Hun Sen's Cambodia
By: Sebastian Strangio
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
ISBN-13: 9780300190724
Subjects: Politics and government; Social conditions; Influence; History
Description: To many in the West, the name 'Cambodia' still conjures up indelible images of destruction and death, the legacy of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the terror it inflicted in its attempt to create a communist utopia in the 1970s. Sebastian Strangio, a journalist based in the capital city of Phnom Penh, now offers an eye-opening appraisal of modern-day Cambodia in the years following its emergence from bitter conflict and bloody upheaval. In the early 1990s, Cambodia became the focus of the UN's first great post-Cold War nation-building project, with billions in international aid rolling in to support the fledgling democracy. But since the UN-supervised elections in 1993, the country has slipped steadily backwards into neo-authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Hun Sen. Behind a mirage of democracy, ordinary people have few rights and corruption infuses virtually every facet of everyday life. In this lively and compelling book Strangio explores the present state of Cambodian society under Hun Sen's leadership, painting a vivid portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile the promise of peace and democracy with a violent and tumultuous past. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: 1; title: Against the Ages -- 1 -- 2; title: The Second Revolution -- 21 -- 3; title: The Wages of Peace -- 42 -- 4; title: A False Dawn -- 62 -- 5; title: Potemkin Democracy -- 89 -- 6; title: The Peasant King -- 110 -- 7; title: Hunsenomics and Its Discontents -- 131 -- 8; title: "A City With No Smoke and No Sound" -- 152 -- 9; title: The Scramble for Cambodia -- 171 -- 10; title: A Hundred Lotuses Blooming? -- 191 -- 11; title: An Improbable State -- 211 -- 12; title: UNTAC Redux-- 235.