The failure of democratisation by elections in Cambodia

This article questions the explanatory power of the theory of democratisation by elections. This approach to democratisation argues that elections in authoritarian regimes constitute part of a metagame between ruling elites and opponents, which involves a competition for votes inside a larger competition over the nature of political power. The cumulative effect is that even flawed elections raise the costs of repression and lower the costs of toleration in ways that eventually bring about democracy. When applied to the most likely case of Cambodia, however, electoral democratisation has resoundingly failed to occur. Instead, this article argues that neopatrimonial inhibits the transformative power of elections by preventing the emergence of resolute democratic ideals, reform-minded elites and pro-democratic institutions. In this way, the distribution of party-state patronage constitutes a method of co-optation; and flawed elections represent a mechanism to renew and reinforce the historical roots and structural basis of state authority. Using the case of Cambodia, this article develops an account of neopatrimonialism in authoritarian elections and explores implications of the Cambodian experience for the democratisation by elections theory more broadly.