Academic literature on the topic 'Monarchy - Cambodia'

Abstract After the departure of the United Nations and the restoration of the monarchy in 1993, Cambodia’s Muslim minorities became an important hub of transnational Muslim networks and movements, including the Salafī movement, which is increasingly influential. This article will examine how Salafism has inserted itself into Cambodian society and what limits there may be to its continued growth.

In addition to the official authorities, opposition is always present in any state formation. It can be part of the political system and take part in de-termining the direction of state development, or be repressed and fight for the right to exist. Opposition parties in Cambodia have historically struggled to participate equally in the political process since their inception. This article examines the state of political opposition in Cambodia after the restoration of the monarchy in 1993 and to the present day, in order to determine its status at this stage and future prospects.

A narrative sponsored by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen posits the prime minister as the reincarnation of sixteenth-century king Sdech Kân, a commoner who toppled the king at the time and ascended the throne. Whilst reincarnation narratives have wider Southeast Asian resonances, the reinvention of Sdech Kân is central to the redrawing of boundaries of power between a politically weakened monarchy and the Cambodian People's Party-led government. This article traces the meanings of reincarnating Sdech Kân in the contemporary Cambodian context, and what consequences this has for contemporary bids for political legitimacy.

This article surveys the reign of Cambodian King Reameathipadei I (1642–58) on the basis of Khmer and Dutch sources, with a particular focus on the monarch's conversion to Islam in the early 1640s. This episode provides an illustration of the pluralism of Southeast Asian societies during the Age of Commerce.

À travers l’analyse du travail gouvernemental de 1993 à 2015 dans l’optique de la stabilité constitutionnelle et politique, il s’est révélé que la transposition au Cambodge des grands principes de l’État de droit, de la démocratie libérale et pluraliste sur le modèle occidental, par la mise en œuvre des Accords de Paris de 1991 ne s'est pas effectuée de façon satisfaisante. L’objectif consistant à faire de la société cambodgienne, une société démocratique où chacun s’incline devant la loi, où la justice est indépendante du pouvoir exécutif, où les forces armées comme les forces économiques sont soumises à l'autorité publique gardienne de l’intérêt général, où à tout pouvoir se voit opposé un contre-pouvoir, n’a pas été atteint. Les obstacles à cette transposition effective résident dans le grand écart qui existe entre les principes du modèle importé, voire imposé, et les pesanteurs de l’histoire tragique que les Cambodgiens ont vécue entre les années 1970 et 1980, d’une part et les fondements traditionnels de la société cambodgienne encore très présents à ce jour d’autre part
Through the analysis of governmental work from 1993 to 2015 within the perspective of the constitutional and political stability, it is obvious clear that the implementation in Cambodia of the main principles of the Western model of the rule of law, liberal and pluralistic democracy, with the implementation of the 1991 Paris Agreements did not take place satisfactorily. The goal to make the Cambodian society, a democratic one where everyone obeys to the law, where justice is independent from the Executive where the armed forces as economic forces are subject to the public authority which is of the guardian general interest, where every power can be balanced by a counter-power, has not been reached. The obstacles to this actual transposition reside in the gap between the principles of an imported or imposed model and the burdens of the tragic history that Cambodians have lived between the years 1970 and 1980, on the one hand and the traditional foundations of Cambodian society still very present to nowadays on the other hand

L'objet de cette thèse est consacré à l'étude d'un mouvement national concrétisé par la mise en place d'une organisation politique : le Sangkum Reastr Niyum (octobre 1955-18 mars 1970), créée par le Prince Norodom Sihanouk - qui avait abdiqué en faveur de son père, pour être plus libre de conduire et d'impulser le développement de son pays libéré de la tutelle coloniale, vers sa modernisation. Durant quinze ans, l'action princière par le Sanghum allait marquer durablement toute la politique cambodgienne jusqu'au coup d'état de 1970 qui mit un terme à une monarchie plus que millénaire. Mais cette Institution a la vie dure, elle sera rétablie par les Cambodgiens après un court intermède républicain, une sanglante tyrannie, celle des "Khmers rouges", et une occupation de dix années par le Viêt-nam. Ce qui montre combien sont profondes, structurelles et populaires les assises de cette institution monarchique. C'est ce "Substrat" culturel, cette "monarchie-civilisation" que l'auteur de cette thèse entend montrer, informer, expliquer, en faire comprendre la genèse en remontant le temps, des origines à nos jours. Sous l'histoire évènementielle où les rois se succèdent aux rois, ainsi voulue par le thésard en direction de ses compatriotes (tel un "devoir de mémoire"), sous cette histoire donc, une civilisation se met en place, se forme, se structure, aboutit à la grandeur suprême et décline, et ce dans une Asie du sud-est dominée par l'Inde brahmanique. Une civilisatin qui progressivement va khmériser pour atteindre une authentique originalité. C'est cette civilisation qui constitue l'objet anthopologique de cette recherche.

Depuis plus d’un siècle, le règne de Jayavarman VII ne cesse de fasciner les chercheurs par son indéniable originalité. Premier roi ouvertement bouddhiste, sa puissance politique et militaire s’accompagne aussi d’une profonde mutation des idées et d’une créativité artistique bouillonnante qui confère une dimension hors du commun à son époque. Au rythme des découvertes qui s’accumulent et constituent un matériau archéologique d’une ampleur inégalée, les publications se multiplient, mais elles demeurent souvent spéculatives, échafaudées sur des hypothèses d’écoles qui, faute d’être contestées, se transforment en dogmes, adoptés et répétés au fil du temps, pour finalement donner l’impression inexacte que ce règne est parfaitement connu. C’est ce constat qui nous a amené à aborder l’étude du règne de Jayavarman VII sous des approches différentes, à partir d’une analyse de son historiographie axée sur une exégèse critique des publications. Cette thèse se fonde sur l’étude des matériaux archéologiques, attribués, en quantités considérables, au règne de Jayavarman VII, et appréhendés comme les éléments d’un système relevant d’un même déterminisme, celui de l’organisation de l’espace par l’autorité royale. Cette approche permet de mettre en lumière les principes directeurs de l’aménagement du territoire qui reflètent des impératifs dictés par la gestion administrative et sociale d’un pays, mais peuvent également satisfaire à d’autres exigences telles que le respect d’un modèle cosmico-religieux, les orientations personnelles du souverain ou encore le facteur économique. Derrière le souverain khmer et bouddhiste, Jayavarman VII, deus ex machina de son royaume, instigateur et catalyseur de toute politique, c’est le bouddhisme qui se révèle être le véritable inspirateur de ses actes, permettant de mieux comprendre certains des aspects atypiques de son règne, qu’il s’agisse de l’exercice du pouvoir ou de la composition architecturale des grands monuments
For more than a century, the reign of Jayavarman VII hasn't ceased to fascinate researchers by its irrefutable originality. First king openly Buddhist, his political and military power was also accompanied by a profound change in the ideas and by an exciting artistic creativity ensuring an extraordinary dimension to his era. Following the progress of the discoveries as they build up and represent an archeological material of unprecedented scale, publications multiply, but they remain often speculative, based upon theories, that as they stay unchallenged, consolidate and transform into dogmas, adopted and repeated over time, finally giving the wrong impression this reign is perfectly well known. This observation brought us to address this reign under a different angle, after retracing the historiography focused on a critical exegesis of the publications. This thesis is based upon the study of archeological material, all attributed to the reign of Jayavarman VII and treated as the items of a system following the same determinism, the organization of space by the royal authority. This approach has high lightened the guidelines of the land use planning that reflect the needs of the administrative and social management of a country, but also other requirements such as the respect of a cosmic religious concept, the king's personal preferences or the economic factor. Behind Jayavarman VII, who appears as the “Deus ex machina” of his kingdom, the initiator and catalyst of all policy, it is Buddhism that proves to be the real inspiration of his actions and leads us to understand better certain atypical aspects of his reign, regarding the exercise of power or the architectural composition of the great monuments

Attentive to the oxymoron of its title, this chapter looks for insight into the contemporary moment through an extended examination of traditions, or symptoms, rooted in the past. Accordingly, the chapter explores a series of transformative periods of Cambodian history as a means of sketching a description of the distinctive traits of contemporary Cambodian Theravada Buddhist traditions. These include the assimilation of Buddhism with the state embodied by the monarch, (dis)investment in language, temples as sites of sociopolitical organization or disruption as it were, and the recurrent denaturing of Buddhism even, though not only in attempts to restore the religion’s supposed authenticity.

This concluding chapter discusses how Thai monks were to refrain from the forms of oppositional political participation increasingly seen among their clerical counterparts in colonized countries just across Thailand's borders. When not pursuing spiritual attainment or gaining scriptural knowledge, the monks were to continue to visibly but silently legitimize the status quo, neither challenging nor overtly defending the hierarchical social system whose apex was the Thai monarch himself, surrounded by Buddhist patriarchs and elderly abbots. These were the standards that had continued to define proper behavior for Thailand's clergy as monks in Burma, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam experimented with vocal, dissident modes of engagement in the secular political realm during the period before World War II.

Authoritarian constituents and their role in stability 102 Authoritarian survival strategies 107 Other sources of authoritarian durability 114 Conclusion 120 Key Questions 121 Further Reading 121 Many authoritarian regimes in power today have been around for decades. The People’s Action Party, for example, has controlled Singapore since its independence in 1965. The Chinese Communist Party has been in power for even longer, approaching nearly seven decades of rule. And the monarchy in Oman has governed for more than two hundred years. Of course, not all authoritarian regimes have this staying power. Cambodia’s Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge ruled for only four years. Similarly, the Turkish military’s reign in the 1980s lasted just three years. This variation in longevity raises the question: what makes some authoritarian regimes more durable than others?...