Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy.

• Author: Un, Kheang
• Position: Book review

Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy. By Sophal Ear. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2013. Hardcover: 185pp.

As this review was being written, Cambodia was preparing for its fourth general election since the historic elections sponsored by the United Nations (UN) in 1993. Those elections helped propel Cambodia from war to peace, and from autarky to global integration. As a result, the Cambodian economy has, since the turn of the century, experienced on average near double-digit annual growth, driven mainly by the tourism and garment sectors. Politically, Cambodia has held regular multi-party elections at the national and sub-national levels. Despite these developments, there exist diverse assessments of Cambodia's political and economic trajectory, varying from the image of a glass half-full to half-empty. Public opinion surveys conducted by the International Republican Institute--a U.S. based agency that promotes democracy around the world--have consistently shown that over three-quarters of Cambodians shared a favourable view that Cambodia "is headed in the right direction".

Sophal Ear, an Assistant Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, offers a glass half empty diagnosis. He suggests that while on the surface Cambodia appears to be headed in the right direction, closer scrutiny reveals signs for concern and that the country is "one broken government away from disaster" (p. 133). According to the author, Cambodia has become "a kleptocracy cum thugocracy" (p. 8) in which the political and economic elites have colluded to exploit the country's natural resources and divert foreign aid for personal gain as well as to perpetuate the country's patronage based politics. In the meantime, the quality of democracy has declined with an absence of inter-institutional accountability, deterioration of the rule of law and tightly restricted civil liberties as the long ruling Prime Minister Hun Sen and his Cambodian People's Party (CPP) monopolize power.

Ear postulates that Cambodia's growth has occurred without development, signified by the country's rising inequality, declining freedom and widespread poverty. Growth without development in Cambodia is attributable to the lack of good governance, a problem closely associated with the generous inflow of development assistance. Foreign aid is a hindrance to sustainable development for it enables the government to forgo tax collection, a...