The Politics of Economic Development in Cambodia: Making Cakes without Flour?

The emergence of “authoritarian capitalism”—economic development under authoritarianism—across Asia challenges Western ideas of liberal democracy as the acclaimed pathway to prosperity. Cambodia, which is the focus of this paper, witnessed impressive economic growth and rigorous marketization under the authoritarian rule of former Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). In this paper we critically assess the effects of Hun Sen’s authoritarian capitalism on economic development in Cambodia between 1993 and 2019. In doing so, we use Joe Studwell’s study How Asia Works (2014), in which the author draws on the historical development trajectories of various East Asian countries to argue that economic development hinges on the implementation of effective government policy in three economic sectors: agriculture, manufacturing, and finance. Using Studwell’s framework as a benchmark and drawing on an extensive review of secondary sources, this article examines the impacts of the CPP’s development strategy on these three sectors. Ultimately, this article aims to debunk the “strong growth” discourse, arguing that even though the CPP fosters short-term growth, in the long run its patronage-based development agenda merely serves the get-rich-quick purpose of a narrow elite but is not reconcilable with sustainable economic development.