Asian values and its political consequences: Is Cambodia the first domino?

Abstract

The coincidence of the ‘third wave of democratization’ and the vanishing Cold War seemed in the early 1990s to pave the way for a global democratization. But there are pockets of resistance and backlashes. Southeast Asia has been labelled as the region in the world most resilient to democracy. The Southeast Asian challenge to liberal democracy has been articulated as an ideology superior to liberal democracy, often labelled ‘Asian Values’. The debate on Asian Values has now been going on for a number of years and while it initially was merely mused over in non‐Asian environments, it is a definite possibility that real political consequences are emerging. The political violence in Cambodia is in this article utilized as a test case on whether the high tolerance towards authoritarianism among the ASEAN countries has paved the way for Cambodia returning to authoritarianism. Was the power grab in Cambodia the first in a second wave of authoritarianism in Asia? On a structural level, circumstances abound that the events of 5–6 July 1997 in Cambodia are related to an authoritarian build‐up in the Pacific Asia. The relationship between a general acceptance of soft authoritarianism in Southeast Asia and the current development in Cambodia is too important to be ignored. The focus is on two partly related possible connections between Asian Values and Cambodian politics, collected under the headings of ‘In search for a political programme’ and ‘Regional responses?’. We try to establish the structural reliance from the side of Cambodia vis‐à‐vis the East Asian region in general and ASEAN in particular, both in terms of power politics and in terms of political ideas.