The Politics of Coercion: State and Regime Making in Cambodia

In 'The Politics of Coercion,' Neil Loughlin explains the persistence of Cambodia’s authoritarian regime for more than four decades. The book provides a historically grounded investigation of the country's ruling coalition: political elites, many drawn from within the state's coercive apparatus, who, in coordination with state-dependent tycoons, have come to control Cambodia's politics and economy. Loughlin presents new empirical data revealing the coercive underpinnings of the modern Cambodian state and its party, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP).

The focus on coercion reflects the regime's conflict, post-conflict evolution and extractive political economy, as the ruling coalition failed to channel popular interests through its political institutions. Thus, it resorts either to low-intensity forms of coercion, such as intimidation and surveillance, or to high-intensity coercion, such as violent crackdowns and extrajudicial killings.
Through a critical reevaluation of the regime's origins and evolution in its relationship with citizens, 'The Politics of Coercion' reconceptualizes the CPP to emphasize the obstacles -- structural, institutional and distributional -- to building a mass-based clientelist or developmentally legitimate authoritarian party.
Dr Neil Loughlin is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in comparative politics at City St George's, University of London. Neil’s research focuses on comparative authoritarian politics and the political economy of development, with an emphasis on Southeast Asia.

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