how to share corruption money.”
134 Asian Affairs
Conclusion
Over the past twenty-five years, the trajectory of resource use in Cambodia
has been to secure military allegiance and maintain elite cohesion with the overall
objective of wining peace. With the achievement of peace and political stability,
the focus of the CPP elites has been on winning elections and promoting the further
accumulation of wealth among elites. The exploitation of natural resources, such
as timber and land, has been awarded to business tycoons who are, among other
things, financiers of the CPP mass-based patronage politics. We argue the political
use of natural resources has increased economic inequality and human rights
abuses. The discovery of oil has generated debates over whether this discovery will
be a curse or a blessing for Cambodia’s economy and politics. Given Cambodia’s
political trajectory, the impact of oil on politics will probably not lead to a significant
reversal from or to any improvement of hybrid democracy. Instead, the CPP
will selectively use oil revenue to secure support from rural peasants by providing
enough development progress to meet limited expectations, preventing challenging
demands for a meaningful redistribution of resources. Of course, the spending
effect is unlikely, as cases of other rentier states show, to completely block off
opposition.66 In the Cambodian context, opposition parties will continue to voice
discontent and attempt to mobilize disaffected groups. However, opposition politics
will be unlikely to garner sufficient voice for substantial political change.
Economically, Cambodia is at a crossroads. On the positive side, the discovery
and production of oil provides revenue that will bring needed funds for development
and diversification of the country’s economy.67 The current global financial
crisis is likely to have a significant negative impact on Cambodia, particularly its
leading export industry—garments. Cambodian leaders have repeatedly suggested
that the agricultural base economy of Cambodia can shield the country from the
global economic downturn, as those who lose jobs in the manufacturing sector
can return to farming. However, given the rising rate of agricultural landlessness
and near-landlessness—which affects 46 percent of the rural population68—the
employment-generating capacity of the agricultural sector appears less promising
than the government believes.
On the cautious side, oil’s impact on the economy will be conditioned by the
rate of speed, scope, and success of the reforms discussed above. It appears that
Hun Sen and his networks are in full control of Cambodia. The future prospects,
following the inflow of oil revenue, will depend on the government’s level of
willingness and ability, particularly that of Hun Sen and his supporters, to create
an enabling environment for further administrative, legal, and judicial reforms. If
the current trends persist, meaningful reforms in these sectors will be minimal.
Consequently, the outcome of the injection of additional revenues from newfound
resources might be capitalism with weak rule of law and development based on a
populist and patronage-based system.
Politics of Natural Resource Use 135
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Kheang Un would like to thank the Center for Khmer Studies, Cambodia, for its financial support
for field research in 2007, and the University of Louisville’s Center for Asian Democracy, where he
coauthored this article while serving as a Visiting Research Fellow. The authors would also like to
thank Professors David Chandler, Judy Ledgerwood, and Stephen McCarthy for their comments on
earlier drafts of this paper.