Cambodia: Transnational Pressures and Local Agendas

Abstract

Crucial to understanding contemporary Cambodia is the way transnational forces interface with local agendas. Its poverty and history of war, the ineffectiveness of state bureaucratic mechanisms, and the way that Vietnam and the United Nations played major roles in recent history in the creation of the current state apparatus, all bear on the fact that Cambodia stands particularly exposed to a variety of international pressures. This is most dramatically illustrated by the pressures related to Cambodia's dependence on foreign aid, but it also manifests itself in Cambodia's vulnerability to the whims of international investors and the encroachments of various other kinds of enterprises, whether international crime, eccentric terrorist movements, or something as straightforward as the adoption of infants. It would be wrong to see Cambodians as passive agents in all this; rather there is active manipulation of foreign influence for local, often private, ends. This is not always bad but is often messy. Foreign aid represents twice the amount of Cambodia's domestic budget revenue and about 17 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).1 In August 2000, a report by the most prestigious Cambodian research institute stated: