoo, ‘Informal Networks and Judicial Decisions: Insights from the Supreme Court of the Philippines, 1986–2015’ (2018) 39 International Political Science Review 616CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chen, Albert HY & Harding, Andrew (eds), Constitutional Courts in Asia: A Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dressel, Björn & Tonsakulrungruang, Khemthong, ‘Coloured Judgements? The Work of the Thai Constitutional Court, 1998–2016’ (2019) 49 Journal of Contemporary Asia 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. See Reuters (n 1).

11. This is a significant point, given that some scholars have suggested that recent studies of legal politics and rule of law in contemporary Cambodia have indicated to the contrary. Melissa Curley, for example, evaluated the developments described in this article by claiming that they ‘raise questions about the government's commitment to democracy’ and suggested that ‘the “rule of law” as a check on the arbitrary use of power is now widely undermined in Cambodia’, further suggesting by implication that there was an assumed commitment to democracy, and that the rule of law could be seen to operate as a check on government power prior to these events. Rather than a change in substance, these developments might be better understood as a shift in style, as Un and McCarthy note when they claim that the use of law for illiberal or antidemocratic purposes was ‘a strategic calculation by the Cambodian ruling elites to utilize a more subtle and legitimate strategy of social control.’ The evidence presented in this article not only suggests that the rule of law and a commitment to democracy have not been features of Cambodia's legal politics since the outset of the current constitutional order, but also that the use of law to silence or sideline political opponents has been a longstanding tactic of the ruling party. If anything, then, the developments discussed in this article suggest that the use of law for authoritarian purposes has – at most – only been accelerated (rather than discovered) by the CPP in recent years. See Curley, Melissa, ‘Governing Civil Society in Cambodia: Implications of the NGO Law for the “Rule of Law”’ (2018) 42 Asian Studies Review 247, 247–248CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCarthy, Stephen & Un, Kheang, ‘The Evolution of Rule of Law in Cambodia’ (2017) 24 Democratization 100, 100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Un, Kheang, ‘Patronage Politics and Hybrid Democracy: Political Change in Cambodia, 1993–2003’ (2005) 29 Asian Perspective 203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roberts, David, ‘The Superficiality of Statebuilding in Cambodia: Patronage and Clientelism as Enduring Forms of Politics’, in Paris, Roland & Sisk, Timothy D (eds), The Dilemmas of Statebuilding: Confronting the Contradictions of Postwar Peace Operations (Routledge 2009) 149–170Google Scholar.

13. See Norén-Nilsson, Astrid, Cambodia's Second Kingdom: Nation, Imagination, and Democracy (Southeast Asia Program Publications at Cornell University 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. See Hor, Peng, Phallack, Kong & Menzel, Jorg (eds), Introduction to Cambodian Law (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Cambodia 2012)Google Scholar.

15. The former, it is argued, is largely formalistic and proceduralist in nature, requiring only that: (i) law provide ‘meaningful restraints on state actors’; (ii) there be rules governing which entities … may make law’; (iii) laws be publicly accessible, generally applicable and their meaning be relatively clear, consistent, stable, and prospective; (iv) laws be enforced, and ‘acceptable to a majority of the populace or people affected.’ Meanwhile, in addition to the above criteria, ‘thick’ conceptions of rule of law include: ‘elements of political morality such as particular economic arrangements (free-market capitalism, central planning, ‘Asian developmental state’ or other varieties of capitalism), forms of government (democratic, socialist, soft authoritarian), or conceptions of human rights (libertarian, classical liberal, social welfare liberal, communitarian, “Asian values”, etc)’: Peerenboom, Randall, ‘Varieties of Rule of Law’, in Peerenboom, Randall (ed), Asian Discourses of Rule of Law (Routledge 2003) 2–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. Interestingly, McCarthy and Un also draw a comparison between Cambodia and Singapore based on this perceived politicization of the judiciary. This comparison, however, appears somewhat misleading and overly generous to Cambodia, as it conflates one potential output of ‘thin’ rule of law with the procedural and normative characteristics typically used to identify it. That one government, considered by McCarthy and Un to be practicing ‘thin’ rule of law (in this case Singapore), is also seen to use its legal system for political purposes should not mean that any government that uses its legal system in that way is necessarily practicing ‘thin’ rule of law. See McCarthy, Stephen & Kheang, Un, ‘Rule of law in illiberal contexts: Cambodia and Singapore as exemplars’, in Bünte, Marco & Dressel, Björn (eds), Politics and Constitutions in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2017) 17Google Scholar; McCarthy & Un, ‘The Evolution of Rule of Law in Cambodia’ (n 11).

17. McCarthy & Un, ‘Rule of Law in illiberal contexts’ (n 16) 315–330.

18. Though it is beyond the scope of this article to offer a detailed discussion of West's analysis, it should be noted that focusing on these factors does risk overstating their influence, potentially at the expense of a proper understanding of the violence that underpins authoritarianism in Cambodia: Lucy West, ‘The Limits to Judicial Independence: Cambodia's Political Culture and the Civil Law’ (2019) 26 Democratization 537; Neil Loughlin, ‘Reassessing Cambodia's Patronage System at the End of Competitive Authoritarianism: Electoral Clientalism in the Shadow of Authoritarianism’ (2020) 93 Pacific Affairs 497.

19. A challenge best articulated in Li-Ann Thio, ‘Constitutionalism in Illiberal Polities’, in Michel Rosenfeld & András Sajó (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press 2012) 133.

20. See Jothie Rajah, Authoritarian Rule of Law: Legislation, Discourse, and Legitimacy in Singapore (Cambridge University Press 2012). Such attention to discourse and language to understand law in authoritarian contexts is, in fact, far from novel. Most notably, it is utilized by Jothie Rajah, in her study of rule of law discourse in Singapore. In explaining her use of Critical Discourse Analysis in Authoritarian Rule of Law, Rajah writes:

Given that ‘law’ is a discursive field especially contiguous with power, dismantling the positivist isolation of ‘law’ becomes especially important when reading legal texts as expressions of state management of legitimacy through ‘law’.

Legal scholarship has recently come to approach ‘law’ as not just interacting with society, but being in a relationship with society “mediated by or even constituted by language itself.” … The analytical approach to discourse in terms of text, interaction and context (required through Critical Discourse Analysis) also means that I attend to … how language captures and performs the relative positions of power of social actors. (p 57–58)

21. Landau (n 7) 189.

22. ibid 191.

23. ibid 189.

24. This, too, has been hinted at by Gonzalez-Jacome, who suggests that ‘by focusing merely on constitutional structure and institutions as Landau does, one loses sight of the more complex projects that shape and are shaped by constitutional debate.’ See Jorge González-Jácome, ‘On Abusive Constitutionalism: Two Critical Impulses’ (i-CONnect Blog, 11 Jun 2015) <www.iconnectblog.com/2015/06/on-abusive-constitutionalism-two-critical-impulses/> accessed 31 Dec 2020.

25. Landau (n 7) 191.

26. Tushnet (n 7) 393

27. ibid 397.

28. ibid 451.

29. Kirsti Samuels, ‘Rule of Law Reform in Post-Conflict Countries: Operational Initiatives and Lessons Learnt’, Social Development Papers: Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (The World Bank, Oct 2006) <http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/537621468137719257/pdf/379140Rule0of0law0WP3701PUBLIC1.pdf> accessed 31 Dec 2020.

30. Cheesman (n 8).

31. ibid 26, 31. Rather than applying consistently and equally, as the rule of law ideal suggests, law and order is expressed through the contingent and hierarchical acts of state administration and law enforcement. ‘Law and order naturalizes a similar kind of order to [the] police [state]: … one with an emphasis on exogenously imposed discipline,’ Cheesman argues, while at the same time it ‘is hierarchical, because it presumes that certain people or groups occupy positions of authority that entitle them to decide when order is lost, and when the state's forces should restore it.’

32. Specifically, in drawing a distinction between ‘rigid’ and ‘resilient stability,’ Biddulph explains that the CCP has privileged a view of society as ‘inherently unstable and therefore in need of active state intervention,’ over one that ‘sees stability as being based on norms of justice and equity, or at least mitigating injustices.’: Biddulph (n 8) 8.

33. There are, of course, other examples that could be used to demonstrate this, as law has also been central to the CPP's efforts to exert control over civil society and to silence human rights activists, for instance. See ‘Cambodia: Courts of Injustice: Suppressing Activism Through the Criminal Justice System in Cambodia’ (Amnesty International, 30 May 2017) <https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/05/cambodia-courts-of-injustice/> accessed 16 Jan 2020.

34. Léon R Yankwich, ‘The Immunity of Congressional Speech. Its Origin, Meaning and Scope’ (1951) 99 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 960; Simon Wigley, ‘Parliamentary Immunity in Democratizing Countries: The Case of Turkey’ (2009) 31 Human Rights Quarterly 567.

35. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia 1993, art 80.

36. Huw Watkin, ‘Hockry sweating out his future’, The Phnom Penh Post (20 Sep 1996) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/hockry-sweating-out-his-future> accessed 25 May 2020.

37. Christine Chaumeau, ‘The opposition of one’, The Phnom Penh Post (15 Aug 1997) <http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/opposition-one> accessed 25 May 2020.

38. Post Staff, ‘Kosal wrangle’, The Phnom Penh Post (9 Nov 2001) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/kosal-wrangle> accessed 25 May 2020.

39. Sebastian Strangio & Sokchea Meas, ‘Sam Rainsy in France to register concerns about loss of immunity’, The Phnom Penh Post (5 March 2009) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/sam-rainsy-france-register-concerns-about-loss-immunity> accessed 25 May 2020.

40. Liam Cochrane, Sam Rith & Vong Sokheng, ‘Rainsy Summoned by Court, National’, The Phnom Penh Post (5 Nov 2004) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/rainsy-summoned-court> accessed 25 May 2020.

41. Vong Sokheng, ‘No Resolution In Sight for Ousted Opposition MPs’, The Phnom Penh Post (3 Jun 2005) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/no-resolution-sight-ousted-opposition-pms> accessed 25 May 2020.

42. Meas Sokchea, ‘Opposition hits out at Parliament Over Lifting of MPs' Legal Immunity’, The Phnom Penh Post (24 Jun 2009) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/opposition-hits-out-parliament-over-lifting-mps-legal-immunity> accessed 25 May 2020.

43. Niem Chheng, ‘Thak Lany Immunity Vote Today’ The Phnom Penh Post (1 Sep 2016) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/thak-lany-immunity-vote-today> accessed 25 May 2020.

44. Niem Chheng & Shaun Turton, ‘Senator Sok Hour Given Seven Years for Forgery and Incitement’, The Phnom Penh Post (8 Nov 2017) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/senator-sok-hour-given-seven-years-forgery-and-incitement> accessed 25 May 2020; Kong Meta, Andrew Nachemson & Soth Koemsoeun, ‘Former SRP Senator Sok Hour Receives Pardon after Serving More than Two Years in Jail’, The Phnom Penh Post (26 Oct 2017) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/former-srp-senator-sok-hour-receives-pardon-after-serving-more-two-years-jail> accessed 25 May 2020.

45. Sek Odom, Alex Willemyns & Khy Sovuthy, ‘CPP Lawmakers Clear Sokha's Path to Prison’, The Cambodia Daily (31 May 2016) <www.cambodiadaily.com/news/cpp-lawmakers-clear-sokhas-path-to-prison-113234/> accessed 25 May 2020.

46. Khy Sovuthy, ‘CNRP Lawmaker Guilty of Incitement for Facebook Posts’, The Cambodia Daily (11 Oct 2016) <www.cambodiadaily.com/news/opposition-lawmaker-sentenced-facebook-posts-119092/> accessed 25 May 2020.

47. Sek Odom & Ben Sokhean, ‘Assembly Asked to Strip CNRP Lawmakers of Immunity’ The Cambodia Daily (4 Jul 2016) <www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/two-cnrp-lawmakers-targeted-to-be-stripped-of-immunity-114949/> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

48. Aun Pheap & Alex Willemyns, ‘With Jailing, Flagrant Abuse of Constitution’ The Cambodia Daily (18 Apr 2016) <www.cambodiadaily.com/news/with-jailing-flagrant-abuse-of-constitution-111395/> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

49. The Phnom Penh Municipal Court's decision was not published in this case. In fact, decisions from Cambodia's ordinary courts are not publicly available, as only the Constitutional Council (deciding on the constitutionality of laws), the Arbitration Council and the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (also known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal) actively publish decisions: Khy Sovuthy, ‘CNRP Lawmaker Guilty of Incitement for Facebook Posts’ (n 46).

50. Interview with anonymous Ministry of Justice spokesperson (Phnom Penh, 30 Mar 2017) (on file with author).

51. Causation in this instance is, of course, difficult to prove. As Ginsberg and Moustafa have pointed out, the secrecy of authoritarian regimes and the fact that political influence is often implicit in such contexts means that empirical evidence is often in short supply. However, there are some examples of political interference being directly exerted, as pointed out by Lucy West. See Tom Ginsburg & Tamir Moustafa (eds), Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (1st edn, Cambridge University Press 2008); West (n 18) 537.

52. Meas Sokchea, ‘Council Tables Decision on CNRP Lawmakers’ Immunity’ The Phnom Penh Post (19 Jul 2016) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/council-tables-decision-cnrp-lawmakers-immunity> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

53. The Constitution was written at the culmination of an internationalized peace process, which sought (with partial success) to end the country's long-running civil war and included an 18-month period during which the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) oversaw the country and administered democratic elections. The post-UNTAC era, which can be understood to run from 1993 to the present, is also referred to by Astrid Norén-Nilsson as the post-Paris Peace Agreements (or post-PPA) era. See Norén-Nilsson (n 13).

54. Prak Chan Thul & Matthew Tostevin, ‘Main Cambodian Opposition Leader Arrested, Paper Shuts as Crackdown Grows’, Reuters (3 Sep 2017) <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cambodia-politics-idUSKCN1BD0Q2> accessed 8 Feb 2021; Sok Khemara, ‘US and EU Condemn Cambodia Opposition Leader's Arrest’ (VOA Khmer, 4 Sep 2017) <https://www.voacambodia.com/a/us-and-eu-condemn-cambodia-opposition-leader-arrest/4014589.html> accessed 8 Feb 2021.

55. Interview with CPP spokesperson (Phnom Penh, 6 Sep 2017) (on file with author).

56. Human Rights Council, ‘Opinions Adopted by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention at Its Eighty-First Session, 17–26 April 2018: Opinion 9/2018 concerning Kem Sokha (Cambodia)’ A/HRC/WGAD/2018/9 (5 Jun 2018) <www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Detention/Opinions/Session81/A_HRC_WGAD_2018_9.pdf> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

57. Law on Political Parties (amended June 2017), arts 6 (vii), 6(iii) and 6(v) respectively. See Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, ‘A Human Rights Analysis of the Amended Law on Political Parties (July 2017)’ (OHCHR, Jul 2018) <https://cambodia.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Analysis%20on%20the%20Amended%20Law%20on%20Political%20Parties%20%28July%29.pdf> accessed 1 June 2020; ‘OHCHR Has Released Its Human Rights Analysis of the Amended Law on Political Parties in Khmer’ (OHCHR, 5 Jul 2017) <https://cambodia.ohchr.org/en/news/ohchr-has-released-its-human-rights-analysis-amended-law-political-parties-khmer> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

58. Socheat Samreth, ‘អង្គភាពព័ត៌មាន និងប្រតិកម្មរហ័ស [Selected Comments (of) Samdech Techo Hun Sen at the Graduation and Diploma Presenting Ceremony of the National University of Management (Unofficial Translation)]’ <pressocm.gov.kh/en/archives/9718> accessed 8 Feb 2021.

59. Alan Watson, ‘Legal Transplants and Law Reform’ (1976) 92 Law Quarterly Review 79.

60. Meas Sokchea & Erin Handley, ‘Party law changes clear Senate’, The Phnom Penh Post (19 Jul 2017) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/party-law-changes-clear-senate> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

61. Royal Government of Cambodia, ‘Cambodia, Democracy and Human Rights: To Tell the Truth’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, 11 Apr 2017) <www.mfaic.gov.kh/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Ministry-of-Foreign-Affair-201704-388.pdf> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

62. ibid.

63. Socheat Samreth, ‘Why HE Kem Sokha Was Arrested?’ (Office of the Council of Ministers, 3 Sep 2017) <http://pressocm.gov.kh/en/archives/38758> accessed 1 Jun 2020; Socheat Samreth, ‘Lessons from Color Revolution in Yugoslavia and Serbia Which USA Dictated Kem Sokha to Implement in Cambodia Have Crossed the Red Line’ (Office of the Council of Ministers, 27 Sep 2017) <http://pressocm.gov.kh/en/archives/13000> accessed 1 Jun 2020; Socheat Samreth, ‘Why CNRP Was Charged for Dissolution?’ (in Khmer) (Office of the Council of Ministers, 12 Nov 2017) <http://pressocm.gov.kh/en/archives/17361> accessed 1 Jun 2020; Socheat Samreth, ‘Why Cambodia Supreme Court Decided to Dissolve the Cambodia National Rescue Party?’ (Office of the Council of Ministers, 16 Nov 2018) <http://pressocm.gov.kh/en/archives/18099> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

64. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, ‘Guidelines on Prohibition and Dissolution of Political Parties and Analogous Measures’ <www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/RuleOfLaw/CompilationDemocracy/Pages/CoEGuidelines2.aspx> accessed 1 Jun 2020. See also European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission), ‘Guidelines on Prohibition and Dissolution of Political Parties and Analogous Measures’ (Council of Europe, 10–11 December 1999) <https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-INF(2000)001-e> accessed 30 Dec 2020.

65. This point is equally true of the 2015 Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organisations (LANGO), which was widely criticised by civil society organisations. See, for an explanation, Melissa Curley's explanation of how LANGO's reporting requirements in particular can be considered a threat to the future of civil society in Cambodia: Curley, ‘Governing Civil Society in Cambodia’ (n 11).

66. David S Law & Mila Versteeg, ‘Sham Constitutions’ (1 Jul 2013) <https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=1989979> accessed 1 Jun 2020. Note that here, Law and Versteeg focus solely on ‘sham constitutions’, that is, the content of written constitutional documents, and the areas in and the extent to which they diverge from practice. The actual processes by which practice in fact comes to diverge from the promises of formal constitutions are not captured by this study but are instead explained by concepts such as authoritarian or abusive constitutionalism.

67. ‘Parties file separate suits for dissolution of CNRP’ The Phnom Penh Post (2 Oct 2017) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/parties-file-separate-suits-dissolution-cnrp> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

68. ‘More parties to accept seats’ The Phnom Penh Post (18 Oct 2017) <www.phnompenhpost.com/national/more-parties-accept-seats> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

69. ibid.

70. Socheat Samreth, អង្គភាពព័ត៌មាន និងប្រតិកម្មរហ័ស [Message from Samdech Techo Hun Sen on Decision of the Supreme Court to Dissolve the Cambodian National Rescue Party] (Office of the Council of Ministers, 16 Nov 2017) <http://pressocm.gov.kh/en/archives/17820> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

71. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Kingdom of Cambodia, ‘Cambodia: Stability and Development First’ (February 2018), 2 <https://www.mfaic.gov.kh/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/4T2-Stability-12-February-2018.pdf> accessed 1 Jun 2020.

72. ibid 2.

73. Interview with a trainee lawyer (Phnom Penh, 8 Feb 2017) (on file with author).

74. Interview with the Programme Manager of a land rights and legal education NGO (Phnom Penh, 17 Mar 2017) (on file with author).

75. Interview with the District Director of Women's Affairs (Kandal Province, 30 Apr 2017).

76. ibid.

77. Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Kingdom of Cambodia, ‘Cambodia: Stability and Development First’ (n 71).

78. McCarthy & Un, ‘Rule of Law in illiberal contexts’ (n 16) 325.

79. Biddulph (n 8) 8.

80. Chandler, David P, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945 (Yale University Press 1991)Google Scholar.

81. Marks, Steven, ‘The Process of Creating a New Constitution in Cambodia’, in Miller, Laurel E (ed), Framing the State in Times of Transition: Case Studies in Constitution Making (United States Institute of Peace 2010)Google Scholar.

82. Un, Kheang, Cambodia: Return to Authoritarianism (Cambridge University Press 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83. Interview with an anonymous legal expert (Phnom Penh, 15 March 2017) (on file with author).

84. ibid.

85. McCarthy & Un, ‘Rule of Law in Illiberal Contexts’ (n 16) 325.