Introduction

Cambodia has made important progress in terms of political stability and economic growth since the devastation wrought by the Khmer Rouge regime in the early 1970s and the many subsequent years of civil war and economic stagnation. This has come about largely due to a “threefold transition,” beginning in the early 1990s, which led Cambodia “from civil war to peace, from one-party rule to multiparty politics, and from an isolated and subsistence-oriented economy to one based on the market and open to international trade.” Nevertheless, the depth of Cambodia's political transition has been questioned. Despite periodic elections, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), which controlled Cambodia prior to 1991, has yet to peacefully relinquish meaningful power and continues to rely on both intimidation of its opponents and the exercise of its authority through an unaccountable and intrinsically corrupt political patronage system.

Cambodia's current transition began with the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement, which formally ended decades of conflict in Cambodia and paved the way for multiparty elections and a new constitution. Under the terms of the agreement, a large international civil and military peace mission, the UN Transitional Administration in Cambodia (UNTAC), was created in order to oversee Cambodia's transition. UNTAC wielded significant formal and real power during its short tenure (1992–1993) and is often described as the midwife of the largely stable and nominally pluralist constitutional monarchy that exists today in Cambodia.