Social movements in Cambodia: why they succeed or fail
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Social movements in Cambodia: why they succeed or fail Sokphea Young1,2
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract In social movements and contentious politics, the factors determining success or failure of a movement remain contested since different scholars tend to argue differently. As a contribution to this debate, this paper draws on two cases representing the relative success and failure of movements targeting the government of Cambodia and foreign joint venture investments to address the communities’ grievances. The paper reveals that, while other factors such as strategies, resource mobilisation, networks and corporate behaviour remain necessary to the debate, the variation in outcome is essentially determined by the patron–client network, a political dynamic employed by the neo-patrimonial rulers to cling onto power. Keywords Neo-patrimonialism · Patron–client network · Political opportunity structures · Social movement outcomes · Success or failure
Introduction In the context of social movements and contentious politics, groups of disgruntled people or organisations tend to make claims over one another in pursuing their respective interests. Scholars investigating this field tend to focus on the dynamics, patterns, structures and emergence of the interactions between these groups, rather than on their outcomes (McAdam et al. 2001; Olzak and Soule 2009; Soule 2009; Tarrow 2012; Van Dyke et al. 2005). Although outcomes of movements have recently received attention, few attempts have been made to theorise their success or failure. A number of scholars have endeavoured to define the factors determining success or failure (Bosi et al. 2016)—known as the extent to which movements, respectively, achieve or fail to achieve their demands—but their propositions remain inconclusive. As a contribution to resolving this puzzle, this study explores why some social movements fail while others succeed within a neo-patrimonial regime. * Sokphea Young [email protected] 1
University College London, London, UK
2
Chiang Mai University School of Public Policy, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
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S. Young
The regime that is defined as ‘a form of organisation in which relationships of a broadly patrimonial type pervade a political and administrative system which is formally constructed on rational-legal lines’ according to Clapham (1985, p. 48). The paper draws on two cases of community movements, one relatively successful and the other a relative failure.1 These two cases are purposely selected in order to theorise the decisive factors explaining the variation in outcomes of social movements in land and extractive industries. This paper argues that, in one case, the movement relatively failed because their actions threaten companies that have strong political ties, manifested by patron–client networks, with the neo-patrimonial government of Cambodia. Conversely, other movements relatively succeed because their actions target companies with weak political ties to the government. Thus, w
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