Decentralization Reforms in Cambodia

Abstract

1. Introduction International donors have promoted a variety of decentralization reform programmes that have been implemented in many governments in developing countries around the world. In Cambodia, a decentralization programme was adopted as a core public sector reform. Since the 2002 commune election, decentralization reforms were introduced and largely financed by international donors as part of a broader objective to improve state accountability and deepen democracy in Cambodia (Manor 2008). However, reform has been shaped by conflicts at the national level rather than by demands from local-level actors. Although there have been radical decentralization initiatives in some respects, particularly at the commune level, decentralization reform has not awarded substantial authority and autonomy to local governments to enable them to be as responsive and accountable to local residents to the extent decentralization advocates hoped for. This paper traces the evolution of Cambodia's sub-national authority since the end of the Khmer Rouge period. During the 1980s and before international intervention in Cambodia in the early 1990s, local actors were given substantial power and discretion over services and revenues as a result of constraints at the time. This paper assesses Cambodia's formal decentralization reform and its outcomes for accountability and democracy after new decentralized institutions and elected councils were officially created in 2002 and 2009. The paper then explains the political significance of the reform from the perspective of the government and leaders of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) and the extent to which decentralization fits in with their strategy for legitimacy. Our analysis suggests that the donor-promoted decentralization in Cambodia has been and continues to be designed and implemented in a context where power has been successfully consolidated in the hands of the CPP and its informal patronage network. Decentralization has helped keep the CPP in power. Consequently, it has offered little opportunity for the emergence of empowered and independent local actors capable of challenging the status quo. Nonetheless, the CPP's surprisingly poor performance in the July 2013 national election, when it won twenty-seven fewer seats in the National Assembly than in the 2008 election, has put pressure on the government and the CPP to execute expansive decentralization to local levels so that they can deliver better services and be more accountable to local citizens. 2. History of Decentralization and Centralization Cambodia had experienced decentralization before the official launch of commune decentralization in 2002. Contemporary decentralization in Cambodia can be categorized into two distinct periods. The first was a de facto decentralization immediately after the end of the Khmer Rouge era (1980 onwards) when the country experienced international isolation and economic collapse; and the second period began in 1993, after a new government was formed following the first national election organized by the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). (1) 2.1 De Facto Decentralization, 1980s to 1993 Decentralization was implemented by the Cambodian People's Party (formerly Kampuchean People's Revolutionary Party) which took control with backing from the Vietnamese government after the end of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979. The Cambodian government faced enormous challenges in rebuilding a country burdened with a shattered economy; a violent and traumatized society; disintegrated state institutions; and isolation from the West. The key aims of the Cambodian leaders were to restore the bureaucracy, to establish the Party's authority from the centre down to the local level, and to manage insurgent threats posed by the remaining Khmer Rouge and their allies operating from safe havens in Thailand. During this period, the state was confronted with a lack of resources needed to pay state officials; the ongoing war with the Khmer Rouge; and the population's distrust of the communist-oriented regime and its Vietnamese advisors. …