Patronage Politics and Hybrid Democracy: Political Change in Cambodia, 1993-2003

A "hybrid" democracy has evolved in Cambodia in which elections are regularly held and internationally endorsed. However, there are inherent defects beneath the facade of free and fair elections that result from the domination of the electoral arena by a single political party—the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). The intertwining of the CPP and the state initially offered the party a coercive mechanism that coopted and coerced voters and restricted opposition parties’ activities in rural areas. Subsequently, as internal and external political legitimacy has increasingly been linked to democratic procedures, the CPP and Prime Minister Hun Sen have used their domination of the state machinery to cultivate patronage politics that not only links them to voters but also to government officials and business tycoons. Such a web breeds corruption.