CAMBODIAN YOUTH IN CREATING MORE LIBERAL

CAMBODIAN YOUTH IN CREATING MORE LIBERAL DEMOCRACY

A thesis is submitted in partial completion of the requirements for the Degree of Master of International Law and Politics

Chandara Khun

University of Canterbury School of Language, Social and Political Sciences Department of Political Science 2014

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis was made possible through New Zealand ASEAN Scholars Awards (NZAS). I am very grateful for the assistance and support of the New Zealand‘s Government, which permits me to pursue my postgraduate study of internationally accredited standards at the University of Canterbury, and to improve my capacity to make more contribution to the development of my home country, Cambodia. I would also like to thank my supervisor, Associate Professor James Ockey, for helping me to build a confidence in my research interests and supporting me from the beginning until this thesis is completed. Thanks are also due to Dr. Jeremy Moses and Professor Karen Scott, who gave me warm welcome and friendly support at the beginning of my academic life, making me feel like being at home. The staff at the Department of Political Science, the Leaning Skill Centre and the Central Library have been very supportive throughout my academic years. Also, I would like to thank my family for their ongoing support and pride in my achievement. Lastly, this thesis is dedicated to all of Cambodian youth. Chandara Khun March 2014.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................... i TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... ii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. vi CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 TRADITIONAL BARRIERS AND PAST TRENDS .................................................... 2 BREAKTHROUGHS OF TRADITIONAL BARRIERS BY NEW TRENDS ............. 7 THESIS OUTLINE ........................................................................................................ 9 CHAPTER 2 - THEORIES AND FRAMEWORKS OF RESEARCH ......................... 11 2.1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 11 POLITICAL COMMUNITY AND INSTABILITY .................................................... 12 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION .................................................................................. 14 2.2 WHY IS YOUTH IN POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AN ATTRACTIVE OPTION FOR OUR COMTEMPORARY DEMOCRACY? ...................................................... 15 PERSONAL FACTORS OF YOUTH.......................................................................... 16 ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS OF YOUTH ............................................................ 19 2.3 SCOPES OF THE PAST AND CURRENT RESEARCHES ...................................... 22 EMERGING YOUTH ACTIVISM IN POLITICS ...................................................... 22 GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES AND EXISTING POLITICAL ORDER .......... 25 SECTORS OF YOUTH PARTICIPATION ................................................................ 27 MEANS OF YOUTH PARTICIPATION .................................................................... 29 2.4 KEY THEMES OF THE LITERATURE..................................................................... 31 2.5 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS OF RESEARCH.................................................. 33 ii

DRAMATIC SHIFTS IN YOUNG DEMOGRAPHICS AND CHANGES IN STRUCTURES OF STATE INSTITUTIONS ............................................................. 34 BETTER EDUCATION AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION ................................ 38 PUBLIC SPACE: MEANS OF REDUCING GENERATIONAL CONFRONTATION AND AVOIDING SEVERE FORMS OF COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE ..................... 41 SUMMARY OF THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS OF RESEARCH ............. 46 2.6 METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................... 48 CHAPTER 3 - RESEARCH FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ........................................... 52 A DRAMATIC SHIFT IN YOUNG CAMBODIAN DEMOGRAPHICS FROM THE MINORITY TO THE MAJORITY GROUP OF THE TOTAL POPULATION LEADS TO NECESSARY CHANGES IN STRUCTURES OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS ........................................................................................................... 53 YOUNG CAMBODIANS HAVE BETTER EDUCATION, SO THEY ARE NOT ONLY MORE LIKELY TO PARTICIPATE IN POLITICS BUT ALSO MORE CAPABLE OF MOBILIZING PEERS AND OTHERS FOR POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT ........................................................................................................... 65 IF THEY ARE PROVIDED AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE FORMAL POLITICAL STRUCTURES FOR GETTING INVOLVED IN DECISION MAKING PROCESSES, THEN A CONFRONTATION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND THE YOUNG IS REDUCED TO MINIMUM AND A SEVERE FORM OF COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE CAN BE AVOIDED ...................................................... 78 SUMMARY .................................................................................................................. 99 CHAPTER 4 - CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 102 BIBLIOGRAPHY....................................................................................................... 108

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2-1 Model for Hypothesis 1 .......................................................................................... 38 Figure 2-2 Model for Hypothesis 2 .......................................................................................... 41 Figure 2-3 Model for Hypothesis 3 .......................................................................................... 45 Figure 2-4 Summary Diagram of Theoretical Frameworks of Research ................................. 47 Figure 3-1 Demographic Growths by Age Groups in 2008 and 2013 ..................................... 54 Figure 3-2 Total Registered Voters in 2012 by Age Groups .................................................... 54 Figure 3-3 Cambodia‘s GDP 2005-2014 .................................................................................. 56 Figure 3-4 Senators in the 3rd Mandate by Age Groups .......................................................... 60 Figure 3-5 Senators by Parties and Age Groups in the 3rd Mandate ....................................... 60 Figure 3-6 Number of Land Disputes from 2008 to 2010 ........................................................ 62 Figure 3-7 Comparison of Literacy Ratio by Age Groups 2010-2012 ..................................... 68 Figure 3-8 Number of High School Examinees and Graduates 2008-2013 ............................. 70 Figure 3-9 Growth of High School Graduates 2009-2013 by Percentages .............................. 70 Figure 3-10 Voter Turnout 2003-2008 and Promising Voter Turnout 2013 ............................ 72 Figure 3-11 Dependency Ratio in 24 City and Provinces in 2008 ........................................... 73 Figure 3-12 Better Education, Family and Friends in Defining a Preferred Party ................... 76 Figure 3-14 Growing Number of Labour Strikes 2003-2013 ................................................... 81 Figure 3-15 Broadcasting Power Shared by the 3 Biggest TV Stations over the 24 City and Province ................................................................................................................ 95 Figure 3-16 Broadcasting Power Shared by the 3 Biggest Radio Stations over the 24 City and Provinces .............................................................................................................. 95 Figure 3-17 The (Almost) Everyday Access to TV, Internet and Radio ................................. 97 Figure 3-18 Percentages of Households Possessing TV, Radio and Personal Computer ........ 97

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LIST OF TABLES Table 3-1 National Assembly (NA) Seats by Age Groups in 3rd and 5th Mandates .............. 58 Table 3-2 Shares of NA Members by Parties and Age Groups in 3rd and 5th Mandates ........ 59 Table 3-3 Chronology of Cambodia‘s Education and National Curriculum Development ..... 66 Table 3-4 General Picture of Human Development in Cambodia............................................ 67 Table 3-5 Enrollment at Secondary Education 2010-2013 Academic Years ........................... 69 Table 3-6 Number of Protests 1998 & 2013 in Comparison .................................................... 79 Table 3-7 Development of Approved Minimum Wages in Garment Industries ...................... 82 Table 3-8 Minimum Wages in Textile, Garment and Shoe Industries 2014-2018 .................. 83 Table 3-9 Summary of the Main Missions for Some Programs and NGOs ............................. 89

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ABSTRACT The focus of this thesis is to study close relations between dramatic shifts in young demographics and growing youth activism in Cambodia, which recently led to increasing confrontations and sometimes deadly clashes between the government and youth. This thesis develops theoretical frameworks that are applied to address three hypotheses to see whether a transformation of Cambodian youth from the minority to the majority group of the population necessitates reorganization of the state institutions, Cambodian youth of better education are more likely to participate in politics and capable of mobilizing others for political engagement, and generational confrontations and collective violence between the government of the elderly political leaders and Cambodian youth are resulted from their loss of trust in the institutions and the absence of the public space as an alternative to the state institutions for them, are correct or not. This research found that Cambodia has already become a country of young population since 2008 and, unlike their parents, most young Cambodians are literate; but both the National Assembly and the Senate are dominated by elderly political leaders. Also, civil society organizations have no regular and persistent platforms for Cambodian youth to work out their demands with the government while traditional media is dominantly controlled by the state and the government-allied private companies, and the social media is carefully censored. These situations very likely justify the above three hypotheses, so youth integration into the state institutions and more public space in variable forms are suggested as mechanisms to resolve and prevent crises of this phenomenon. Though this thesis may have its constraints in areas of its theoretical frameworks due to an early assumption of the literature and a quantitative method regarding data collection on the internet, its findings produce very fruitful inputs for the government‘s and non-governmental organizations‘ work and policy as well as the field of research alike since the theme of research is new.

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CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION ―When leaders fail to lead, people take charge and leaders then have to follow1.‖ -Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General and Nobel laureate

In the past, talking about politics rarely happened in public. Cambodians hardly discussed the government‘s policy and performance, and rarely expressed their ideas with acquaintances besides their families and friends. Their passive behaviours towards politics may have a close relationship with both socio-cultural and eco-political barriers preventing them from political engagement. However, recently, more Cambodians, especially youth, have involved in politics of their country, for they felt freer than ever to express their ideas and less worried about oppression2. This emerging trend may be a result of growing young demographics of better education and skillful information communications technology (ICT) in the kingdom. Thus, a question on whether a liberal democracy is suitable for Cambodia is no longer a concern but, rather, popular demands for more liberal democracy and a stable political community may place at the corner of the country‘s contemporary problems. This section briefly explains chronological development of Khmer‘s ideologies that may be an obstacle to their participation in politics. It seems that traditional ideologies and legacy of the Cambodian People Party towards Cambodian people gradually loss their essence in the heart of Cambodians, especially the young, because of, perhaps, time, levels of literacy and a decline of the public‘s trust in the regime and its leadership. Changes in Cambodians‘ political behaviours and attitude clearly happen in a coincidence of growing young demographics, making Cambodia a country of young population. This turning point necessitates a study in depth, which is subjected of discussion in the following sections.

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This sentence is quoted from an exclusive interview between Kofi Annan and Subhabrata Guha of the Time of India, which was published in the Time of India on February 6, 2014. See "If leaders fail, people will lead," The Elders, accessed March 2, 2014, www.theelders.org/article/if-leaders-fail-people-will-lead 2 "IRI Cambodia Survey: Declining Optimism on Country‘s Direction; Strong Support for Democratic Reforms," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 3, 2014, http://www.iri.org/news-events-presscenter/news/iri-cambodia-survey-declining-optimism-countrypercentE2percent80percent99s-direction-strongsupp

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TRADITIONAL BARRIERS AND PAST TRENDS Politics care-free behaviours and attitudes of Cambodians may have relations with ideologies of the ―Great‖ and ―Little‖ traditions, ―patron-client‖ system and illiteracy levels of the population. Throughout the modern history in Cambodia, these traditional ideologies appeared to be fad in time gradually and to become less bold in influencing Cambodian people in the present day. They likely remain refrained from engaging in politics by fear, perhaps of civil wars and violence, and by easily affordable satisfaction due to their illiteracy. Thus, societal experiences of tragedy and levels of illiteracy may be the main push-and-pull factors keeping Cambodia‘s democracy in a trap of the long-serving regime, the Cambodian People Party. Passive Citizenship: From Traditional Ideologies to Fear Traditional ideologies might be an obstacle to the political participation in Cambodia. Though the ideologies appeared to have eroded with time, recent past throughout the history prove its existence as a result of unsuccessful revolutions. Nightmares of civil wars such as hunger, massacres, breakup of families continue to scare older people. Thus, it might be reasonable to argue that many failures of the revolts in our recent past revitalized Khmer ideologies of dependency but lately changed in nature from their pure submission to the authority to fears of oppression and violence. The ―Great” and “Little” traditions were originated of the Sanskrit writing system brought from India since the early centuries. According to David P. Chandler, the Cambodian society was practically divided into ―those who understood Sanskrit and those who only understood Khmer‖ 3. This social classification was also promoted through the Hindu ritual ceremony of the ―god king‖ or ―king of the gods‖ (devaraja in Sanskrit) in the 9th century by the King Jayavarman II who wished to link the monarch with Siva for his supreme leadership of a ‗universal monarch‘ and the unity of Cambodia4. With this ideology, only the King and the senior officials in the palace could communicate with Gods and praise for the prosperity of the nation while ordinary peoples could only have a conversation and ask for protection from

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David P. Chandler, A History of Cambodia (United States: Westview Press, 1983), 21. Ibid., 32-33.

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‗wild spirits‘ (‗nak ta‘ in Khmer) and their ancestors5. Hence, in this ideological system, people depended on the King and senior officials without contention. However, an influence of this cult system appears to gradually lose its strength among ordinary people even before the collapse of Angkor era. These traditional ideologies were no longer widely acceptable since believes and practices of Hindu were partly integrated and replaced by Buddhism. The Mahayana Buddhism was promoted by Jayavarman VII but the ordinary people lately converted their practices and believe from Mahayana to Theravada in the 13th century6. Buddhism ideologies have matched well with the indigenous traditions, for it promoted an increasingly equal status between the rich and the poor or the powerful and the weak. Another ideological aspect, the ―patron-client‖ concepts like the ―Great‖ and ―Little‖ traditions may also influence Khmer‘s contemporary ideology. The ‗patron-client‘ system of dyadic relationships was identified as the ―backbone of the traditional [Cambodian] political structure‖7 upon which the ordinary peoples sacrifice their freedom and liberty to the authority in exchange for various forms of protection and assistance but the later uses their submission and available resources to create their strong patronage networks for grasping power8.This ideology may remain deeply rooted in the Cambodian society where the power is decisive and less likely to be subverted by a reaction of the grassroots. However, discussions on ideological systems of dependency remain controversial. Some scholars claimed that ideological systems greatly influence Cambodians‘ daily lives whereas many argued it gradually loses its spiritual forces among Cambodian people in the present day. In his Ph.D. dissertation, David P. Chandler asserted that a hierarchical system of ―patrons/governors‖ and ―clients/governed‖ has been nurtured with the peoples since their birth and continued to spiritually influence them9. This claim may be justified by some existing evidence of Khmer proverbs and literatures showing their helplessness against the powerful such as ―eggs cannot hit a rock‖. However, Serge Thion observed that Chandler‘s arguments appear unlikely to reflect the whole picture of the pre- and the post-independence 5

Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 21. Ibid., 66-67. 7 Serge Thion, "The Cambodian Idea of Revolution," in Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays, ed. David P. Chandler and Ben Kiernan (U.S.A: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1983), 11. 8 Grant Curtin, Cambodia Reborn?: The Transition to Democracy and Development (Geneva: The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1998), 111-112. 9 David P. Chandler, "Cambodia before the French: Politics in a Tributary Kingdom 1794-1848" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1973), 39; cited in Thion, 12. 6

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eras during which revolutions took place successively in Cambodia10. The ideas of ‗French Revolution‘ greatly inspired many well-educated and the then Cambodian revolutionaries from both elite and poor families through the introduction of the French educational system by the colonial administration11. Since then, many revolutions consecutively broke out one after another such as a replacement of the absolute monarchy by an introduction of the constitutional monarchy in 1947, the 1970 coup by General Marshal Lon Nol, the 1975 revolution by Khmer Rouge and finally the 1979 counter-revolution by the People Republic of Kampuchea. Yet, the past revolutions had not yet produced any result admired by poor Cambodians at the countryside and other marginalized groups at the time but made them scare of politics. They likely continue to fear of politics and feel pessimistic of revolutions, for the latter makes them hard to imagine of any new attempt to breakdown chains of patronage dependency. Their reluctance in political activities may have a relationship with their trauma and fear during Khmer Rouge campaigns of purification12. During the purification movement led by the Khmer Rouge, people spoke cautiously and controlled their own behaviours strictly towards others outside their groups because they prevented making themselves suspicious and so becoming ‗targets‘ for hard labors or execution. Moreover, illiteracy may also disinterest old people in politics and traps them in a cycle of making their end meet. With an enormous amount of the national budget invested in education between 1953 and 196613, Cambodia‘s educational system comprised of 5,275 primary schools, 146 secondary schools and 9 higher education institutes by the year 1969 14. Though the country was facing political instability in the capital and continuous fights over the borders in the 1970-1975 periods, the number of student enrollments at universities remained relatively high15. Unfortunately, both physical and institutional infrastructures of education nearly were completely destroyed by Khmer Rouge in the mid-1970s. As a result, by 1979, while nearly all schools, books, equipment and facilities for teaching had been

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Thion, 14. Benedict R. O‘G. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London/New York: Verso, 1983), 142. 12 Thion, 29-30. 13 Lee C. Fergusson and Gildas Le Masson. "A Culture under Siege: Post-Colonial Higher Education and Teacher Education in Cambodia from 1953 to 1979," History of Education 26:1 (1997): 100. 14 Thomas Clayton, "Building the New Cambodia: Educational Destruction and Construction under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979," History of Education Quarterly 38:1 (1998): 5. 15 Sam Rany, "Cambodia's Higher Education Development in Historical Perspectives (1863-2012)," International Journal of Learning and Development 2:2 (2012): 228-229. 11

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destroyed, ―there were no more than 300 qualified persons of all disciplines left in the country‖ whereas 67 percent of primary and secondary teachers lost their lives and nearly 80 percent of higher education students fled the country during the regime16. Regime’s Slogans, Magic Tricks, in Decline of Popularity The main principles of liberal democracy including fundamental human rights and freedom were brought by the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements and lately integrated into the domestic laws. However, these international norms may contradict the social and political values of national norms. Cambodia‘s government led by the long lasting ruling party, the Cambodian People‘s Party (CPP), sometimes justifies its authoritarian rule with political stability and peace at the expense of individual freedoms and human rights, by explaining necessary conditions for economic development. The Prime Minister Hun Sen claimed that only the CPP has the ability to ensure a socio-political stability and to prevent a return of civil wars17. Hence, freedom of speech, press18, assembly and associations19 is tightly controlled by the government and threatened by criminal charges. In the last decades, Cambodia has experienced a rapid and constant economy growth. Since 2000s, in overall, the Cambodia‘s government has performed its duties well by achieving the annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth at around 7 percent. Referring to data provided by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Cambodia experienced a rapid and sharp growth of GDP at more than 10 percent between 2005 and 2008 but this figure fluctuated between 6 percent and 7.6 percent from 2010 to 2013 with exception of an economic downturn in 2009 when GDP plummeted to only 0.1percent20. Therefore, with this achievement and its

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Fergusson and Masson, 111. Also, the Ministry of Education in the State of Cambodia reported even greater figures of human resources‘ loss by putting the teaching staff at 75 percent, tertiary students at 96 percent as well as elementary and secondary students at 67 percent. Thomas Clayton, "Building the New Cambodia: Educational Destruction and Construction under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979," History of Education Quarterly 38:1 (1998): 7-8. 17 Rachel Vandenbrink, "Hun Sen Warns of 'War' If He Loses Election," Radio Free Asia (English), April 19, 2013, http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/hun-sen-04192013173854.html 18 Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Cambodia 2012 Human Rights Report (United States: Department of State, 2012), 11-12. 19 Sean Teehan, "Fears SL Strike Could Get Ugly," The Phnom Penh Post, November 4, 2013, http://www. phnompenhpost.com/national/fears-sl-strike-could-get-ugly 20 "Cambodia's Real GDP Growth Rate," the Ministry of Economy and Finance, accessed January 15, 2014, http://www.mef.gov.kh/

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ambition, the government has recently set Cambodia to reach lower Middle Income Country in the next five to ten years21. However, a growing socio-economic disparity remains a persistent concern despite the constant economic growth. Cambodia was among the 40 countries in the South that have had greater gains in Human Development Index (HDI) between 1990 and 2012 but its 2012 HDI of 0.543 remained below the average of 0.683 and 0.64 for countries in East Asian and the Pacific and the Medium HDI human development groups respectively22. In its report 2013, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) claimed that Cambodia could perform its HDI well if it has improved better access to maternity, education and fair redistribution since Cambodia‘s HDI average lost to inequality in life expectancy at birth (28.8percent), education (28.8percent) and income (20.3percent)23. Also, the income inequality appears to gradually worsen from year on year. The Gini coefficient rose from 0.35 in 1993/94 to 0.40 in 2004 and 0.43 in 200724 though the poverty rate was significantly reduced from 47percent in 1993 to 26percent in 201025. The economic disparity may have relations with a concentration of employment in urban areas and a loss of productive and residential lands by most of farmers due to economic and mineral land concessions26. By mid-2013, around 70percent of 558 factories were located in cities while nearly 20 percent was allocated to surrounding provinces27. Also, it is worthwhile to notice that most of Cambodians is farmers whose livelihood and sustenance depend on lands, therefore a loss of lands means a loss of productivity and labor in agriculture for many households, the main source of their income. Consequently, family livelihood puts hard on young workers in the cities, children of landless men. According to the NGO Forum on

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The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Cambodia Annual Report 2011 (Phnom Penh: UNDP, 2011), 4. 22 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 2013 Human Development Report: Rise of the South and Analysis on Cambodia (Phnom Penh: UNDP, 2013), 2. 23 Ibid. 24 Chandarany Ouch, Chanhang Saing and Dalis Phann, "Assessing China's Impact on Poverty Reduction in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region: The Case of Cambodia," (Phnom Penh: CDRI, June 2011), 10. 25 Serey Sok,"Asia Development Bank Predicted Cambodia's GDP Growth," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), September 4, 2013, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/news/social-economy/cambodian-economic-growth04092013044538.html. 26 According to the Cambodia Centre for Human Rights report, more than 8 million hectares of land concessions have been granted to 368 companies between 1994 and 2012. Titthara May, "China reaps concession windfalls," The Phnom Penh Post, April 4, 2012, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/ national/china-reaps-concessionwindfalls. 27 "Garment Factories and Supply Chains", sithi.org, accessed September 17, 2013, http://www.sithi.org/ temp.php?url=bhr/bhr_list.php&lg=.

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Cambodia, 173 cases in 200828, 236 cases in 200929 and 282 cases in 201030 were reported as unsolved and partly solved land disputes31. As a result, a share of agricultural labour dropped substantially from 51.4percent in 1992 to 29.6percent in 200932. BREAKTHROUGHS OF TRADITIONAL BARRIERS BY NEW TRENDS Recent social changes in areas of young demographics, new education and ICT bring optimism for the future of liberal democracy in the kingdom. These factors appear very likely to provide new opportunities for young Cambodians to expand their liberty and freedom spaces that are needed for demanding a more responsible government and an increasingly egalitarian society. While they are by nature dynamic, progressive and optimistic of the future, Cambodian youth are a new generation of better education and the ICT, making them distinct from their parents, the old generation. Cambodia is a country of young population. The National Institute of Statistics reported 70.4 percent of the total population in 2008 was younger than 35 years old33. By 2013, the CIA also estimated the country‘s old population of over 55 years old would stand at only around 8.8 percent34. These demographic trends show undoubtedly the pre-Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge generations gradually move to a margin of the society‘s structure and are slowly replaced by the post-Khmer Rouge baby boom, a dominant group of the young generation. These young Cambodians in the new generation have never personally shared experiences of the same societal events with the elderly people in the previous generation, making them innocent and less fearful of the past tragedies left by civil wars. Restoration and rejuvenation of the national education system amplify an emergence of young Cambodians as the majority group of the total population more meaningful. Immediately after

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Land Information Centre (LIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Disputes Occurring in Cambodia 2008 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2008), 1-2. 29 Land Information Centre (LIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Disputes Occurring in Cambodia 2009 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2009), 3. 30 Research and Information Centre (RIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Dispute Occurring in Cambodia 2010 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2010), 2. 31 The data provided by NGO Forum on Cambodian was not clear whether land disputes in the previous year were recounted in the following year or not but it seemed that cases in each year were new. Also, it is not least to notice that NGO Forum on Cambodia‘s reports did not represent the total land disputes in the kingdom, form many cases were suspected to be unreported. 32 Ouch Chandarany et al, Assessing China's Impact on Poverty Reduction in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region: The Case of Cambodia (Phnom Penh: CDRI, June 2011), 1. 33 "Population Census 2008," National Institute of Statistics (NIS), accessed April 01, 2013, http://celade.cepal.org/khmnis/census/khm2008/. 34 Ibid.

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the liberation of Phnom Penh in 1979, over 5,000 primary schools were reopened, more than 60 percent of school-aged children enrolled and around 21,000 teachers were recruited35. By 1982, the number of students and teachers rose greatly up to 1,503,000 and 37,000 respectively36. Until 1996, the quality of education became a priority for the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, so the national curriculum was standardized by increasing a length of general education from 10 years to 12 years37. As a result, this educational reform has been fruitful to the young generation of the post Khmer Rouge baby boom. That means every young population born after 1979 has been benefiting this new education system. Finally, a growing presence of the ICT takes place at the same time with a reversal of the demographic trends and the development of the national educational system. Computer desktops, laptops, notebooks, tablets and smart phones gradually gain their popularity among young students and workers, so do various types of social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and blogs. Among these social networking sites, Facebook is the most popular in Cambodia with a total of between 500,000 and 750,00038 users. This figure is expected to grow rapidly, especially among young people, since a growing internet market and its competitive price make the services more accessible and convenient. In 2012, the total number of internet users stood at around 2.7 million while 27 Internet Service Providers (ISP) got licenses for their nationwide operation39. A rate for an unlimited package of high speed internet (2 Mbps) decreased to as low as US$ 10 per month while a monthly fee for internet users having access through smart mobiles and modem subscriptions spent US$5 per 2 gigabytes40, an expense amounting to approximately 5.86 percent of the 2013 GDP per capita41. To sum up, the socio-cultural and eco-political barriers become less influential in preventing Cambodians from participating in politics. As mirrored from Cambodia‘s modern history, chains of dependency reinforced by Khmer ideologies have already been broken whereas the 35

Stephen J. Duggan, "Education, Teacher Training and Prospects for Economic Recovery in Cambodia," Comparative Education 32:3 (November 1996): 366. 36 Ibid, 367. 37 Royal decree No. NS-RKT 0796-52 dated on 26 July1996 on the General Educational System of 12 Years. 38 "Asia Marketing Research, Internet Usage, Population Statistics and Facebook Information," Internet World Stats, accessed November 11, 2013, http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia.htm#kh 39 The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication, The 2012 Annual Report (Phnom Penh: Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication, 2013), 30. 40 "Internet: ADSL, Mobile Internet and USB," Metfone, accessed June 2, 2013, http://www.metfone.com.kh/en/Services/Internet.4.aspx 41 The Economic Institute of Cambodia estimated a growth of the GDP per capita from US$ 945 in 2012 to US$ 1,024 in 2013. "Key Economic Indicator," Economic Institute of Cambodia, accessed November 11, 2013, http://www.eicambodia.org/

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current regime‘s slogans of legitimacy such as political stability and economic development appeared unlikely to successfully buy a loyalty and deference of Cambodian people and disengage them from politics. As can be seen below, all of the emerging factors may have had a close relationship with growing interests of politics and more political participation in recent years. Young and old, or rural and urban Cambodians showed their face to cast their ballots during the national election 2013 whereby the result of the election proved a turning point of the political landscape in the country. In the aftermath of the election result‘s announcement, demonstrations and strikes spread from the capital city, Phnom Penh, to other provinces. The streets have become tense than ever whereas social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs has been much busier than usual. THESIS OUTLINE This section introduces the 3 remaining chapters of the thesis. Chapter 2, ‗Theories and Frameworks of Research‘, summarizes the key pieces of literature and theories upon which this thesis is based, and ends up with a proposition of the theoretical frameworks of the research in order to contextualize the theories with the fact. Based mainly on theories proposed by Benedict R. O.‘ G. Anderson, Ernest Gellner, Samuel P. Huntington, Ted Robert Gurr, Benjamin Barber and Karl Mannheim as well as relevant case studies conducted by Halim I. Barakat (Kuwait and Jordan), Emma C. Murphy (Arab World), Denis J. Sullivan, Nadine Sika (Egypt), Ahmed Jdey (Tunisia), Asef Bayat (Iran), Johan Largerkvist (China), youth integration into the political institutions and increasing more public space are suggested as mechanisms to protect the public interest, to assure the stability of the political community and, in turn, to expand liberal democracy in Cambodia. This research paper bases on a quantitative method. A wide range of sources are extracted from the government, nongovernmental organizations, international organizations‘ reports, policies, strategies and statistics. Also, most of the necessary information for analyses of the research is greatly based on local newspapers and media that are published in both Khmer and English. Most of the sources are accessible on the concerned websites. Chapter 3, ‗Research Findings and Analysis‘, analyses each of proposed three hypotheses individually with the suggested models of the theoretical frameworks and describes findings based on data that is accessible on the internet. Three hypotheses are tested with the available sources of information whether they are correct or not, and to find out if there is any flawless with the theories and the proposed models of the theoretical frameworks. The findings show a 9

result of the applied theories into the phenomena that happened in Cambodia such as a measurement of the social issues with the theories, predictable consequences and potential mechanism for solving and preventing the problems. Some flawless theories are also evaluated based on the provided context of issues in Cambodia while the result of these findings also adds some reflection on the previous studies. Chapter 4, ‗Conclusion‘, summarizes findings, evaluation of the literature and contributions of the thesis to the development of Cambodia and a field of research. Final comments are also made in regards to constraints of the research including matters of a quantitative method and secondary data. Also, other issues occurring during the research such as the government‘s willingness in integrating youth at local rather than national levels and initiators of collective violence are suggested for further studies. Thus following researchers on the same theme may use both quantitative and qualitative methods as well as some primary data deemed to be necessary for better and increasingly convincible results.

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CHAPTER 2 - THEORIES AND FRAMEWORKS OF RESEARCH The public interest, one of the cornerstones assuring a stability of the political community, may be threatened either by malfunction of the political institutions or by changes in nature in relations between the institutions and popular forces. In other words, this can be simplified in three questions, who is the majority group of the population, what do they want and how do they work their demands with the state. Therefore, dramatic shifts in young demographics and a growing rate of literacy, the two main variables embedded throughout the literature, are believed to have impacts on a reversal of the current political order. In turn, this new order necessitates changes in structures of the political institutions to reduce generational gaps and differences in ideologies, so the interest of the majority, if not the public interest, is likely to be insured. Also, an alternative to the state institutions is necessary to be provided and expanded in order to minimize generational confrontation and to avoid severe forms of collective violence. In this chapter, I summarize the major theories regarding young demographics and implication of their emergence as the major social forces on the existing political institutions and the political community as a whole. By assessing theories and some case studies in Indonesia, Tunisia and Egypt, another half of this chapter ends up with a proposition of the testing theoretical frameworks and a description of the methodology of the research on how these frameworks are tested in Cambodia‘s case study, Chapter 3. 2.1

INTRODUCTION

This introductory section briefs basic theories explaining why a stability of the political community is threatened and why this instability sometimes leads to collective violence. The public interest, one of the main pillars assuring a stable political community, is hard to be maintained without adaptability and autonomy of the political institutions. Consequently, its failure to represent the public interest sometimes contributes to growing political participation, either active or passive, through informal political structures while a discriminatory treatment of any particular group by the public institutions and a prolonged silent of passive contention may lead to severe forms of collective violence.

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POLITICAL COMMUNITY AND INSTABILITY Country refers to a political community with an overwhelming consensus among the people on the legitimacy of the political system42. In this sense, it might function smoothly without disruption in case within which leaders and citizens share a vision of public interests and traditions and principles as bases of the political community. Hence, the legitimacy of the political system is sustained and the political community becomes stable. Yet, the legitimacy of the political system usually does not last long unless, claimed Rousseau, rulers transform ―strength into right and obedience into duty‖43. In other words, the legitimacy of the regime is maintained by interdependent relations of rights and duties between rulers and their subjects. While some scholars believed state‘s legitimacy may depend on either democracy or state performance, others seemed to perceive that the latter sometimes prevails over the former. This means that, while democracy appears merely to give a presumption of the regime legitimacy at the first glance, only the state performance appears to prove the reality because the inability of the rulers to ―make democracy deliver‖ still possibly weakens the legitimacy of the democratic government44. Fukuyama argued that the authoritarian regimes still can buy loyalty of its citizens and, in turn, maintains its legitimacy if it is apparently able to provide precisely ―shared growth and broadly available public goods‖ to its people45. How can the government‘s performance be measured? The government‘s performance may be measured by achievement of either ―programmatic policies‖ or ―promises of direct benefits‖. Either of them might be used as exchangeable bases for evaluating the quality of the state bureaucracy depending on their achievement and circumstances, for it is a priority of voters that matters and only the latter may decide whether their urgently necessary needs or long-term perspectives are prioritized on the top political agendas of a newly elected government. On the contrary, political parties might not be free to choose whatever they want because their ability to keep their promises with voters costs their supports and legitimacy as the ruling party of the government.

42

Samuel P. Huntington, Political order in changing societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 1. Huntington, 9. 44 Francis Fukuyama, "Democracy and the Quality of the State," Journal of Democracy 24:4 (October 2013): 5. 45 Fukuyama, 6. 43

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Yet, Fukuyama noticed less visible long-term outputs of the policies and an unfair access to state resources as challenges of both political parties and voters46. On one hand, ―programmatic policies‖ appear likely to be an abstract ideology making its achievement less visible and convincible to voters, therefore ―promises of direct benefits‖ like job, foods and medical care are more easily to mobilize voters47. On the other hand, some political parties might be unable to keep their promises with their supporters if they have not won elections, so unfair access to state resources such as recruitments and promotion of civil servants based on political connections rather than merit needs to be avoided during elections and a government‘s mandate to ensure a fair play for all parties48. However, Samuel P. Huntington argued the stability of the political community depends not only upon the ―scope of support‖ by the social forces but also its ―level of institutionalization‖ whereby adaptability and autonomy are greatly important49. Generational gaps are one out of three suggested measures Huntington uses to evaluate the adaptability of the political organization and procedures. According to Huntington, chronological gap and generational gap become less apparent in the later days of founders‘ careers rather than in early days of their organization foundation, therefore this situation produces tension between the first leaders of the organization and the next generation immediately behind them because both of them shared significantly different organizational ―experiences‖50 . Yet, his argument appears to solve contemporary problems of the generational gaps in some countries only partly, for the generational gaps may exist not only among the different generations in the political parties and the government but also between either the regime or the ruler and the subjects as well. In addition, the autonomy, argued Huntington, involves in the relations between social forces and political institutions whereby the political organizations and procedures do not just represent interests of any particular group but also assure any branch of political institutions independent of other branches and other social groupings51. For instance, the judiciary must be independent of the legislature and the executive as well as of any particular group in the society, businessmen or peasants.

46

Fukuyama, 11. Ibid. 48 Fukuyama, 12. 49 Huntington, 12. 50 Huntington, 14-15. 51 Huntington, 20. 47

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POLITICAL PARTICIPATION Political participation commonly concerns demands of voters and supplies of the government as well as their wish to fulfillment of citizen rights and duties. According to the ―dual motivation theory‖ by Cambell, despite their wish to fulfill citizens‘ right to vote, voters also admire to influence the national policy adapted from various political agendas of highly competitive parties by casting their ballots52. Yet, when people know their participation in politics in any form including voting may hardly change anything in any significant way and may indeed face repression from the authoritarian rule, their passive contention against the government‘s performance such as low voter turnout, argued Sika, is also an alternative form of participation in politics by voters53; but a prolonged silent of any particular marginalized group occasionally leads to a silent revolt. ―[I]t means that accepting everything, following everything, enduring everything in silence for months and years, to finally dare to pick oneself up and stand tall‖, cautioned Simone Weil54. Bayat argued ―most‖ of the new urban poor such as unemployed and other marginalized groups struggle for a direct response to their ―immediate concerns‖, ―many‖ poor people live on the ―dream of a better future‖55. Yet, during a time of crises, Both Ronald Aminzade and Asef Bayat appeared to echo some invariable basic needs such as employment and means of subsistence demanded in the mass social movements in the mid-19th century in France and the late 20th century in Iran. In this sense, subjects of the demands in informal political structures remained generally unchanged. Nevertheless, Amizade and Bayat limited their scope of studies to merely certain groups of people and neither of them specified what circumstances socially, economically and politically defined might have an influence on people‘s choice between immediate concerns and their long-term expectation. Given that most Asian people including young and old whose socio-cultural believes and values belong to ―collectivism‖56, 52

Nadine Sika, "Youth Political Engagement in Egypt: From Abstention to Uprising," British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 39:2 (2012): 182. 53 Sika, 181. 54 Simone Weil, La condition ouvrière (Paris: Gallimard, 2002); cited in Ahmed Jdey, "A History of Tunisia, January 14, 2012: The End of a Dictator and the Beginning of Democratic Construction," Boundary 39:1 (spring 2012): 70. 55 Asef Bayat, Street Politics, Poor People's Movements in Iran (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 159. 56 Many countries in African, Asia and Latin America are identified as having attributes associated with a culture of ―collectivism‖ whereas individuals, who have believes and attitude inspired by this culture, are called ―collectivists‖. To number a few of attributes of collectivism, collectivists pay much attention to ―ingroup‖ than ―outgroup‖ members, think of ―groups‖ as the basic unit of analysis of society, and greatly concern about what happens in the ―ingroup‖ and to ―ingroup‖ members, and much emphasize on hierarchy within ―ingroup‖ members. All of the above mentioned attributes well fit with Asian cultures where family members, the so-called

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they share the same sort of long-term perspectives in time of peace and stability, the future. Thus, young people think of their potential works after schools whereas parents mostly worry of their children‘s future. When demands for fair distribution of wealth are usually not met by supplies of the government, popular participation in politics may not necessary happen through institutional frameworks of the state since they lose their trust towards the institutions in representing the public interest, or the interest of the majority. Citizens struggle with their representatives, politicians, for expanding and protecting spaces for liberty and equality since the latter help them to claim their essential humanity and to promote an increasingly egalitarian society. P. Bourdieu strongly believed this elite minority in the globalization era cover themselves with democracy to legitimize their special interests at the expense of the public interests, for they lost their ―moral courage‖ and ―social vision‖57. Likewise, Benjamin Barber called the representative democracy ―thin‖ and likened it to ―politics as zookeeping‖, in the sense that citizens are comparable to ―animals in a zoo waiting for their keepers to decide their lives‖58. Ronald Aminzade argued that protests and other sorts of informal self-help groups by the new urban poor take place when the public institutions were not any kind of help for solving their problems59. Thus, public space is not only an alternative besides the state institutions but also the last final ground any marginalized group is eager to protect and take control for a protection and promotion of their interests. 2.2

WHY IS YOUTH IN POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AN ATTRACTIVE OPTION FOR OUR COMTEMPORARY DEMOCRACY?

A growing activism of youth catches attention of both scholars and policy makers since the latter perceive their presence in politics may accompany with them changes. Some scholars believed that the main reason behind this optimism seems that youth are distinguishable from their previous generation by their personality traits such as dynamism and progressivism. ―ingroup‖ members, mutually depend on each other socially and economically. In other words, parents invest their hardly earned income into their education not only because of love but also because of their perceived dependencies in their later lives, especially after their retirement. Harry C. Triandis, Christoper McCusker and C. Harry Hui,"Multimethod Probes of Individualism and Collectivism," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59:5 (November 1990): 1006-08. 57 P. Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998); cited in Frederick Powel, The Politics of Civil Society: Neoliberalism or Social Left? (Great Britain: University of Bristol, 2007), 23. 58 Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participator Politics for a New Age (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1984); cited in Frederick Powel, The Politics of Civil Society: Neoliberalism or Social Left? (Great Britain: University of Bristol, 2007), 16. 59 Ronald Aminzade, "Breaking the Chains of Dependency: From Patronage to Class Politics, Toulouse, France, 1830-1872," Journal of Urban History 3 (August 1977):505.

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However, many scholars also noticed social, economic and political conditions within which youth are influenced may be a better subject of studies rather merely understanding youth in terms of age gaps. Yet, one might claim both personal and environmental factors of youth make them who they are and distinguish them from ―others‖. PERSONAL FACTORS OF YOUTH Personal factors of youth mainly refer to traits that personally characterize youth either physically or psychologically. Remarkable characteristics of their personality traits might not only shed a light on our doubt why distinctive features make them different from ―others‖ in terms of their dynamic activism and their aspiration and why some scholars conceive youth are more willing to participate in politics than their counterparts, the elderly. All answers might lie in what approaches are used to understand youth. Thus, it might be logical to begin with analyses of pure personality traits of youth and its interaction with socio-economic and political conditions. Youth may be identified in terms of both their physical and psychological development. As an anthropologist, Benedict R. O‘ G. Anderson understood youth as a transitional phase of lifearc from childhood to mature adulthood60 and noticed their attitude and behaviours of ―dynamism, progress, self-sacrificing idealism and revolutionary will‖61. Though he agreed with Anderson, G. Standley Hall cautiously noticed ―inner‖ formation of adolescents‘ volatile identity because this volatility might inevitably trouble themselves and a wider society62. However, other scholars examined adolescents‘ changes in attitudes and behaviour by putting their biological and psychological development under economic, social and political constraints. ―It is not the relations between ages which explain the changes or stability in society‖, argued Sheila Allen63, ―but changes in societies which explains the relations between ages‖. By referring to Allen‘s claim, Bill Osbergy strongly agreed distinguishable features of youth from other life stages were mainly sharped by ―wider social, economic and political structures‖64. In this regard, Navtej Dhillion and Tarik Yousef perceived youth as 60

Benedict R. O'G. Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1972), 3. 61 Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 109. 62 G. Standley Hall, Adolescence: It’s Psychology and Its Relation to Physiology, Anthology, Sociology, Sex, Crime and Education (1904); cited in Bill Osgerby, Youth Media (London; New York: Routledge, 2004), 7. 63 Sheila Allen, "Some Theoretical Problems in the Study of Youth," Sociological Review 16:3 (1968):321; cited in Osbergy, p.8. 64 Ibid.

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being in a state of ―waiting‖ to be mainly shaped by the three interdependent institutions, ―education, employment and family formation‖65. For instance, state is responsible to provide them educational skills necessary to prepare them for meaningful employment, so they can earn income for their independent lives, purchase homes and eventually get marriages, which is a key milestone in the transition from youth to ―fully mature‖ adulthood. Anderson called youth in colonies the ―first‖ generation of a European education, ―marking them off linguistically and culturally from their parents‘ generation‖66. Some of them were exposed to both a modern educational system and culture of the West while they were also bilinguists. Thus, both modern education and their bilingual capacity provide them precious means to absorb ―learnable-from‖ experience through studies of the West and World histories67 and, in turn, help them well understand a ―prime cause‖ of difficulties through which some members of a society are passing from diverse cultural dimensions68. It is worth to notice that Anderson seemed to be optimistic that youth break traditional chains of dependencies in the patron-client system by mainly basing his argument on education. In this sense, an increasing number of the literate young and their growing knowledge mark not only a generational gap of political tendency between the older generation (parents and old politicians) and the younger generation (children and young population) but also inspire them to participate even more in politics than their previous generation. However, in order to avoid generalization of Anderson‘s argument, two experiments are considered to understand children-parents political socialization whereby their levels of education differ really matter their political behaviours and attitudes, and whether political education at schools significantly inspire pupils to actively participate in political affairs of their country. Some Western scholars generally considered family‘s political socialization as one of many factors inspiring political behaviours and attitude of children. The1965 study by the Survey Research Centre of the University of Michigan on a national sample of American high school seniors appeared very likely to be affirmative with the general presumption. According to the findings, when both parents had the same party preference, 76% of students agreed with their

65

Navtej Dhillion and Tarik Yousef, Generation in Waiting: The Unfulfilled Promise of Young People in the Middle East (Washington, DC: Brooking Institute Press, 2009); cited in Emma C. Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," Mediterranean Politics 17:1 (2012):9. 66 Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 109. 67 Ibid. 68 Albert Breton and Raymond Breton, "An Economic Theory of Social Movements," The American Economic Review 59:2 (May, 1969):203.

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parents; but, when both parents divided their preference between Republican and Democratic parties, 39 % of the students agreed with their mother, 37% with their father and 24% with neither69. Though this figure did not show a significant force of mothers in establishing a child‘s party identification, the result was decisive in both cases of Democrat and Republic mothers. Similar studies conducted in French, Swedish and Norwegian societies reported similar results of ―high intergenerational agreement‖ between children and parents towards the same party though the highest frequency was found in the United States, followed by Sweden and Norway, then France70. Yet, following researches found the early assumption is malleable because the result may change if other circumstances such as levels of education from both parents and children are considered. At the American University of Beirut in 1969 and 1970, Halim I. Barakat conducted a survey on Kuwaiti and Jordanian students, who came from different family backgrounds in terms of their family education and incomes, to find out how parents influence their children‘s political behaviours and attitudes. It is not least to notice that Kuwait started suddenly to experience much more rapid social changes in the last few decades and a great majority (88 percent) of Kuwaiti parents had less than some secondary education whereas social changes in Jordan earlier took place but at a comparatively slower pace and a great majority of Jordanian parents had secondary and university education71. The result of this study convincingly found that generational gap in different levels of education between parents and children render parents less influential in transmitting their political behaviours and attitudes to their offspring72. In overall, 62.5% of Kuwaiti students from both sexes politically deviated from their parents whereas merely 42.5 % of girl and boy Jordanian students politically identified themselves to neither of their parents73. Yet, as this study has not covered a reciprocal inspiration of political socialization between parents and children, one might reasonably ask whether their children may inspire their parents‘ political behaviours and attitude, supposed their parents have less influence on their children because of their lower level of education and that children-parents ratio of dependency remains high in an extended family. 69

Halim I. Barakat, "Generational Gap and Family Political Socialization in Three Arab Societies," in Political Youth, Traditional Schools: National and International Perspectives, ed. Byron G. Massialas (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972), 218. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid, 216, 224. 72 Ibid, 215. 73 Ibid, 218-219.

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Moreover, another separate study conducted in 1968 and 1969 founded formal political education at schools only fostered and maintained a cognitive development of students but has not directly and simultaneously contributed to their political participation. Russell F. Farnen and Dan B. German conducted their study on students aged between 9 and 20 years old in five countries including West Germany, the United States, England, Sweden and Italy and used three scale of measurement such as political legitimacy, dissident/opposition and sense of efficacy in order to find out a close relationship of the political socialization at schools with students‘ behaviours and attitudes74. Students were asked to indicate whether they were studying or studied one or more courses of political science in terms of ―like civics, international relations, constitutions and government, etc.‖75 . The findings shown the political education curriculum at schools has no significant impacts on students‘ behaviours and attitudes76. Indeed, the political courses have an impact on their cognitive development and, in turn, ―may or may not‖ have a ―latent‖ effect on their behaviours and attitudes in due course77. ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS OF YOUTH Environmental factors of youth refer to socio-economic and political situations that have the impact on their perception and behaviours towards political participation. It can be a result of pure influence of the situations or of its interactions with personality traits of youth. Beside education, some scholars particularly paid attention to mobilization and socialization, the most important motors facilitating the processes of interaction, which are supported by availability of new locus and new tools of communication. All of these factors may not just have effects on youth‘s values and taste through ―peer cultures‖ but also inspire theirs much higher when the environmental and the personal factors of youth interact mutually. Migration may give the young a chance to have more socialization among their peers and sometimes with others in higher classes contributing to their high level of aspiration. Asef Bayat appears to go further than Anderson whose claims particularly focus on education, for he thinks youth are distinguished from their parents, who live in traditional life course, not only by their education but also, more particularly, by their more mobilization that inspires

74

Russell F. Farnen and Dan B. German, "Youth, Politics and Education," in Political Youth, Traditional Schools, ed. Byron G. Massialas (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 161. 75 Ibid, 170. 76 Ibid, 171. 77 Ibid, 172.

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their aspiration and fascination of having more like ―others‖ 78. In his work titled Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran in 1997, Bayat studied a case of Iranian youth within which they migrated from their villages to the cities where they witnessed the modernclass lifestyle and, in turn, desired to be part of it79. However, Ted Robert Gurr shown that a mere exposure to a better way of life is unlikely to bring people‘s discontent with what they already had unless they think they have opportunities to attain it80. In this regard, W. G. Runciman illustrated that these chances can be perceived by a period of prosperity that breaks the circle between the poverty and conservatism making people aware of that possibility81 while Daniel Lerner noticed that, in order to gain more popularity in a popular period of time, ―unattainable hopes‖ given by political leaders to their people is enough to buy their believes of attainment82. Though he did not mention clearly which side he would take, Gurr‘s arguments could be implied that both Runciman and Lerner had reasons, and their claims provided a very probability of people‘s believes in attainment, which is a source of discontent, making Bayat‘s argument become less perfect in explaining how increasing aspiration and people‘s discontents have a close relationship with mobilization and socialization of different social classes. Ernest Gellner and Ted Robert Gurr agreed that ―increasing aspiration‖, a source of discontents, would lead to violence when people felt their shares in social revenues were unfairly distributed and so their tensions became intolerable. Unlike Gurr, Gellner felt pessimistic of society of perpetual growth where these ―intolerable tensions‖ normally took place due to increasing human mobilization and communication unless its ―economic development proceeded‖ constantly83; but he cautioned of discriminatory treatments between the ―privileged‖ and the ―underprivileged‖ as ―so acute‖ when their living are too far from other people in terms of the average growth, when compared to the differences between ―starvation and sufficiency‖ and then the ―sufficiency with more [,] or with fewer‖84. Like Bayat, Aminzade tends to be affirmative to an inspiring notion of ―peer cultures‖. In France, at the city of Toulouse, in the late 19th century when aristocrats and clergy‘s power 78

Bayat, 56. Ibid. 80 Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1970), 102. 81 W. G. Runciman, Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 23-24; cited in Gurr, 105. 82 Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society (New York: The Free Press, 1958), 330-331, 335ff; cited in Gurr, 94. 83 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford; Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 24. 84 Gellner, 109. 79

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was in decline due to their unwillingness and inability to provide basic services to workingclass groups, a growing number of public spaces such as cafés, pubs, social clubs, mutual benefit societies and labor associations made room for entertainment, friendship and self-help groups85. Such new public spaces became the centres of regularized patterns of interaction and were used as areas of respite from the struggle for survival. Such a new locus and their changing patterns of behaviours and attitudes towards traditional institutions were believed to significantly contribute to a break of dependency chains between the clientele and their elite patrons86. Beside the above new locus, new media appears to be an exclusively sole tool for young people. From a psychological perspective, concepts of young and new technologies in our contemporary society, argued Julian Sefton-Green, share ―similar teleological assumptions about growth, progression and development‖87. Their enthusiasm for curiosity, challenges, competition and progress matches together with new technologies that are used for realization of consumer industries‘ ambition, especially greater profits at a rocket speed. From socioeconomic perspective, an inseparable nature of youth and new technologies have already been nurtured by consumer industries since the latter has targeted them as potentially sizeable segment of markets since the early 19th century88. It is not least to notice that, while working youngsters profoundly dominated the markets during the ―jackpot‖ years of the 1950s-60s period and remained the largest group of a hard-earnings disposal in the 1970s and 1980s89, new media along with a development of new technologies and Internet appeared in a period of the 1980s-1990s for market expansion shortly following a declining confidence in local markets including the United States of America and Great Britain90. New media occasionally becomes a new tool for ―peer cultures‖. It may offer youth another new type of ―interactive‖ locus in the age of online societies. With facilitation of new technologies such as computers and mobile phones supported by digital codes and the Internet, both youth and early adults may socialize and enjoy their individual leisure through various software applications and new formats that are compatible for a wider range of

85

Aminzade, 503. Ibid, 502. 87 Julian Sefton-Green, "Introduction: Being Young in the Digital Age," in Digital Diversion: Youth Culture in the Age of Multimedia, ed. Julian Sefton-Green (London: UCL Press, 1998), 1-20; cited in Osgerby, 193. 88 Osgerby, 6-7. 89 Ibid, 9, 16-20, 26-31. 90 Ibid, 35, 194. 86

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delivery and storage platforms91. In addition, while some scholars seem to be more optimistic than others, Jon Katz believed that the digital world not only helps young people connect one another in becoming the citizens of the ―Digital Nation‖ but also provides them a new sense of ―political self‖92. Also, Murphy argued their interaction among peers through online communication by using new media to supplement the existing traditional networks leads to an emerging of ―patchwork identities‖ whereby young people have ―unique identities by mixing different styles and values drawn from the supermarket of opinions presented by increasingly diverse information and communication technologies‖93. However, neither personal nor environmental factors of youth may perfectly explain why their behaviours and attitudes lead to a presumption of a new generational class separated from others and how their emerging accompanies changes, often perceived as positive, when youth is not yet appropriately identified. Indeed, those elements might not cover complete characteristics of youth and, in turn, remain less effective in understanding exactly who else is better classified into ―youth‖. Karl Mannheim argued, as each phase of life arc is gradually continuous and the same changes shared by intergenerational groups keep going on, young people are possibly classified into a generational unit of youth in accordance to their socially, economically and politically shared experiences94. Indeed, wider groups of variable ages may feel they are still young because of the limits to their lives‘ opportunities that the government has never provided them, and of shared benefits of new media, internet, modern education and the same authoritarian rule. 2.3

SCOPES OF THE PAST AND CURRENT RESEARCHES

EMERGING YOUTH ACTIVISM IN POLITICS Social movements in our recent history have been marked by an emerging of young activists though origins of their appearance and their goals may be variable. Youth activism we may have never seen in the history has been fueled either by culture and personality traits of youth like in Indonesia or by socio-economic and political changes like in Tunisia and Egypt as we will see during the course of discussion in this section. Also, based on these ―learnable-from‖

91

Ibid, 193-196. Jon Katz, "The Rights of Kids in the Digital Age," Wired 4:7 (July, 1996):123; cited in Osgerby, 202. 93 Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 12; Osgerby, 204. 94 Karl Mannheim, "The Problem of generations," in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London: RKP, 1928), 288-290; cited in Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 15. 92

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experiences, those young people share their common desires to fulfill themselves with means of subsistence, to be freed from oppression and to challenge their leaders for the right direction of their country as it can be seen in the following. Indonesian ―peduma‖ (youth) play a significant role in the Indonesian independence. According to Anderson, the main reasons behind emergence of those Javanese young activists are explained perfectly by understanding a traditional classification of life arc among them into ―childhood, youth, maturity and old age‖ and Javanese traditions of ―hormat‖ referring, which refer to their respect to older people or anyone in higher social status95. Javanese male children of 6 years old at least traditionally pass out of their childhood to youth by a ceremony of circumcision; since then, their dependency is no longer submitted to their fathers but a ―guru‖ who prepares them for their full integration into a society96. By understanding such a tradition, Japan succeeded in mobilizing young Indonesians nationwide by recruiting the respectful elderly teaching the young for their physical and spiritual strength to fight against Dutch and British allies but these ideology projects have, in turn, awakened Indonesian young nationalists, pressing Japan to grant Indonesia‘s independence97. It is not least to notice that youth movements for Indonesian independence would have not happened without initiatives and leadership of small groups of well-educated and highly privileged ―peduma‖ in organized ways, clear plans and active networks98. Tunisia‘s revolution has impressed the world by a dynamic activism of youth as a result of changes in socio-economic and political conditions. By 2010, over 55 percent of the national population was below the age of 30 years99. The country‘s economy appeared to undergo an unparalleled trend with demographics and to harm some marginalized groups of the society more severely than others due to unfair distribution of economic growth. While an unemployment rate of the general population in 2010 varied between 14 percent and 17 percent for the official estimate and 24 percent for the unofficial one, highly skilled young individuals aged between 15 and 19 years were seriously hit by 44 percent100.

95

Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946, 3. Ibid, 3-5. 97 Ibid, 1-2, 26-27, 44, 50-51. 98 Ibid, 17-18. 99 Emma C. Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," Mediterranean Politics 16:2 (2011): 302. 100 Ahmed Jdey,"A History of Tunisia, January 14, 2011: The End of a Dictator and the Beginning of Democratic Construction," boundary2 39:1 (2012): 78; Monica Marks, "Youth Politics and Tunisian Salafism: Understanding the Jihadi Current," Mediterranean Politics 18:1 (2013): 110. 96

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Moreover, youth‘s hardship may have close relations with economic inequality among different classes and varying geographical locations, which were affected disproportionally. Between 1973 and 1981, 83.2 percent of the industrial investments in Tunisia were poured into the coastal areas whereas the remains of 16.8% were spread over the central-west, the northwestern and the southwestern regions where many social movements broke out and later spread across the country101. Also, while the richest 10 percent of Tunisians received a third of the gross domestic product (GDP), the poorest 30 percent got merely less than 10 percent and the remaining 60 percent of the population, mostly the middle class, gradually began suffering as well102. Thus, poor people, in particular the young unemployed, in those three regions were not beneficiaries of thousands of new factory and industrial centre projects but subservient to the people living in the coastal areas at the eastern part of Tunisia103. They were even excluded from access to vital areas such as drinking water, electricity, health care, infrastructure and economic opportunities104. Finally, Egypt‘s uprising was originated from sharp changes in socio-economic and political conditions, especially an unprecedented growing rate of the young population. The number of young Egyptians, who were aged between 15 and 35 years, stood at 44 percent of the total population in 2004105. By 2012, Egypt‘s young population under 30 years jumped to between 65 percent and 70 percent of the total106. According to the UNDP, Egypt was already among the countries in the region hit by a wave of new labour market entrants and growing youth unemployment varying between 16 percent and 39 percent by 2009107. This country was also trapped in its fragile economy with slow economic growth and wide fluctuation between 4.3 percent and 8.4 percent in the 1960s-1980s periods108, yet this situation appeared likely to prolong in the following decades, leading to a necessity of severe repressive measures of the government to silent the public outcry. The Egypt‘s authoritarian regime was also well-known for its neoliberalism and corruption, for some government senior officers had conflicting of interests between their private businesses and the national economic reforms, especially in the

101

Jdey, 84. Jdey, 77. 103 Ibid, 81. 104 Ibid, 76, 78. 105 Sika, 185. 106 Kate Nevens, "The Youth Are Revolting," Harvard International Review 34: 2 (2012): 45. 107 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), "The UNDP 2009 Report on Arab Human Development Report 2009: Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries"; cited in Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 9. 108 Denis J. Sullivan, "The Political Economy of Reform in Egypt," International Journal of Middle East Studies 22: 3 (August, 1990): 317. 102

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agriculture109. In the absence of effective solutions, the Egypt‘s uprising on January 25, 2011 was unavoidable. In brief, youth movements in Indonesia, Tunisia and Egypt show that either personality traits or socio-economic and political situations more or less have a close relationship with growing youth activism though this phenomenon may be greatly attributed to either of them disproportionally depending on situations in a definite place and time. While Indonesian ―peduma‖ was awakened by nationalism and ideology, an abrupt outcry of both Tunisian and Egyptian youth was mainly spurred by unmatched trends among dramatic shifts in young demographics, unhealthy economic growth and economic disparity. Unlike Egypt, a negligence of Tunisian youth in the inner regions in the west likely put Tunisia in very serious and irreparable situations economically, socially and politically. Also, when compared to Tunisia and Egypt, Indonesia‘s youth movements were more organized and active while youth movements in these two Arab countries were likely more passive and less organized at its early stages because of, perhaps, their passive contention against the authoritarian rules and repressive measures of the government. Yet, all the three cases of the youth movements share some common trends such as solidarity of youth within cross-cutting sectors and without geographical barriers while informal political structures seemed to be their preferred mode of political participation in the pre- and the post-independence and revolution periods. GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES AND EXISTING POLITICAL ORDER After uprisings, youth movements continue and streets remain tense. Most scholars including Mark, Jdey, Murphy, and Nevens seemed likely have a consensus on the reasons why protests remained present when an old regime (ancient régime) was already replaced by an interim government or a newly elected government. They appeared to agree that youth movements remain persistent because of the absence of trust between the new government and youth, different ideologies between the youth and their elderly political leaders as well as a centralized hierarchy of the state institutions. Either an interim or a newly elected government necessarily needs to build trust with the public including youth to affirm that the new regime in place is different from the previous one and does not represent interests of any particular group. In both Tunisia and Egypt, Ben Ali and Gamal Mubarak were thrown out of power and fled their countries. Yet, most core 109

Sullivan, 319-320.

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members of the old regime and parties remained unchanged. It appears that the old generation was not yet ready to give ways to the younger generation, who has not yet experienced how tasty power is, by pretending they were still young while the young, perhaps, conceived those old politicians as ignorant and incompetent. For example, soon after Ben Ali fled the country, Mohammed Ghannouchi, Ben Ali‘s Prime Minister, and Fouad Mebazaa, the speaker of the parliament, competed for the interim President110. Yet, both of them were either core members of Ben Ali‘s government and of the former ruling party, the Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique (RCD). Consequently, in order to response to protests‘ demands and to show a sincerity to the revolutionaries, they resigned from the RCD to put clear water between themselves and the former structure of power while some senior officers close to Ben Ali including the head of presidential security, General Ali Seriati, and the interior minister, Rafik Belhaj Kacen, were arrested and a committee for investigation into corruption and asset-collecting of the former President and his family was also set up111. Despite their attempted separation from the previous regime, most of political elites in the old regime (ancient régime) and bourgeoisie in most coastal areas of Tunisia including Tunis, Sfax, Sahel, Jerba, Nabeul and Hammamet remained in power to defend their interests and businesses while the revolutionaries, mostly made up of youth, were excluded from decision-making bodies and processes112. Another noticeable reason behind perpetual youth movements may be differences in ideologies between the young population and their elderly leaders. Murphy claimed these differences pose on both conflicting interests and perception113. In other words, both in Tunisia and Egypt, youth continued to precede their demands for employment and fair economic growth since they were underrepresented and so their needs became unmet. In Egypt, while these young revolutionaries were indeed replaced by the elderly to fulfill positions in the decision-making bodies and processes in the government and opposing parties, some of them were discredited and kicked off by the military114. Also, both Indonesian and Tunisian politics still reflect well-known figures of an early generation.

110

Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," 302. Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," 303. 112 Jdey, 85. 113 Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 11, 18. 114 Neven, 46-47. 111

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Sukarno and Hatta were already active in Indonesia‘s politics in the 1930s115 while Maya Jribi and Beji Caid Essebi were politically active in Tunisia‘s politics in the 1980s116. Finally, participation through the formal political structures seems not to reflect political perception and action of youth. According to Murphy, young and old generations are not only different in what they think but also in how they work, especially how the state institutions interact with their people in terms of policy feedback117. In the wake of the 1944 Koiso Declaration, the Gerakan Rakjat Baru was found under leadership of Sukarno, Hatta and other old service members, while young Indonesians thought this institution was less effective and slowly moved towards Indonesia‘s independence; therefore they tried to promote youth movements nationwide and eventually their informal political group, the Angkatan Baru (―New Generation‖), was established to challenge and lobby the formal political structure of their older generation118. Also, Tunisian youth preferred some looser forms of ―youth-friendly civil society networks‖ like i-WATCH and Doustourma (―Our Constitutions‖)119 whereas some young Egyptians chose to work out their demands through semi-formal political structures such as non-governmental organizations and associations to lobby the national policy120. To them, these semi-formal and informal political structures appeared to be more flexible and approachable compared to the state institutions. In short, generational detachment of youth from the public institutions keeps a distance between the elderly elite politicians and their young population. In Indonesia, Tunisia and Egypt, young people were not incorporated into decision-making bodies and processes of the state institutions while a prolonged situation of their marginalization from a wider society appeared to gradually increase intergenerational tension and sometimes political violence. Thus, unless the elderly politicians build up trust among their young population and ensure their interests are included, a cycle of political struggles in our recent past may repeat again. SECTORS OF YOUTH PARTICIPATION When slow economic growth and unfair distribution of wealth prolong for years, social outrages may break out from any particular geographical location and then gradually spread

115

Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946, 56-57. Marks, 110. 117 Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 11, 18. 118 Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946, 44, 50-51, 56-57. 119 Marks, 111. 120 Neven, 47. 116

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nationwide unless the government satisfies people‘ demands. During this difficult time, it seems likely people share their needs in common. While Fukuyama concerned political parties are not easy to decide whether ―programmatic policies‖ or ―promises of direct benefits‖ are better prioritized in their political agendas or the government policy121, Bayat argued, during such a time including economic crises, ―most‖ of (new urban) poor like the urban unemployed and other marginalized groups struggle for a direct response to ―their immediate concerns‖ but merely ―many‖ poor people live on their ―dream of better future‖122. Yet, Bayat has not yet covered the details on what circumstances people are more likely to ask for long-term outcomes than the short-term ones. It seems that people most often prioritize foods and other means of subsistence for themselves and their family before their dreams of freedom, liberty and also, perhaps, the future of their children during time of crises but they are more likely to expect of sustainable and long-term development rather than merely foods in time of peace and stability. Yet, this generalization may be unsuitable with youth‘s personal factors because the young appear to have higher aspiration and expect even more needs than the elderly. During a time of crises or transition, people in Tunisia and Egypt appeared to share their common desires notwithstanding their income levels and their generational gaps though they may have different interpretation of their needs. Both Egyptian youth and adults across all sectors and classes fought for the same goals under a commonly shared slogan ―food, freedom and human dignity‖123. In Tunisia, the poor needed breads and drinking water while the middle class and the rich begun to feel suffering from economic slowdown, inflation and repression of the government on their rights and freedom124. Also, unemployed fresh graduates and worker unions demanded for employment whereas teachers, lecturers, lawyers, doctors and businessmen no longer traded political stability for dubious economic growth but freedom, liberty and dignity125. However, problems regarding a protection of the majority interest sometimes cannot be solved due to a conflict of interests with the elite minority. Though the Egyptian government has committed to economic reforms since the late 1980s, its pace was really slow, if not failed, by leaving the country‘s economy in fragile and unstable conditions due to a lack of 121

Fukuyama, "Democracy and the Quality of the State," 11. Bayat, 159. 123 Sika, 186, 189-190. 124 Jdey, 83-84; Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," 301. 125 Ibid 122

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political wills and a strong leadership126. Some senior government officers had conflicting interests between the national economic reforms and their private businesses, and many ministries including the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Industry and Ministry of Economy and Finance competed with each other to grasp their power over a fix of price and export quota for most of the agricultural products whereas Mubarak, the Egypt‘s President at the time, had no willingness to solve the problems for autonomy and stability of the state institutions127. Like Egypt, while political elites and bourgeoisies mostly in the coastal areas of Tunisia took care of both decision-making bodies and procedures, the young revolutionaries were excluded and, in turn, had no influence on their country‘s future direction, for the ruling classes were fierce in defending their acquired powers and personal interests128. Therefore, the interests of both Tunisian and Egyptian youth were not only threatened by the politicians but also by businessmen. MEANS OF YOUTH PARTICIPATION Some scholars like Barber, Murphy, Aminzade and Bayat agreed public space provides an alternative platform outside the state institutions. Some informal groups emerge from a growing presence of a new locus such as cafés, bars, pubs and other entertainment places where group members build up their trust among themselves easily and, in turn, discuss openly a wide range of topics among their peers by basing on a mutual trust129. For example, during the later years of the Dutch era in the late 1920s, a very small number of Indonesian elite students from the Law Faculty and the Technical Institute in Djakarta and Bandung established informal groups among them in order to discuss about current political situations and their country‘s future130. Since their plan was not only for students in the universities and other higher education institutes, educated young Indonesians gradually propagated their messages and information to other young Indonesian groups and the general population in mobile and remote areas of Indonesia noticeably in the 1930s and 1940s131. Moreover, Internet appears to be a modern tool that can be used to promote political engagement and to mobilize people for support of any particular political action. Maden, Macgill and Smith argued more teens treat internet as a ―venue for social interaction‖ where 126

Sullivan, 317. Sullivan, 323-328. 128 Jdey, 85. 129 Aminzade, 503. 130 Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946, 17-18. 131 Ibid, 26-27. 127

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they share their creations such as photos, videos and information, and interact each other regularly132. Wellman also claimed this socialization spurs ―networked individualism‖133 through what Jon Katz called the ―peer culture‖134. Some social networking sites such as Facebook and blogs greatly play significant roles in sharing information and rallying youngsters for changes. Facebook and blogs may be used for different purposes and produce different shapes of consequences. For instance, Facebook was particularly used to mobilize popular forces from all across sectors and throughout the country, leading ultimately to Tunisia‘s revolution on January 14, 2011 followed by Egypt‘s uprising of January 25, 2011135, but the uprisings would not happen without supports of faceto-face based networks among group members. However, it does not necessarily mean blogs are less useful than Facebook. The blogs likely appeal to the general public and shape the public opinion by its particular contents written by bloggers. In other words, it may depend on purposes of usage whether Facebook or blogs appear to be more effective and fruitful for a particular action such as in a case of China where blogs are the most popular means for gradual reforms. In China, blogs seem to effectively represent social norms and shape state norms by its particular focus on socio-political oriented issues. Out of 231 million bloggers in 2010, equivalent to 55 percent of China's total internet population136, merely a small segment of the blogosphere, which was made up of the intelligentsia and the grassroots in the scenes, defined their writing about political and social affairs and made the fruits of their works known to a wider audience137. On the contrary, most of young bloggers, very often students at college and middle schools, had their blog content responded to their peers‘ attention such as love relations and lifestyles whereas middle-life people, who were aged between 30 and 50 years, made a majority of "checking out from the Internet"138. In other words, only a small number of bloggers, most of them is very likely at their fully mature adults , has a greater influence on the public opinion in China and, in turn, the social norms against the state norms while youth, 132

Meredith Conroy, Jessica T. Feezell and Mario Guerrero, "Facebook and Political Engagement: A Study of Online Political Group Membership and Offline Political Engagement," Computers in Human Behavior 28 (2012): 1535. 133 Ibid. 134 Osgerby, 202. 135 Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," 300; Sika, 186. 136 Johan Largerkvist, "The rise of online public opinion in China," China: An International Journal 3:1(2005):119-130; cited in Johan Largerkvist, After the Internet before Democracy (Bern: Peter Lang AG, Internaitonal Academic Publishers, 2010), 67, 70-71. 137 Largerkvist, After the Internet before Democracy, 72-73. 138 Ibid, 71, 73-74.

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late adults and elderly people tend to be receivers rather than delivers but, perhaps, active audience. China‘s case shows no matter how small the number of activists and what ages they are, youth, early adults and late adults possibly share the same generational unit and work together to shape the government‘s policy from various dimensions. However, either Facebook or blogs per se may not mobilize people en masse to engage in political activities without support of face-to-face networks. Yet, the on-the-scene witness and investigation play important roles in making uses of the social media more effective in challenging and changing the state norms. While some academia and intelligentsia use blogs to share their research to the public in general, ordinary people, mostly the middle-class urbans, combine uses of blogs with concepts of citizen journalism to mirror many sensitive issues existing in the Chinese society but uncovered by traditional media. Hence, when either Facebook or blogs are exploited in combination with citizen journalism, perhaps as a result of loss of trust in state-controlled media or less investigative coverage of traditional media, netizens become more mobile than ever and any individual can shape either social norms or state norms to a large extent. In this sense, any local citizen journalist, who is really fond into a particular topic of sensitive issues including corruption, environment and other issues of social injustice, or who witnesses an incident on a scene, may report this event in a real time from different angels with or without investigation in depth. 2.4

KEY THEMES OF THE LITERATURE

Most prominent scholars such as Fukuyama and Barber agreed with Rousseau that either democratic or authoritarian governments can buy a loyalty of its citizens with the public interest. Notwithstanding it is a matter of weak institutionalization or declining supports of the social forces, a failure of the state institutions to guarantee at least the majority interest leads to instability of the political community and sometimes collective violence due to a loss of the public‘s trust in the state institutions and, in turn, their swap to informal structures for selfsatisfactory justice. Huntington identified inadaptability and absence of the autonomy of the institutions as the main reasons behind a malaise of the society and political violence but either of them shares the same route cause, generational gaps between elderly political leaders and their young population. Generational gaps have impact not only on a smooth functioning of the state institutions but also regular relations between the state institutions and the social forces. Anderson‘s and 31

Gellner‘s arguments provide an insight into how dramatic shifts in young demographics and the growing number of literacy cause generational gaps and sometimes intolerable tensions between the included old generation in and the excluded young generation from both decision making bodies and processes of the institutions. They share different ideologies, ways of works and interests, so all of these situations eventually lead to a loss of trust of the young people and their decision to swap the political institutions for public space as their alternative means of protecting their interests. Yet, in some cases, their option for informal structures may be voluntary due to its flexibility and approachable platforms. Distinctive characteristics of youth such as different societal experiences, personality traits and better education make the existing political order for the old generation inapplicable for the young generation. According to the theory of the ―generational unit‖ by Karl Mannheim, people can be classified into different generations due to their separate societal experiences, in the sense that the past social experiences of the old generation is unlikely to affect political behaviours and attitudes of the young generation. Youth are characterized by enthusiasms, dynamism and progressivism, claimed Anderson, while conservatism is shared among elderly people. Also, they are exposed to a new curriculum of modern education including ICT and foreign languages, and sometimes have higher levels of education when compared to the previous generation. These factors not only demarcate the young from the elderly but also give them more opportunities to inspire their elderly parents and friends to get involved in politics according to the theory of ―peer cultures‖, which were emphasized by Eisenstadt, Katz and Murphy, and also affirmed by Barakat in his recent studies. Behind modern education and personality traits of youth, mobilization and socialization sometimes become influential motors fueling higher aspiration of young people. More migration and a growing presence of the ICT contribute to ―increasing aspiration‖ and facilitate political mobilization. Based on a variable of higher levels of education, these young people not only influence the old generation, especially their parents, in terms of political behaviours and attitudes but also mobilize their friends for political engagement. As a consequence, a generational detachment from political institutions and limited public space for recourses may provide more room for prolonged passive discontents and silent revolts while its scale may sometimes be unprecedented. Across the literature, case studies in Indonesia, Tunisia, Egypt and China shed a light into how problems of generational gaps can be solved effectively for a stable society. Youth 32

integration into decision making bodies of the state institutions and more public space are the main scenarios that can be learnt from the above case studies. Their integration into the state institutions help reduce generational gaps and differences in ideologies between the elderly political leaders and their young population, for these institutions become approachable to hands of the young people and popular confidence on its roles in representing the public interest is assured. Also, more public space sometimes provides an alternative outside the hierarchically-centralized state structures, since civil society, social media and protests give a more flexible means to any marginalized group in challenging and changing state norms. On the top of that, Johan Largerkvist shares an insightful impression that social media can become a future and persistent platform of public space even in authoritarian countries like China. Conciliation between the state norms and the social norms, and a favorable environment for businesses and investment are the main reasons making a complete censorship on the internet by the Chinese Communist Party impossible. Yet, like China‘s case, many experiences in Tunisia and Egypt told that a virtual community alone cannot work to challenge the state without any interaction with a real community. A matter of trust on Facebook necessitated young Tunisian and Egyptian revolutionaries to mobilize their supporters through face-to-face based networks while blogs run by intelligentsia and the grassroots in China would not work and have impacts on the state norms without reports of on-the-scene witness and investigative journalism on the hot spots. It is worthwhile to notice that China is not the only country that has been facing this new challenge of the globalization but also other authoritarian countries that step their food into modernization and free market economy for maintaining the perpetual economy growth, a base of any authoritarian government‘s legitimacy. 2.5

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS OF RESEARCH

Cambodia‘s young population makes more than a majority of the total139. Therefore, a study into this new phenomenon is very useful to predict and measure what consequences will be accompanied, to find out what solutions are better suitable and effective and how they are implemented. Based on the above mentioned theories and case studies, this research hypothesizes:

139

"2008 National Census," the National Institute of Statistics; "The World Factbook," Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), accessed November 11, 2013, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/geos/cb.html

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1-A dramatic shift in young Cambodian demographics from the minority to the majority group of the total population leads to necessary changes in structures of political institutions; 2-Young Cambodians have better education, so they are not only more likely to participate in politics but also more capable of mobilizing peers and others for political engagement; 3-If they are provided an alternative to the formal political structures for getting involved in decision making processes, then a confrontation between the government and the young is reduced to minimum and a severe form of collective violence can be avoided. These hypotheses are theoretically framed and explained in diagrams as following. DRAMATIC SHIFTS IN YOUNG DEMOGRAPHICS AND CHANGES IN STRUCTURES OF STATE INSTITUTIONS The first hypothesis to be tested is that a dramatic shift in young demographics from the minority to the majority group of the population causes political institutions malfunction. Changes in the young demographics particularly bring an emergence of another population class, the so-called youth. This hypothesis is modeled mainly from theories made by Huntington, Anderson and Gellner. They believed that generational gaps and differences in ideologies contribute to the inadaptability and the absence of the autonomy of the public institutions, and, in turn, the generational confrontation in relations between the institutions and the young population. Thus, necessary changes in the organization of the political institutions help to overcome the malfunction of the institutions and maintain a stability of the political community, for the young are underrepresented and feel that their interests are neither protected nor promoted. Youth, as defined in the above section, refer to people of various ages who have similar personality traits and who share the same societal experiences. Benedict Anderson140, Ernest Gellner141, Ronald Aminzade142, Asef Bayat143 believed that personal factors such as progressivism, optimism and better education, and environmental factors including mobilization and socialization all contribute to their ―higher level of aspiration‖. Also, a

140

Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 109. Gellner, 24. 142 Ronald Aminzade, "Breaking the Chains of Dependency: From Patronage to Class Politics, Toulouse, France, 1830-1872" Journal of Urban History 3 (August 1977):502-503. 143 Bayat, 56. 141

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variable of societal experiences was used by Karl Mannheim144 to elaborate his arguments on the ―generational unit‖ or a generation of youth. Hence, all of these factors not only distinguish them from the older generation, who appear to be less ambitious and to live in a more conservative life course due to their past experiences in civil wars, but also necessitate the political institutions to changes their structures, which were once used with the old generation. In other words, types and amount of their needs as well as means and ways of their demands are all different. Besides their dynamism, progressivism and optimism, young Cambodians in the 1980s and thereafter remain the one who benefits from the educational standardization in 1996 and 2005, and who continues to share the contemporary authoritarian rule and social injustice in the country. Consequently, even late adults in the generations of the post-Khmer Rouge baby boom still perceive themselves as youth since they may feel their live opportunities have not been provided by the government yet. In this regard, a dramatic shift in young demographics means that Cambodia is a country of young population since more than a majority of the total population is under 35 years145. It will be more convincible with this hypothesis in the case whereby youth, a group of young Cambodians aged from 15 to 34 years, make up of a half or more of the total population. Evidence from Tunisia and Egypt prove growing young demographics challenge existing structures of the political institutions. Egyptian youth numbered 70 percent of the total population in 2012146 whereas Tunisian youth were recorded at over 55 % of the total population in 2010147. Yet, both of Tunisian and Egyptian youth were excluded from the government and the Parliament while elderly political leaders thought of their personal and partisan interests rather the interests of the young and the public148. Consequently, what the disintegration of youth in those cases left were intergenerational struggles and collective violence, the ―Arab Spring‖. Youth integration into the state institutions is necessary to insure the stability of the political community. This integration not only puts the institutions much closer and more approachable 144

Mannheim, 288-290; cited in Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 15. 145 "Population Census 2008," National Institute of Statistics (NIS), accessed April 01, 2013, http://celade.cepal.org/khmnis/census/khm2008/. 146 Nevens, 45. 147 Emma C. Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," Mediterranean Politics 16:2 (2011): 302. 148 Marks, 111; Neven, 46-47.

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to the people but also helps the institutions to represent the interests of the majority, if not the public interest. This claim is modeled from Huntington‘s argument that generational gaps, which cause inadaptability and the absence of the autonomy of the political institutions, can contribute to malfunction of the institutions but he particularly emphasized significant differences in organizational experiences between the first leaders of the organization and the next generation149. Yet, Murphy demonstrated the differences in ideologies also exist between the young population and their elderly political leaders, and, sometimes, lead to intergenerational struggles due to a conflict of interests between the elderly politicians of the minority and the young of the majority150. Due to their different perceptions and ways of work, intergenerational struggles take place among old and young political leaders, and, in particular, between elderly leaders and the younger population. The latter case is subjected of a study in details for this paper. Elderly political leaders in Egypt and Tunisia preferred to protect their personal151 and partisan152 interests rather than the public interests, especially the interest of the young people. Also, the young people in these two Arab countries were not only excluded from decision making bodies153 but also were marginalized from getting access to employment154 and subsistence155. Yet, though Egyptian youth were not seriously neglected like young Tunisians but this young group of 15 and 34 years old had already an enormous proportion of the total population by standing at more 70 percent while the young Tunisians from birth to 30 years merely stood at 55 percent. It seems that severe forms of the collective violence such as uprisings are not only attributed to a discriminatory treatment of the state institutions, which was argued by

149

Huntington, 12, 14-15. Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 11, 18. 151 Some Egyptian political leaders had a conflict of interests between their functions as senior officers of the government and their private businesses, causing the government policy of agriculture fail to be implemented effectively. Sullivan, 319-320. 152 Tunisian politicians had more interests in protecting investors at the expense of the poor people, especially the young unemployed, in some geographical areas, leading to disproportional distribution of welfare. Jdey, 77, 84. 153 In the aftermath of the revolutions, some young Tunisians and Egyptians were discouraged to be part of the formal political structures while many was forcefully excluded from the decision making bodies, for many positions in the government and the Parliament were mainly kept for the older political leaders, mostly of the old regime. Marks, 111; Neven, 46-47; Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," 302; 154 The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), "The UNDP 2009 Report on Arab Human Development Report 2009: Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries;" cited in Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 9; Jdey, 78; Marks, 110. 155 Sika, 186, 189-190; Jdey, 83-84; Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," 301. 150

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Gellner156, but also a prolonged marginalization of any particular group and an overwhelming proportion of this group in the total population. However, it is of importance to notice that ability of the political institutions to represent the public interest is the most important goal of this integration. In other words, the institutions do not favor any particular social grouping157. Huntington‘s concern is a real challenge in practice, for it does not necessarily mean that the integrated youth represent the public interest instead of individual or partisan interests. This case already happened in Egypt. In the late 2000s, when the National Democratic Party (NDP) and its leaders became more concerned with youth issues and created strategies to integrate them into the party leadership, the NDP youth were more interested in advancing their careers and getting access to state resources through the ruling NDP158. Hence, their political participation did not contribute much to the political reforms and the general interest, so youth concerns remained unsolved and political instability prolonged. In short, dramatic shifts in the young demographics make the existing political institutions inapplicable for the emerging class of the population, youth. Generational gaps and differences in ideologies between old political leaders and their young population have negative effects on both adaptability and autonomy of the institutions, for they have different values, principles and ways of work. Thus, these differences sometimes lead to a generational detachment from formal to informal political structures, a potential source of political violence. Indeed, the overwhelming number of the old politician representatives in decision making bodies of the public institutions results in an infringement of the majority‘s interests, the young. Yet, youth integration into the state institutions does not always lead to a protection of the majority‘s interests, or the public interests, but rather strengthens the fake quality of the representative democracy. This first hypothesis is briefly summarized in the figure 2-1 as following.

156

Gellner, 109. Huntington, 20. 158 Sika, 185-187. 157

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Figure 2-1 Model for Hypothesis 1

BETTER EDUCATION AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION The second hypothesis to be tested is that better education has an impact on the likeliness of the political participation and capacity of political mobilization. The importance of focusing on better education is particularly based upon Ernest Gellner‘s and Benedict R. O‘ G. Anderson‘s arguments. Gellner stated that advanced societies are unable to abandon education as long as their utmost goals are to maintain ―perpetual growth‖ while the sustainability of the advanced societies is assured by processes of communication and socialization159. Based on a variable of education, Anderson argued young generation of modern education has different behaviours and attitudes from the older generation including their parents since they are exposed to the outside world through their history, language and culture studies, and so better understand a ―prime cause‖ of hardship from variable angles160. Breton and Raymond Breton agreed with Anderson that understanding origins of problems gives more opportunities to these young people to get involved in politics161. The variable of better education has three consequences. First, this variable accentuates the theory of the generational unit. While they have never been exposed to the same societal experiences as the old generation, they even better understand socio-political issues due to their higher levels of education. In this case, the past societal experiences that are believed as the main obstacle to the political participation of the old people have no implication on young people‘s political behaviours and attitudes. Second, higher levels of education are also a 159

Gellner, 23-24, 31-32, 34-37. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 109. 161 Breton, 203. 160

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decisive factor of the political identity through the political socialization among family members and friends. People of higher education are believed to have an influence over the political behaviours and attitudes of the people of the lower education. Third, different levels of education also define various forms of the political participation and measures of their actions. Young people of higher education sometimes tend to choose a less confronting form of political engagement with the government where both old and young people of lower education appear likely to prefer some forms of direct confrontation and coercive measures. In a study conducted in 1972, Halim I. Barakat used levels of education as a variable to test whether political behaviours and attitudes are transferred among family members through political socialization. As a result, his study found that parents‘ lower levels of education render them less influential in transmitting their political behaviours and attitudes to their children but other effects are not subjected of his survey162. Therefore, this hypothesis is made on the assumption that the different levels of education within families have reciprocal effects among family members, in the sense that children with higher levels of education not only perceive and behave differently from their parents but also the latter appear likely to be influenced by the former. Moreover, Anderson‘s and Aminzade‘s studies in Java, Indonesia, and Toulouse, France, gave an insight into how the theory of the ―peer cultures‖ proposed by S.N. Eisenstad really worked. Yet, since the concept of the peer cultures was introduced even before the development of the information communications technology (ICT), it was mainly referred to face-to-face based networks among friends. Eventually, the ICT‘s implication on education is changes in the ways of learning, so schools are no longer the only places where children‘ political behaviours and attitudes are shaped. Jon Katz believed that internet-based socialization provides a new means for exploring and shaping one‘s political identity163 through information and knowledge they gather from their peers. Also, Murphy agreed with Katz that the political identity becomes less different from one another but the types of networking can be either internet or face-to-face based. Therefore, you people in the generation of better education appear very likely to have more influence over the political identity of their parents and friends through either traditional or modern modes of socialization.

162 163

Barakat, 215. Katz, 123; cited in Osgerby, 202.

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Furthermore, political participation takes place in various forms depending on either available options or acknowledge of possible consequences from a particular action. Sika believed passive contention is a reaction to restrictive measures of the government on people‘s social and political discourses outside the traditional political structures164. As the hypothesis contends that young people have access to better education disproportionally or do feel that some forms of participation are more effective than others in some circumstances, some of them chose to work out their demands with the government through direct confrontation such as protests while many prefer the least risky means such as civil society and social media. In other words, availability of a public space and the government‘s measures are the decisive factors in a selection of a particular form of political participation, and in turn, in scopes of the consequences such as political violence. In summary, a variable of better education gives an insight into why political behaviours and attitudes of the young people are less likely to be under an influence of familial socialization. Yet, they are more likely to mobilize old and young people of lower education alike for purposes of political engagement. This new generation is separated from the older generation, for the former has higher levels of education and, in turn, the greater number of literacy notwithstanding their differently shared societal experiences. Also, their means of political participation are not stuck to the traditional political structures but sometimes informal structures with variable forms depending on its availability at a particular time and place. Therefore, it is a misunderstanding of the elderly political leaders to judge this young generation of better education as the old generation living in a closed life course and frightening past, and also to presume their means of interaction with the government as the old means used by the previous generation. This second hypothesis is briefly summarized in the figure 2-2 below.

164

Sika, 181-182.

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Figure 2-2 Model for Hypothesis 2

PUBLIC SPACE: MEANS OF REDUCING GENERATIONAL CONFRONTATION AND AVOIDING SEVERE FORMS OF COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE The third hypothesis to be tested is that public space, an alternative to the state institutions, helps reducing generational confrontation between old political leaders and their young population to minimum, and to avoiding severe forms of collective violence. This hypothesis is modeled from arguments by Huntington, Gellner, Gurr and Barber that the public space is an indispensable supplementary in society of perpetual growth due to an ―increasing aspirations‖, and becomes an alternative when people lose a confidence on the public institutions in representing their interest. These arguments fit well with the situations of the young people, in the sense they come into struggles with elderly political leaders because of their higher aspiration fueled by their mobilization and effective means of communication, and hardly have trust in the elderly political leaders who dominate the decision making bodies of the state. Instability of the political community happens when the public interest is threatened. According to Gellner and Huntington, the ―scope of support‖ by social forces is in decline when people are unfairly treated and, in turn, the political community becomes unstable165. Yet, unfair economic treatment appears to be more prone to serious forms of collective violence than weak institutionalization, for its characters are hard to separate and difficult to notice. Indeed, the latter seems likely to be concerned with organizational problems of the state institutions like the generational confrontation while the former concerns its functioning 165

Huntington, 12.

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problems such as an unfair access to economic progress, a source of collective violence. Gellner warned of the discriminatory treatment by the state institutions between the ―privileged‖ and the ―underprivileged‖ as a source of severe forms of collective violence when economic conditions of the persons concerned are far more comparable with average levels of the economic growth and other people in general166. However, either confrontation between the government and its young population or severe forms of collective violence can be solved by keeping public space open as either a supplementary or an alternative to the state institutions. The public space is perceived as an alternative to the state institutions when the majority of the population, the young, loses their trust in the institutions. Some scholars, such as Benjamin Barber, argued that a failure of representative democracy to protect the interests of the majority contributes to a demand for more public space167 in variable forms. Some popular forms of public space include civil society, media and protests. Each form defines coercive levels of individual and collective actions whereas its selection may partly be relative to a matter of targeted consequences of actions and reactions. Generational confrontation partly refers to struggles between elderly political leaders and their young population. This confrontation may be a result of generational gaps in relations between the elderly leaders and their young population due to a failure of the state institutions in representing the majority interest, the young, if not the public interest. Whether it is a matter of inadaptability or of absence of its autonomy, various forms of the public space outside the state institutions are the alternative of any marginalized group, especially the young population, to work out their demands with the government. A choice of the public space as an alternative may be explained by exclusion of the young people from the state institutions, and a growing presence of various forms the public space itself. In the case of Indonesia, political leaders of the young generation decided to establish an informal political group, the so-called Angkatan Baru (―New Generation‖), in order to pursue their dream of immediate independence of Indonesia by lobbying and challenging the political institutions of the old generation and the colonial administration of Japan168. In

166

Gellner, 109. Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participator Politics for a New Age (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1984), XVii; cited in Frederick Powel, The Politics of Civil Society: Neoliberalism or Social Left? (Great Britain: University of Bristol, 2007), 16. 168 Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946, 44, 50-51, 56-57. 167

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addition, while some young Tunisians169 and Egyptians170 were excluded from decision making bodies by elderly political leaders of the old regimes, others chose youth-friendly civil society organizations such as i-WATCH and Doustourma (―Our Constitutions‖) for challenging and changing the national policy in their favor. These informal and semi-formal groups commonly communicated their members through either face-to-face networks by Indonesian youth in the late 1920s171 or internet-based networks by Egyptian and Tunisian youth in the 2010s172. Collective violence seems very likely to have close relations with functional rather than organizational malaise of the political institutions. In other words, a loss of the public trust in the institutions to represent the public interest is more likely to contribute to the collective violence. Gellner173 and Gurr174 agreed collective violence is inevitable since the ―increasing aspiration‖ is unavoidable in society of perpetual growth, which depends greatly on human mobilization and communication, but Gellner emphasized that different levels of the collective violence are defined by unfair and discriminatory treatments of the public institutions175. This increasing aspiration usually happens after a period of shape economic growth making people aware of breaking their traditional life circles176. In this sense, people must believe in their possible attainment to a better way of life even though their belief is impossible in reality177. Egypt‘s and Tunisia‘s uprisings provide good examples of unfair and discriminatory treatments. The treatments of the government in these two countries may likely have a close relationship with severe forms of the collective violence. Young Egyptians178 were marginalized and unfairly treated since their problems of unemployment and an improvement of their basic living were not tackled and the national economy remained fragile for decades due to conflicting interests of some senior government officers with the state reforms179. Even worse, Tunisian youth were not only unfairly marginalized but also neglected. Many young 169

Marks, 111. Neven, 47. 171 Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946, 17-18. 172 Murphy, "The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy," 300; Sika, 186. 173 Gellner, 24. 174 Gurr, 93, 102, 105. 175 Gellner, 109. 176 Ridker, 1-2, 8; Runciman, 23-24; cited in Gurr,105. 177 Gurr, 102; Lerner, 330-331, 335ff; cited in Gurr, 94. 178 The United Nations Development Program (UNDP). "The UNDP 2009 Report on Arab Human Development Report 2009: Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries." cited in Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 9; Sullivan, 319-320. 179 Sullivan, 323-328. 170

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Tunisians, mostly poor and unemployed180, were unintentionally discriminated by elderly political leaders and investors according to their geographical locations of residence at the central-west, northwestern and southern regions since nearly all of the investment projects were poured into coastal regions in the east and so other regions hardly benefited from economic progress of the country181. Though they were not severely maltreated like Tunisian youth, Egyptian youth noticeably made up nearly most of the total population at the time, causing the crises in Egypt and Tunisia seriously alike. Social media appears to be a preferable means of youth‘s engagement in politics while the internet seems to be an untouchable part of the globalization assuring the perpetual growth of ―advanced societies‖. When they are excluded from political institutions or intentionally choose less centralized-state structures, social media becomes a suitable alternative for them since it responds not only to the character of the young generation themselves but also a social setting invented by consumer industries. Julian Sefton-Green argued technologies and young people are a suitable pair, for the concepts of youth and the ICT share the same characters of dynamism, progressivism and competitiveness182. Also, since young people became a sizeable segment of markets, new media and internet have been at the center of innovation and market expansion strategies. Indeed, it appears unlikely that governments give up business and take over complete censorship of cyberspace, therefore social media provides room for regular and persistent platforms of interactions not only among citizens but also between elderly political leaders and their young voters. China provides a good example on how the Chinese Communist Party leaves room for social media as a compensatory mechanism to a restriction of the political participation through the state institutions. While political leaders are not directly elected by Chinese people and many forms of public space such as protests and civil society organizations are tightly restricted, blogs remain a popular means for either individual-to-individual or individual-to-state interactions. By 2010, bloggers alone numbered 231 million, or equivalent to 55 percent of China‘s total internet population183, and most of them were young184. These young Chinese netizens use blogs and other forms of social media in combination with citizen journalism and investigative journalism to challenge and change the state norms in some areas of 180

Jdey, 78; Marks, 110. Jdey, 76, 78, 81, 84. 182 Sefton-Green, 1-20; cited in Osgerby, 193. 183 Largerkvist, "The rise of online public opinion in China," 119-130; cited in Largerkvist, After the Internet before Democracy, 67, 70-71. 184 Largerkvist, After the Internet before Democracy, 71, 73-74. 181

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environment, corruption and sex scandals. Nowadays, the ―human flesh search engine‖, or a phenomenon of online crowds gathering and sharing information via the internet, appears to have great impact on behaviours and attitudes of the Chinese bureaucrats involved in corruption and sexual scandals185. This mirrors suitable means provided by social media in reducing the confrontation and avoiding the collective violence through a gradual compromise of state norms and social norms, which can be reused as a model in other countries. To conclude, a loss of the public trust in the state institutions makes the public space become an indispensable alternative to the institutions. Young people are excluded from the decision making bodies of the state institutions by the elderly political leaders due to their generational gaps and differences in ideologies. As a consequence, these young people may feel their interests are unrepresented, on one hand, and, on the other hand, the elderly leaders may promote their vested interests at the expense of the majority‘s interest, the young. Thus, more public space is needed for any particular marginalized group exercising their liberty and freedom for a more egalitarian society. Though opening more public space sometimes provides room for violence, severe forms of collective can be avoided since reforms have been done gradually. This third hypothesis is briefly summarized in the figure 2-3 below.

Figure 2-3 Model for Hypothesis 3

185

Celia Hatton, "China‘s internet vigilantes and the ‗human flesh search engine‘," BBC News, January 28, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25913472 .

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SUMMARY OF THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS OF RESEARCH Dramatic shifts in young demographics may result in malfunction of the political institutions and a decline in support of social forces. The existing polity in use with the former majority group of the population, the old generation, is no longer applicable with youth, the current majority group of the total population, due to their different personality traits, societal experiences and their new education. As a result, the state institutions malfunction because of generational gaps and differences in ideologies between the elderly political leaders and their young population. Thus, youth integration into the state institutions and more public space are necessary to be done in order to provide more room for their political participation. When the majority of the population, the young, losses their trust in the state institutions such as the parliament, the government, and the courts, the public space becomes an indispensable alternative to the state institutions. If more public space is not provided, generational confrontations may likely happen and gradually change from being peaceful to violent in nature, threatening a stability of the political community (PC). However, the included youth do not always represent the interests of the excluded youth whereas civil society organizations do not necessarily mean apolitical organs that freely work outside political realm and other forms of public space such as protests and social media sometimes may also leave room for violence. Therefore, only participatory young citizens bring optimism for the liberal democracy by ensuring an increasingly egalitarian society through their political engagement; but it happens only when platforms of both formal and informal political structures are available for their accessibility. When neither is available, struggles between the government of the elderly political leaders and their young population take place and, eventually, collective violence becomes unavoidable. The general picture of the theoretical frameworks of the research is briefly explained in the figure 2-4 below.

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Figure 2-4 Summary Diagram of Theoretical Frameworks of Research

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2.6

METHODOLOGY

Introduction The overall purposes of this paper are to explore a new potential of social forces, youth, in expanding liberal democracy in Cambodia. With growing young demographics as the majority group of the total population, it is important to analyze how the youth generation has been challenging and changing the state norms and institutions in the context of liberal democracy. This new phenomenon likely contributes to necessary changes in the organization of the state institutions as a reflection to a reversal of a demographic order and growing demands for more public space in various forms, which are required to reduce generational confrontations and to avoid collective violence between the elderly political leaders and their young population. Cambodian youth are distinct from the old generation. Besides their personality traits and distinct societal experiences, they have higher levels of education, unusual mobility, higher capability to use information communications technology and social media, and, in turn, higher aspiration and more needs. Hence, this younger generation greatly plays an important role in breaking chains of dependencies that are patron-client in nature through either their political participation or their capability in mobilizing their peers and others including their parents to get involved in politics as well. They are the generation that brings changes to a political landscape of democracy in the kingdom. Yet, youth‘s behaviours and attitudes are sometimes characterized by their passive contention. This may be resulted from their higher levels of education and ―peer culture‖. As a result, youth‘ reactions to the government‘s policy and measures are projected in forms of silent dissents and, in turn, seem to be less apparent to catch eyes of the policy makers and politicians. In this sense, an abrupt of youth protests may appear at any stage and, perhaps, occasionally in an unprecedented scale. Therefore, this paper ends up with recommendations within which the government should have a clear national policy representing their interests and incorporating them into the state institutions while more public space is supplementary to imperfection of the state administration. They should also have more public spaces as an alternative when they lose trust in the state institutions for expressing their concerns and working out their demands with the government, so generational confrontations are reduced to minimum and severe forms of collective violence can be avoided. 48

Methodological approach The current thesis is conducted for a partial completion in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of International Law and Politics. As this qualification is partly coursework-based and partly research-based, the methodological approach for this paper is quantitative due to a short timeframe of 1 year in total for full-time students to graduate from this program. Though the timeframe for this minor-thesis has begun since March 2013, research work actually commenced at the end of the second semester in November 2013 and would be finished by mid-March 2014, the last deadline of submission. However, constraints of time limit and a quantitative method unlikely impede the achievement and the quality of this research paper. Until the present, a very few of researches has been conducted by experts on growing activism of Cambodian youth in expanding liberal democracy in the country but most often it has been done in forms of reports and short commentary articles. This topic came to my attention in 2012 in the aftermath of a wide spread information on the ―Arab Spring‖. Also, a short period and a quantitative method for this minor thesis are suitable to elaborate tested models of research and provide an insight into this new theme for further researches and inputs to the world of knowledge from an insider‘s perspectives. Cambodian youth activism has come to the attention of local and international media since mid-2012. This timeframe appears to have a coincidence with a widespread of the wellknown political crises in the Arab world, the so-called ―Arab Spring‖, beginning in Tunisia and Egypt. In late 2012, local media and analysts discussed a possibility of the so-called ―Cambodian Spring‖ but their responses were controversial. Some observers such as Thomas Mann Miller, a former Phnom Penh Post reporter, were pessimistic of its likeliness because of the general inefficacy of the opposition party Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and many such as Faine Greenwood, a reporter for the Cambodian Daily and a blogger, felt optimistic of its possibility due to growing demographics of young population and their increasing activism on the internet186. Even until recently, this topic remains at the centre of both national and international analysts‘ discussions. In early February 2014, Virak Ou, the president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR), one of the most prominent human rights organizations in the kingdom, and an U.S.-educated intelligent, was invited by the Sanford 186

Nash Jenkins, "‗Cambodia Spring‘ Unlikely, Political Observers Say," Voice of America (Khmer), August 1, 2012, www.voacambodia.com/content/cambodia-spring-unlikely-political-observers-say/1452460.html .

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Center for East Asian Studies to join a special seminar and to give a speech on ―Will Cambodia See a ‗Spring‘?‖187. Yet, it is still hard to see a couple of researches that embed on how growing youth activism has impacts on the existing political order and institutions, and what solutions are suitable for some predictable consequences of the changes in the political landscape in Cambodia. This thesis is mainly a kind of the report research. Based on textbooks, journal articles and class materials, most of the relevant literatures on the topic of the thesis have been reviewed. Across the literature, many prominent theories have been framed to build theoretical frameworks of the research and three hypotheses have been modeled from the relevant theories to be tested with many recent events that happened in Cambodia. Though primary qualitative data is not required for this thesis and impossible to be done in a short time of the current program, a wide range of newspapers, magazines, reports from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international organizations (IOs), policies and statistics from the government are mostly available and accessible on the Internet. Some data from the government such as the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Planning (National Institute of Statistics), the National Election Committee, NGOs and IOs such as the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL), the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (NICFEC), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and Centre for Intelligent Agency (CIA), private companies including the Metfone and the Mobitel, mobile operating companies and internet service providers, and newspapers such as the Phnom Penh Post, the Cambodia Daily, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America all can be accessed by their websites. The proposed hypotheses are tested by most of the sources that are accessible on the internet. Those sources are written in both English and Khmer. Some of these sources have already been recorded since the beginning of the academic year in early 2013 while many have been lately followed for up-to-date news in Cambodia. A large proportion of the information in use for analyses is extracted from the Phnom Penh Post, the Cambodia Daily, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and Voice of America (VOA), Khmer- and English-language media but foreign owed companies. These sources cover most of sensitive issues that are rarely reported by local media and newspapers. Yet, both RFA and VOA have been criticized of being biased towards the opposition and the U.S. government, and recently been described by the Council of 187

"Will Cambodia See a ‗Spring‘?," The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, accessed February 25, 2014, www.cddrl.stanford.edu/events/will_cambodia_see_a_spring/ .

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Ministers as becoming even ―worst‖188. Most importantly, they provide online news for free, easy online accessibility and periodical archives of the past issues dated back as early as the 1990s. The paper will shed a light on this new theme from perspectives of a political analyst. Its findings will improve an understanding of the roles of youth in creating more liberal democracy in Cambodia, and are expected to have an influence on behaviours and attitudes of the government, political parties, civil society and youth themselves. Also, it shows directions for the further researches in the country, for more accurate and primary sources are in need to be collected for testing the hypotheses in order to build convincible tested models on the theme and finding a more consistent result. Some hypotheses in this thesis also require further researches to use a qualitative method to determine very probable opinions, values and attitudes of youth, parents and elderly political leaders in questions. Yet, the current work is optimistically believed to provide a floor that can be used as a model for either Cambodia or other countries that have been walking through the same paths of development.

188

Kevin Ponniah, "RFA, VOA agency fires back," The Phnom Penh Post, February 3, 2014, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/rfa-voa-agency-fires-back .

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CHAPTER 3 - RESEARCH FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS This chapter is an overview of the findings that this research produces. Each of three hypotheses is analyzed individually using data from the government, civil society organizations and print and online media. Most of the data from media is mainly run by foreign-owned broadcasters and printers, for they cover nearly all of important local issues including the sensitive ones and are widely available online for free access. From the theory and data analyses, it will be seen whether any or all of these three hypotheses are correct or incorrect. It is noted that some primary data is also necessary in order to produce more consistent findings but it is hardly possible to do so because of time constraints and a scope of this paper. However, the data used in this sample produce many interesting findings. It provides room for analyses while findings of the analyses can be used to measure potential consequences of the growing young demographics in expanding the liberal democracy in Cambodia, to explore causes and effects of the growing youth activism, to define close relations between recent increasing generational confrontations and the absence of the regular and persistent platforms for youth in both the state institutions and the public space according to the theories, and to suggest potential mechanisms that can be used to solve and prevent problems of violence. Three hypotheses are analyzed in combination between theories and recent events that happened in Cambodia as following.

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A DRAMATIC SHIFT IN YOUNG CAMBODIAN DEMOGRAPHICS FROM THE MINORITY TO THE MAJORITY GROUP OF THE TOTAL POPULATION LEADS TO NECESSARY CHANGES IN STRUCTURES OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS Young Cambodians have emerged as the majority group of the total population and nearly make up a half of the total registered voters. They are distinct from the old generation in terms of societal experiences and personality traits. In this sense, the existing political order that has been applied with the old generation becomes inapplicable with the young. Consequently, all of these distinct features necessitate reorganization of the political institutions to make sure these young people have their representatives in decision making bodies, so their interests are ensured. The demographics of the post-Khmer Rouge baby boom illustrates this generation takes up more than two thirds of the total population and becomes a dominant group of voters in the national elections. This emerging trend reverses the previous trends of the demographics in Cambodia, which used to preserves the political landscape and orders in the country. Young Cambodians under 35 years were recorded at 70.4 percent in 2008189. This number was expected to grow up to 73.9 percent while older peoples at their mid-50s and over were estimated at 8.8 percent in the next five-year time190. By 2013, the number of Cambodian youth, the group of 15-to-34 years old, would grow to 41percent of the total population, and continue to grow steadily in the next decade at least (Figure 3-1). Also, these young people are believed to have a great influence on the country‘s direction, for they become or will become the majority group of voters who decide which party would lead the government and the National Assembly. According to the National Election Committee (NEC), around 3.5 million out of the total 9.5 million registered voters in 2012 were between 18 and 30 years, or 36 percent of the total, while some 1.5 million were first-time voters191 (Figure 3-2). As a result of the increasing demographics of the post-Khmer Rouge baby boom, this number is also expected to increase significantly in the next general elections.

189

"Population Census 2008," National Institute of Statistics (NIS), accessed April 01, 2013, http://celade.cepal.org/khmnis/census/khm2008/. 190 "The World Factbook: Cambodia‘s Age Structure," Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), accessed January 28, 2014, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cb.html 191 Theara Khoun, "Youth Showing More Political Engagement as Election Approaches," Voice of America, July 10, 2013, http://www.voacambodia.com/content/youth-showing-more-political-engagement-as-electionapproaches/1698262.html .

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2013 55-over 35-up 15-34 2008

0.00%

0-14

5.00% 10.00% 15.00% 20.00% 25.00% 30.00% 35.00% 40.00% 45.00%

Figure 3-1 Demographic Growths by Age Groups in 2008 and 2013

Source: Population Census 2008192 by NIS & Cambodia‘s Age Structure in 2013193 by CIA

Age Group Over 30

Total Registered Voters Age Group 18-30

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Figure 3-2 Total Registered Voters in 2012 by Age Groups Source: National Election Committee‘s Report cited by Voice of America 194 (VOA)

Cambodian youth are distinguished from their parents by their different societal experiences. These young people were born in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge regime, so they do not own their deference to the revolutionary legacy of the Cambodian People Party (CPP), and

192

"Population Census 2008," National Institute of Statistics (NIS), accessed April 01, 2013, http://celade.cepal.org/khmnis/census/khm2008/. 193 "The World Factbook: Cambodia‘s Age Structure," Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), accessed January 28, 2014, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cb.html 194 Theara Khoun, "Youth Showing More Political Engagement as Election Approaches," Voice of America, July 10, 2013, http://www.voacambodia.com/content/youth-showing-more-political-engagement-as-electionapproaches/1698262.html .

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have never been personally exposed to civil wars. Thus, neither the regime nor senior political leaders of the CPP are likely to propagate their long-lasting revolutionary ideologies with these young people successfully, rather the political party‘s performance and its achievement of economic development are decisive. According to the International Republican Institute (IRI) Public Opinion in November 2013, ‗good economic development‘ and the ‗party‘s record of accomplishments‘ were ranked on the top with support of respondents 41percent and 39 percent respectively but merely 22 percent of respondents chose their preferred party by ‗past performance‘195. These figures show convincingly that the government‘s present performance rather than a revolutionary legend of the CPP conserved its legitimacy. Moreover, these young people have higher aspiration compared to elderly people. Their high aspiration may be linked to their dynamic mobilization, exposure to a ―better way of life‖ and their belief in a possibility of having more than what they have in the present, argued Geller 196 and Gurr197. Cambodia has experienced GDP growth at 7 percent on average from 2005 until the present198 (Figure 3-3). Though the national economy was hit by the global economic repression in 2009 as shown in the figure, it recovered immediately making people feel more optimistic of their welfare according to Runciman199. Also, a few months before the 2008 national election, the government made a false promise of a land speculation to mobilize support for the ruling party200. Hence, their personality traits of higher aspiration were fueled by societal situations such as a decade-long GDP growth and the government‘s unattainable promise. Also, Cambodian youth have different needs from their elderly political leaders, making the latter hard to predict what the former really want. Some political campaign programs and events such as land titling volunteer schemes and entertainment strategies were also used to

195

The International Republican Institute (IRI), Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: October 28-November 10, 2013 (IRI: Phnom Penh, 2014), 15. See "IRI Cambodia Survey: Declining Optimism on Country‘s Direction; Strong Support for Democratic Reforms," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 3, 2014, http://www.iri.org/news-events-press-center/news/iri-cambodia-survey-declining-optimismcountrypercentE2percent80percent99s-direction-strong-supp. 196 Gellner,24. 197 Gurr,102. 198 "Cambodia‘s Real GDP Growth Rate," The Ministry of Economy and Finance, accessed February 12, 2014, www.mef.gov.kh 199 Runciman, 23-24; cited in Gurr, 105. 200 Denise Hruby and Hul Reaksmey, "Unlike Past Elections, Property Investors Remain Buoyant," The Cambodia Daily, June 28, 2013, www.cambodiadaily.com/elections/unlike-past-elections-property-investorsremain-buoyant-32542

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mobilize youth support for the 2013election201. Thousands of young people, mostly university students and fresh graduates, were recruited for six months with pay and promised employment in state institutions. Also, some Cambodian celebrities such as actress, singers, comedians and even K-pop singers were exploited to attract young people and promote the party‘s popularity. Yet, the election result turned out to be unexpected and appeared to show a turning point of the liberal democracy in the kingdom. A failure of the ruling party in buying loyalty of its young voters may have close relations with their higher levels of education and the growing number of literacy in the kingdom as well as their expectation of a more promising political agenda by each political party. 14.00% 12.00% 10.00% 8.00%

Cambodia's Real GDP Growth Rate

6.00% 4.00% 2.00% 0.00% 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Figure 3-3 Cambodia‘s GDP 2005-2014 Source: Ministry of Economy and Finance, updated on July 30, 2013202

The result of the 28 July election gave a very slim victory to the Cambodian People Party (CPP) and more gains to the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), the opposition party, with 68 seats and 55 seats respectively, shocking top leaders and senior members of the ruling party. This was perhaps due to high aspiration of the youth and differences in ideologies between these young voters and elderly political leaders. The CPP underestimated these newly emerged voters and incorrectly identified their needs. In a public opinion survey, only 7 percent of the respondents believed that there was ―less poverty‖ whereas merely 5 percent believed the government shared the social revenues widely to the poor even though more than a majority of the respondents aged 18 years and over agreed the country was generally headed 201

Kevin Ponniah, "Political eyes on youth vote," The Phnom Penh Post, July 9, 2013, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/political-eyes-youth-vote ; also, Bennett Murray and Sokha Cheang, "The ties that bind: when popstars meet politicians," The Phnom Penh Post, July 19, 2013, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/ties-bind-when-popstars-meet-politicians . 202 "Cambodia‘s Real GDP Growth Rate," The Ministry of Economy and Finance, accessed February 12, 2014, www.mef.gov.kh

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in the right direction203. Also, 94 percent of the respondents were dissatisfied with the government in creating more jobs and 95 percent were concerned about ‗low wages/salaries‘ though the overwhelming number of them felt really satisfied with the public investment in infrastructures204. It appears that a decline in popularity and legitimacy of the government and the regime largely results from generational gaps and differences in ideologies between the elderly political leaders and young population. However, these factors appear merely to be scratches on the surface of the problems, since the cornerstone of Cambodia‘s contemporary issues is that elderly political leaders mainly take care of their personal and partisan interests at the expense of the majority interest205. Their hunger for personal enrichment very likely explains the reasons why nearly all positions in decision making bodies of the powerful state institutions such as the National Assembly and the Senate are held by founders and long serving senior members of the ruling party. In this sense, conflicts of the interests between their positions and their business are hard to avoid, so national policy that infringes on their vested interests takes too long to be realized in reality, and sometimes cannot be implemented effectively, just as what Huntington argued regarding the absence of the autonomy of the state institutions. The National Assembly is directed by elderly members in their 60s and 70s (Table 3-1). The number of the young members has been seriously low since the third mandate 2003-2008 and worsened in the fifth mandate 2013-2018 while the percentage of the middle-aged members slightly improved lately. Members of the National Assembly under 35 years accounted for 4.88 percent of the total 123 seats in the third mandate206 while the 50-years-and-over groups noticeably grown to 83.74 percent in the fourth mandate 2008-2013, up from 79.67 percent in the third mandate207. Yet, the youngest group under 35 years halved in number in the fifth mandate to merely 2.44percent, if compared to the third mandate, whereas the deputies in 203

The International Republican Institute (IRI), Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: October 28-November 10, 2013 (IRI: Phnom Penh, 2014), 4, 6. 204 Ibid, 6. 205 The Voice of America (Khmer) reported that there were at least 100 senior government officers, police and military forces as well as tycoons involving in illegal loggings in Cambodia. In a press conference, Mr. Chan Soveth, deputy head of the investigation unit at the ADHOC, the human rights non-governmental organization, told reporters that those people are identifiable but further investigation is needed before submitting the documents to the courts for corruption‘s cases. Sothanrith Kong, "Civil Society: Government Senior Officers and Tycoons Are Involved in Illegal Logging," Voice of America (Khmer), November 26, 2013, http://khmer.voanews.com/content/new-report-shows-cambodian-forests-in-jeopardy/1797555.html 206 COMFREL and NICFEC work team, Directory of the Third National Assembly of the Kingdom of Cambodia 2003-2008 (Phnom Penh, July 2005), 35-157. 207 Ibid, 32; COMFREL, 1st Annual Report of 4th Legislature, 2008-2009 (Phnom Penh, March 2010), 7.

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their 50s and over amounted to 74.80 percent208. In this sense, though the number of the deputies at the 50s and over slightly decreased in the fifth mandate, this oldest group continued to dominate the leadership of the National Assembly while the youngest group of the National Assembly members remained scarce. Also, this change contributed to a slight gain of the 40s-aged group. Table 3-1 National Assembly (NA) Seats by Age Groups in 3rd and 5th Mandates

NA Seats & Age Groups

Years 2003-2008

Years 2013-2018

13,395,682

15,205,539

Population under 35

70.40 percent

73.90 percent

NA Members under 35

4.88 percent

2.44 percent

Population Over 55

3.80 percent

8.80 percent

NA Members over 55

83.74 percent

74.80 percent

Total Population

Source: Population Census 2008 by NIS, Cambodia‘s Age Structure in 2013 by CIA 209, Directory of the National Assembly 2003-2008 by COMFREL210, and NEC Decisions in 2013211

The dominance of the elderly members in the National Assembly can be explained by the decision making of the political parties concerned and an increasing competition between them from one mandate to another (Table 3-2). Generally, opposition parties, the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), have a higher percentage of young members in the National Assembly whereas the ruling party, the Cambodian People Party (CPP), has an overwhelming number of elderly members, which is, perhaps, relative to a duration of the parties‘ foundation and their compositions. The opposition parties in Cambodia are quite young when compared to the ruling party, which was created in the mid1950s. However, though a composition of the political parties, especially of their standing committees, is more likely to be partly responsible for the exclusion of the Cambodian youth

208

Letter No.420 on the Name List of the Members of the National Assembly in the 5 th Mandate Having Decided Validity of the Mandate issued by the National Assembly on 23 September 2013. 209 "The World Factbook: Cambodia‘s Age Structure in 2013, " The Central Intelligence Agency, accessed January 28, 2014, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cb.html 210 COMFREL and NICFEC, 35-157. 211 Decisions no. 467/13 and no. 468/13 dated on September 18, 2013, issued by National Election Committee.

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from becoming members of the National Assembly, a growing competition also appears to put more pressure on each party in selecting candidates. This clearly happened during the 2013 election with both the ruling party and the opposition party though the former seems less likely to have a confidence on the young candidates as in the below table. Table 3-2 Shares of NA Members by Parties and Age Groups in 3rd and 5th Mandates

Third Mandate: 2003-2008 55 Years and Over

UNDER

CPP=73 members

60percent (44)

40percent (29)

SR=24 members

17percent (4)

83percent (20)

Fifth Mandate: 2013-2018 CPP=68

91percent (62)

9percent (6)

CNRP=55

40percent (22)

60percent (33)

Source: Directory of the National Assembly 2003-2008 by COMFREL212 and NEC Decisions in 2013213

The Senate has more old members than the National Assembly. While members of the National Assembly have to be 25 years at least, no members of the Senate can be under 40 years old according to the 1993 Constitution214. Yet, on average, the percentage of the senators under 55 years remains higher than that of the National Assembly. Among the total 61 members in the third mandate (2012-2018), approximately 11.50 percent is between 40 and 54 years while 88.50 percent is over 55 years (Figure 3-4). This means that, though a proportion of young members in the Senate are significantly higher than that of the National Assembly, Cambodian youth are also excluded from the Senate.

212

COMFREL and NICFEC, 35-157. Decisions no. 467/13 and no. 468/13 dated on September 18, 2013, issued by National Election Committee. 214 Article 76 and article 99 new of the 1993 Constitution. See "Basic texts: Constitution," the Constitutional Council of Cambodia, accessed February 26, 2014, www.ccc.gov.kh/english/CONSTITUTIONEnglish.pdf 213

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40-54 years 55 years-over

Figure 3-4 Senators in the 3rd Mandate by Age Groups

Source: The Senate of Cambodia: Senators in the 3rd Mandate215

Of 61 senators, the CPP took up to 77 percent of the total while the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) only accounted for 18 percent of the total (Figure 3-4). The SRP gave a large proportion of its shares in the Senate to younger members, a complete contradiction of trends to the CPP: 95.80 percent of the CPP shares were allocated for senators over 55 years while merely 4.2 percent was conceded to younger senators (Figure 3-5). Unlike the CPP, the SRP prioritized both young and old senators with 45.5 percent and 54.5 percent respectively (Figure 3-5). 120% 100% 80% Over 55

60%

UNDER

40% 20% 0% CPP

SRP

Figure 3-5 Senators by Parties and Age Groups in the 3rd Mandate Source: The Senate of Cambodia: Senators in the 3rd Mandate216

215

"The Senate of Cambodia: Senators in the 3rd Mandate," The Senate, accessed February 12, 2014, www.senate.gov.kh

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Over-representation of the elderly political leaders in the main decision making bodies of the legislature appears to be partly responsible for a failure of both the parliament itself and also other state institutions including the government and the courts in implementing the national policy, especially regarding land reforms217. The Parliament, the government and the courts fail to represent the public interest at the expense of personal and partisan interests of their members218. In some cases, though members of the parliament and the government do not directly intervene in the land disputes but their spouses, relatives and allies are involved219. Given that is the case, members of any decision making body in the state institutions have conflicts of interests with their functions, so any national policy for the public interest that is detrimental to their personal, partisan and familial interests are impossible to be implemented effectively while the autonomy of subunits or branches of the Government also might be under influence of some old political leaders in senior positions such as members of the National Assembly and the Senate. According to the NGO Forum on Cambodia, 173 cases in 2008220, 236 cases in 2009221 and 282 cases in 2010222 were reported as unsolved and partly solved land disputes (Figure 3-6). Some senior government officers and close allies to the Prime Minister Hun Sen are suspected of being involved and responsible for a failure of either the government or the courts in bringing an end to the decade-long crises of land disputes. For instance, the two most recent 216

" The Senate of Cambodia: Senators in the 3rd Mandate," The Senate, accessed February 12, 2014, www.senate.gov.kh 217 Article 96 of the 1993 Constitution gives power to members of the National Assembly to raise questions to the Royal Government of Cambodia and its members while the article 98 new authorizes the National Assembly to dismiss any member of the government and to remove the government by voting a motion of censure. The Senate reviews and can propose any amendment to either draft laws or proposed laws approved by the National Assembly according to article 113 new. According to the article 133 new and the article 134 new, magistrates are responsible before the Supreme Council of Magistracy indirectly, which is controlled by the Minister of Justice and indirectly influenced by the government. See "Basic texts: Constitution," the Constitutional Council of Cambodia, accessed February 26, 2014, www.ccc.gov.kh/english/CONSTITUTIONEnglish.pdf 218 Kong Sothanrith, "Civil Society: Government Senior Officers and Tycoons Are Involved in Illegal Logging," Voice of America (Khmer), November 26, 2013, http://khmer.voanews.com/content/new-report-showscambodian-forests-in-jeopardy/1797555.html 219 To name a few, two examples involved wives of the Commerce Minister and the Minister of Industry, Mines and Energy, so it shown that the conflicts of the interests with the functions of the government senior officers may sometimes be at stake by either direct involvement or indirect influence. See Erik Wasson and Kimsong Kay, "Little-Known NGOs Defend Minister‘s Wife," The Cambodia Daily, May 6, 2005, http://www.cambodiadaily.com/archive/little-known-ngos-defend-ministers-wife-47559/ ; also Sovuthy Khy, "Land Dispute Case Involving Minister‘s Wife Is Heard," The Cambodia Daily, May 1, 2013, http://www.cambodiadaily.com/archive/land-dispute-case-involving-ministers-wife-is-heard-20836/ . 220 Land Information Centre (LIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Disputes Occurring in Cambodia 2008 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2008), 1-2. 221 Land Information Centre (LIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Disputes Occurring in Cambodia 2009 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2009), 3. 222 Research and Information Centre (RIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Dispute Occurring in Cambodia 2010 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2010), 2.

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and famous out of hundreds of land disputes, Boeung Kak Lake223 and Borei Keila224 communities, were involved with a tycoon senator from the CPP and a close ally to the Prime Minister225, having shares in Shukaku Inc., and the owner of the Phanimex226, a close ally of the Prime Minister. As a consequence of their powerful positions, local authorities might be hard to make a reconciliation between parties in disputes while many cases before the courts were on waiting lists for trials for years and sometimes justice might not be fairly laid down for both parties, perhaps, due to the absence of the courts‘ impartiality, making protests happen more often as an ultimate alternative of the poor and the weak. 300 250 200

2008

150

2009

100

2010

50 0 Reported Land Disputes Figure 3-6 Number of Land Disputes from 2008 to 2010

Source: NGO Forum on Cambodia–Statistical Analysis on Land Disputes in Cambodia 2008-2010227

At the same time, it is unclear whether the integrated Cambodian youth in the parliament will protect the interest of their generation. But this integration may rather provide a complementary mechanism since the public space remains indispensable for an increasingly egalitarian society, according to Barber228. It is worthwhile to notice that, in terms of their

223

Laura Rena Murray, "Target Cambodia", World Policy Journal (2012):80. Odom Sok, "Borei Keila Families Mark Anniversary of Eviction," The Cambodia Daily, January 4, 2014, http://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/borei-keila-families-mark-anniversary-of-eviction-50070/; see also, Titthara May and Rachana Veng, "Phanimex owner summoned," The Phnom Penh Post, August 27, 2010, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/phanimex-owner-summoned . 225 "The Senate of Cambodia: Senators in the 3rd Mandate," The Senate, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.senate.gov.kh/home/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1718&Itemid=12&lang=km 226 "Clash of Hun Xen‘s cronies: Suy Sophan (aka Yeay Phan) vs CPP Tycoon-Senator Sy Kong Triv", KIMedia, accessed January 16, 2014, http://ki-media.blogspot.co.nz/2009/09/clash-of-hun-xens-cronies-suysophan.html . 227 Land Information Centre (LIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Disputes Occurring in Cambodia 2008 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2008), 1-2; Land Information Centre (LIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Disputes Occurring in Cambodia 2009 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2009), 3; Research and Information Centre (RIC), Statistical Analysis on Land Dispute Occurring in Cambodia 2010 (Phnom Penh: NGO Forum on Cambodia, 2010), 2. 228 Barber, XVii; cited in Powel, 16. 224

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demands and needs, Cambodian youth are better understood from both Anderson‘s and Mannheim‘s perspectives, the 15-24 and the 25-34 groups, but, when it comes to means of collective actions, they are better referred to a group of the young generation whose ages vary from 15 to 34 years, which will be embedded in the following hypotheses. Hence, though the generation of Cambodian youth shares the same adversaries, elderly political leaders and the long-serving regime, they may have different wants because the adolescents appear to focus on their leisure and comfort whereas the adults are in a rush to prepare for families, which was emphasized by Anderson, Dhillion and Yousef. Using all the above information, it can be concluded that Samuel P. Huntington, Benedict R. O‘G. Anderson, Karl Mannheim and Emma C. Murphy made reasonable claims on the points that dramatic shifts in young demographics could have domino effects on a stability of the country by failing the state institutions to make shares of social revenues broadly available for the public, and so the compositions of both the National Assembly and the Senate need to reflect the demographic trend. On one hand, Bourdieu and Barber made the points that political leaders appear to lose social vision and morality to work for the public but rather perceive politics as business and do it for personal enrichment. On the other hand, Huntington also noticed that it sometimes happens because the old and the young share different values and principles, so the outputs of the policy held by the old do not really fit with what the young need. Thus, whether the failure to represent the public interest is intentional or unintentional, reorganizations of these public institutions are necessary for their effective roles as guardians of the public interest and, in turn, for the stability of the political community. In this case, the problems of underrepresented Cambodian youth in the parliament are unlikely to be solved by the ruling party in the short term. This pessimism is due to the fact that the ruling party is under pressure from elderly senior members and founding members while there is no available mechanism in place for their replacement yet. Thus, underrepresentation of Cambodian youth in the National Assembly and the Senate eventually leads to a decline in the support of these young people towards the political leaders and the regime, on one hand, and, on the other hand, a swap from working within the state institutions such the parliament, the government and the courts to protests and other means of informal participation as an alternative, providing more room for political and collective violence because of the absence of trust and prolonged passive discontent. In this sense, severe forms of collective violence may not be just a result of a discriminatory treatment by any particular 63

branch of the government towards any social grouping, especially new urban young Cambodians studying and working in the capital city and its neighboring provinces, which was argued by Gellner, but also prolonged passive contention against the government and the absence of an alternative beside the state institutions to create an increasingly egalitarian society according to Ted Robert Gurr, Nadine Sika and Simone Weil. Such cases of land disputes are just a few examples to prove that recent surges in protests have had a close relationship with growing tensions and a decline of trust by social forces in the state institutions including the parliament, the government and the courts in guaranteeing and protecting the public interest. Unlike the ruling party, the opposition party has less pressure from elderly senior members and founding members so that a majority of its members at the parliament are from young and middle-aged groups. Hence, the growing support of the opposition party likely results from its policy of direct responses to immediate concerns and wants of the young, such as employment and minimum wages for garment workers. This success may be partly a result of less generational gaps and differences in ideologies between political leaders within the opposition and Cambodian youth. As can been seen from the third to the fifth mandate of the National Assembly, young members of the opposition party generally makes up a majority of its total members in the Assembly. Yet, the increasing number of the elderly members in the fifth mandate of the National Assembly by the opposition party shown the party moved a step backward in terms of its policy for young candidates and so would become a concern in the future making the opposition less different from the ruling party, in the sense that the public trust in the state institutions becomes narrower.

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YOUNG CAMBODIANS HAVE BETTER EDUCATION, SO THEY ARE NOT ONLY MORE LIKELY TO PARTICIPATE IN POLITICS BUT ALSO MORE CAPABLE OF MOBILIZING PEERS AND OTHERS FOR POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT Cambodia is dominated by a generation of post-Khmer Rouge baby boom. Young Cambodians in this generation are clearly distinguishable from the older generation including their parents not only by societal experiences but also by better education, making them perceive and behave towards politics differently229. In other words, they are the generation of better education in terms of higher standards and higher levels of education. Hence, young Cambodians are not only more likely to participate in politics but also more capable of mobilizing their peers and others for political engagement through both traditional and modern means of networks as can be seen in the following discussions. After nearly two decades of dedication to a restoration of the national education system, in 1996, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports moved to another phase, standardization of the national education (Table 3-3). On July 26, 1996, the national education system was standardized by the national curriculum policy by increasing school years of general education from 10 to 12 years in total composing primary education (6 grades) and secondary education (the lower secondary education=3grades and the upper secondary education=3 grades)230. Eventually, this curriculum was lately revised and improved in 2005231. As a result, modern world history, political science courses including Cambodia‘s system of government and the rule of law, and foreign languages such English232 and French have become compulsory for students at both lower and higher secondary levels of education233. Since then, information communications technology (ICT) has also become an important major for students at senior high schools and been used in combination with other courses in foreign languages, social science and math as well234. At universities, many ICT qualifications and courses are available whereas the uses of ICT in teaching and learning processes are

229

Forum Syd, Youth in Cambodia: Organizations, Activities and Policies (Phnom Penh: Forum Syd, 2002), 7. Royal decree No. NS-RKT 0796-52 dated on 26 July1996 on the General Educational System of 12 Years. 231 The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Policy for Curriculum Development 2005-2009 ( Phnom Penh: MoEYS, December 2004). 232 English is the main instruction language for students and dominate other languages including French at higher education. Also, it is a mean to approach job markets in the kingdom. Thus, most of young Cambodians appear very likely to know very basic English. Caroline Vernaillen, "Parlez-vous Anglais," Southeast Asia Globe, May 23, 2013, http://sea-globe.com/english-education-cambodia/ . 233 The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), Policy for Curriculum Development 2005-2009 ( Phnom Penh: MoEYS, December 2004), article 2.1, 2.4, 3.13, 8.3, 12.5. 234 The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), Policy and Strategies on Information and Communication in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: MoEYS, December 2004), 14. 230

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encouraged and facilitated by the government under various schemes including standardization of Khmer codes and digitalization of some sources in Khmer and international foreign languages235. Table 3-3 Chronology of Cambodia‘s Education and National Curriculum Development Years

1979

1996

2005

Education and National Curriculum Development Reopen schools for school-aged children, encourage more students enrollment and recruit more teachers; Increase school years from 10 to 12 years (6 years at the primary education and 6 years at the secondary education); Revise and improve the national curriculum by integrating world history, systems of government, rule of law, foreign languages and ICT.

Source: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports 236.

Recently, Cambodia was classified among other countries in a group of ―Medium Human Development‖ and ranked at 138th, above Laos and Bhutan and immediately below India in the same group237. In the Human Development Report 2013 titled ―The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World‖ issued on March 14, 2013238 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 77.60 percent of Cambodian adults over 14 years were literate and 15.70 percent of the adults over 24 years had at least secondary education while the enrollment ratio had grown at 46 percent annually for secondary education and 7.80 percent for tertiary education239 (Table 3-4). The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports also reiterated that Cambodia had already achieved its goal of a 6-year basic education for all 235

Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Policy and Strategies on Information and Communication in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: MoEYS, December 2004), 16. 236 Royal decree no. NS-RKT 0796-52 dated on 26 July1996 on the General Educational System of 12 Years; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Policy for Curriculum Development 2005-2009 (Phnom Penh: MoEYS, December 2004); Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Policy and Strategies on Information and Communication in Cambodia, (Phnom Penh: MoEYS, December 2004). 237 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World (New York: UNDP, 2013), 172. See "2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World," The United Nations Development Programme, accessed February 16, 2014, www.hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report . 238 Ha Cheat Vor, "UNDP: Education and Labour in Cambodia Have a Good Classification," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), March 13, 2013, www.rfa.org/khmer/news/social-economy/Cambodia-education-and-employment03172013075439.html? 239 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World (New York: UNDP, 2013), 172. See "2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World," The United Nations Development Programme, accessed February 16, 2014, www.hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report .

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in 1997 and planned to achieve a 9-year basic education for all by 2030240. Yet, the gaps of education levels between the pre- and the post-Khmer Rouge generations do exist widely. Table 3-4 General Picture of Human Development in Cambodia

Gross Enrollment Ratio

Educational Attainment

Primary

Secondary

Tertiary

Adult literacy rate

Population with

(2002-2011)

(2002-2011)

(2002-2011)

ages 15years-up

at least secondary education

(2005-2010)

Ages 25 years-up (2010)

77.60%

15.70%

127%

46%

7.80%

Source: The United Nations Development Programme–Human Development Report 2013241

The older generation has lower levels of education when compared to the younger generation. The older Cambodians are, the lower the rate of literacy. Among the pre-Khmer Rouge baby boom generations, especially during the 1950s and the 1980s, the 1950s generation has the lowest rate of literacy and a far lower rate compared to the 1980s generation and thereafter242. According to the Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey (CSES) by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS), the literacy rate of 65-years-and-over group was recorded at 42.90 percent in 2010, 45.20 percent in 2011 and 46.30 percent in 2012 whereas the literacy rate of youth was reported at 84.50 percent, 88.05 percent and 87.35 percent in the same time frame 240

Kolab, "In 2030, Every Cambodian has at least a 9-year basic education," Cambodia Express News (CEN), November 29, 2013, http://www.cen.com.kh/localnews/show_detail/24?token= ZGUxYTQ0MG 241 The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World (New York: UNDP, 2013), 172. See "2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World," The United Nations Development Programme, accessed February 16, 2014, www.hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report . 242 "Social Statistics: Cambodia Socio-Economics Survey (CSES)," The National Institute of Statistics, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.nis.gov.kh/nis/CSES/Data/CSES_Education.html

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respectively243 (Figure 3-7). This means that more than a majority of the Cambodian elderly aged 65 years and over was illiterate while nearly all Cambodian youth were literate. 100.00% 90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

65years-Up Youth

2010

2011

2012

Figure 3-7 Comparison of Literacy Ratio by Age Groups 2010-2012 Source: Cambodia Socio-Economics Survey (CSES) by NIS244

However, the government appears to have been unsuccessful at facilitating the growing high literacy of Cambodian youth at the secondary education level, since the percentage of student enrollment annually declined in the last three years. From 2010 to 2013, the total enrolment of students at the secondary education stood at an average of 860,000 per year but the number of the annual enrolment declined by 4 percent and 2 percent from 2010-2011 to 2011-2012, and from 2011-2012 to 2012-2013 academic years respectively245 (Table 3-5). Given that the total population increased by 2 million from 13 million in 2008 up to 15 million in 2013, the annual growth of the population within this timeframe was around 2.5 percent on average. In other words, the declining trends of enrolment at the secondary education level clearly 243

"Social Statistics: Cambodia Socio-Economics Survey (CSES)," the National Institute of Statistics, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.nis.gov.kh/nis/CSES/Data/CSES_Education.html 244 "Social Statistics: Cambodia Socio-Economics Survey (CSES)," the National Institute of Statistics, accessed January 16, 2014, http://www.nis.gov.kh/nis/CSES/Data/CSES_Education.html 245 Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), Education Statistics & Indicators 2012/2013 (Phnom Penh: EMIS Office, Department of Planning, May 2013), 1. See "Education Statistics 2012-2013," The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), accessed February 14, 2014, www.moeys.gov.kh/en/stastic-andindicator/eims/emis-2012-2013.html#.Uv2NHH8aySM; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), Education Statistics & Indicators 2011/2012 (Phnom Penh: EMIS Office, Department of Planning, February 2012), 2. See "Education Statistics 2011-2012," The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), accessed February 14, 2014, www.moeys.gov.kh/en/stastic-and-indicator/eims/emis-20112012.html#.Uv2RF38aySM ; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), Education Statistics & Indicators 2010/2011 (Phnom Penh: EMIS Office, Department of Planning, March 2011), 2. See "Education Statistics 2010-2011," The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), accessed February 14, 2014, www.moeys.gov.kh/en/stastic-and-indicator/eims/emis-2010-2011.html#.Uv2SUX8aySM .

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contracted the increasing speeds of the population growth in the kingdom. In addition, from 2008 to 2013, around 98,000 senior high school students took the national exam annually and about 82 percent of them on average passed the exam (Figure 3-8 and Figure 3-9). Assuming the average population within the 2008-2013 timeframe numbered at 14 million, then the annual rate of students graduating from high schools was merely equivalent to 0.57 percent of the total population. In this sense, the annual growth rate of high school graduates was at least 3 times slower than the annual rate of the population growth. Table 3-5 Enrollment at Secondary Education 2010-2013 Academic Years Enrollment at Secondary Education Academic

Upper Secondary Education

Lower Secondary Education

Total

Years

(grade10-12)

(grade7-9)

2013-2012

288,789

534,710

823,499

2012-2011

318,165

541,147

859,312

2011-2010

334,734

560,868

895,602

Source: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports: Education Statistics and Indicators 2010-2013246

246

Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), Education Statistics & Indicators 2012/2013 (Phnom Penh: EMIS Office, Department of Planning, May 2013), 1. See "Education Statistics 2012-2013," The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), accessed February 14, 2014, www.moeys.gov.kh/en/stastic-andindicator/eims/emis-2012-2013.html#.Uv2NHH8aySM; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), Education Statistics & Indicators 2011/2012 (Phnom Penh: EMIS Office, Department of Planning, February 2012), 2. See "Education Statistics 2011-2012," The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), accessed February 14, 2014, www.moeys.gov.kh/en/stastic-and-indicator/eims/emis-20112012.html#.Uv2RF38aySM ; Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), Education Statistics & Indicators 2010/2011 (Phnom Penh: EMIS Office, Department of Planning, March 2011), 2. See "Education Statistics 2010-2011," The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS), accessed February 14, 2014, www.moeys.gov.kh/en/stastic-and-indicator/eims/emis-2010-2011.html#.Uv2SUX8aySM .

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2013 2011 Graduate Numbers

2010

Examinee Numbers 2009 2008 0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000 120,000

Figure 3-8 Number of High School Examinees and Graduates 2008-2013 Source: Radio Free Asia (Khmer)247

88.00% 86.00% 84.00% 82.00% 80.00%

High School Graduates

78.00% 76.00% 74.00% 72.00% 2009

2010

2011

2013

Figure 3-9 Growth of High School Graduates 2009-2013 by Percentages Source: Radio Free Asia (Khmer)248

247

Sochea Meta Yang, "BacII Students in Phnom Penh Spent More than US$700,000 to Bribe Proctors," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), August 31, 2013, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/news/social-economy/Students-in-PP-spentover-half-a-million-dollar-for-bribery-during-bac-II-exam-08312013011541.html?searchterm:utf8:ustring =%E1%9E%94%E1%9F%92%E1%9E%9A%E1%9E%A1%E1%9E%84%E2%80%8B%E1%9E%94%E1%9E %B6%E1%9E%80%E1%9F%8B%E2%80%8B%E1%9E%8C%E1%9E%BB%E1%9E%94%E2%80%8B ; Sok Norng Kher, "More than 82% passed high school exam in 2011," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), August 20, 2011, www.rfa.org/khmer/indepth/ over_82percent_passed_bacII_exam-08202011054437.html? ; Ayuthya Den, "Teacher Association: Education in Cambodia is at alarming time," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), September 25, 2010, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/indepth/cam-education-system-critcized-09252010050606.html?searchterm:utf8 :ustring=%E1%9E%94%E1%9F%92%E1%9E%9A%E1%9E%A1%E1%9E%84%E2%80%8B%E1%9E%94% E1%9E%B6%E1%9E%80%E1%9F%8B%E2%80%8B%E1%9E%8C%E1%9E%BB%E1%9E%94%E2%80%8 B ; Pech Meta Keo, "Situations of the High School Exam Nationwide" Radio Free Asia (Khmer), July 29, 2009, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/indepth/situation-of-high-school-exam-2009-07292009043840.html ; Pech Meta Keo, "High School Exam Starts Nationwide between 4-6 August," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), August 5, 2008, www.rfa.org/khmer/indepth/high-school-exams-start-08052008051829.html?

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The young generation of better education is not only more likely to participate in politics but also more capable of mobilizing their parents and friends for political engagement. On one hand, based on their modern standards and higher levels of education, political behaviours and attitudes of Cambodian youth are less likely to be influenced by their parents according to Barakat‘s findings, and so are more likely to participate in politics than their parents and other old people in the previous generation. The IRI survey in November 2013 found that 71 percent of the total 2,000 respondents, who were randomly selected from 24 city and provinces, felt freer to speak about politics and two third of this percentage said they were less worried about their expression of political ideas249. Moreover, their political participation can be clearly seen through their growing interests in the July 2013 election, if compared to the previous elections, and a growing presence of youth in protests. In the IRI survey conducted between January and February 2013, shortly before the July 2013 election, 88 percent of respondents replied they would ―very likely‖ go to vote for their desired political parties to lead the National Assembly and the government while only 9 percent responded ―somewhat likely‖250. This data shows the highest probable voter turnout in the last 10 years since 2003251 (Figure 3-10). Also, during the election and in the post-election period, most of the election observers252, the participants in demonstrations

248

Sochea Meta Yang, "BacII Students in Phnom Penh Spent More than US$700,000 to Bribe Proctors," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), August 31, 2013, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/news/social-economy/Students-in-PP-spentover-half-a-million-dollar-for-bribery-during-bac-II-exam-08312013011541.html?searchterm:utf8:ustring= %E1%9E%94%E1%9F%92%E1%9E%9A%E1%9E%A1%E1%9E%84%E2%80%8B%E1%9E%94%E1%9E% B6%E1%9E%80%E1%9F%8B%E2%80%8B%E1%9E%8C%E1%9E%BB%E1%9E%94%E2%80%8B; Sok Norng Kher, "More than 82% passed high school exam in 2011," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), August 20, 2011, www.rfa.org/khmer/indepth/ over_82percent_passed_bacII_exam-08202011054437.html?; Ayuthya Den, "Teacher Association: Education in Cambodia is at alarming time," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), September 25, 2010, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/indepth/cam-education-system-critcized-09252010050606.html?searchterm :utf8: ustring=%E1%9E%94%E1%9F%92%E1%9E%9A%E1%9E%A1%E1%9E%84%E2%80%8B%E1% 9E%94%E1%9E%B6%E1%9E%80%E1%9F%8B%E2%80%8B%E1%9E%8C%E1%9E%BB%E1%9E%94%E 2%80%8B ; Pech Meta Keo, "Situations of the High School Exam Nationwide," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), July 29, 2009, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/indepth/situation-of-high-school-exam-2009-07292009043840.html . 249 "IRI Cambodia Survey: Declining Optimism on Country‘s Direction; Strong Support for Democratic Reforms," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 3, 2014, http://www.iri.org/newsevents-press-center/news/iri-cambodia-survey-declining-optimism-countrypercentE2percent80percent99sdirection-strong-supp 250 The International Republican Institute (IRI), Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: January 12-February 2, 2013 (IRI: Phnom Penh, 2013), 22. See "IRI Cambodia Survey Finds High Interest in National Elections," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 13, 2014, www.iri.org/news-events-press-center/ news/iri-cambodia-survey-finds-high-interest-national-elections . 251 COMFREL, Final Assessment and Report on 2008 National Assembly Elections (Phnom Penh: COMFREL, 2008), 72. 252 Youth are generally interested in election observation. In the 2007 Commune/Sangkat Council Election, more than a majority of election observers recruited by COMFREL and NICFEC were young. COMFREL, "Participation of Youth in Elections," Neak Kloam Meul 73 (July 2007): 2.

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against the 2013 election result253 and the strikers asking for US$ 160 minimum wages per month254 were youth. 100.00% 90.00% 80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00% 30.00% 20.00% 10.00% 0.00%

Voter Turnout Promising Voter Turnout

2003

2007

2008

2013

Figure 3-10 Voter Turnout 2003-2008 and Promising Voter Turnout 2013 Source: IRI255 and COMFREL256

On the other hand, elderly parents and young people appear likely to be inspired by their young children and their peers orderly. Cambodian youth may have roles in transmitting their political behaviours and attitudes to their older parents because of their better education. This kind of political socialization and mobilization has been facilitated by a high rate of dependency within Cambodian households. According to the General Population Census of Cambodia in 2008, the dependency ratio was significantly high in most parts of the country varying from 57 percent up to 76.6 percent with a low in the capital city at only 34percent257 (Figure 3-11). While young political activists have shown their discontent with the government‘s performance in areas of education, employment258 and minimum wages259,

253

Sonorng Kher, "Youth in Volunteer Works at Democracy Square," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), October 25, 2013, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/news/politics/youth-join-social-work-in-cnrp-demonstration-102520130818 47.html?searchterm:utf8:ustring=youth+in+demonstration 254 Savyuth Hang, "Civil Society and Citizens Seek Perpetrators in Shooting Garment Workers to be Sent to the Courts," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), January 14, 2014, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/ news/law/ngos-and-peoplewant-govt-to-bring-gunman-who-killed-workers-to-court-01142014072208.html 255 The International Republican Institute (IRI), Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: January 12-February 2, 2013 (IRI: Phnom Penh, 2013), 22. See "IRI Cambodia Survey Finds High Interest in National Elections," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 13, 2014, www.iri.org/news-events-presscenter/news/iri-cambodia-survey-finds-high-interest-national-elections . 256 COMFREL, "Final Assessment and Report on 2008 National Assembly Elections, " (Phnom Penh: COMFREL, 2008), 72. 257 "Census Info: Dependency ration – Percentage, 2008," The National Institute of Statistics, accessed January 22, 2014, http://data.nis.gov.kh/censusinfo/libraries/aspx/dataview.aspx . 258 In the 2008 COMFEBA survey, more than half of the high school students were more concerned with job creation and necessary skills and vocational trainings for employability whereas more than the majority of

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most elderly demonstrators explained their participation with the opposition party in terms of a better future for their children and grandchildren‘ better welfare260. 90.0% 80.0% 70.0% 60.0% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0%

Dependency Ratio

20.0% 10.0% 0.0%

Figure 3-11 Dependency Ratio in 24 City and Provinces in 2008 Source: General Population Census of Cambodia 2008 by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) 261

However, it is not yet clear whether this factor of better education dominates others sociocultural factors including the culture of collectivism and socio-economic dependency of

university students looked pessimistic at a size of job markets. Ratana Norng and Tola Hem, "Youth and Employment: Bridging the Gap," (Phnom Penh: CAMFEBA, June 2008), 30, 36, 38 and 40. 259 A total number of garment workers is in between 400,000 and 500,000. These young workers, who generally aged between 18 years old and 30s, consider a matter of minimum wages as the urgent prioritized issue, followed by working conditions. In recent nationwide strikes, which lead to deadly clashes, they all asked for an increase of minimum wages in the sector by US$ 160 as a result of recently high inflation in the country. Khunthear Mom, "Cambodia‘s Free Trade Union offers minimum wage plan," The Phnom Penh Post, January 4, 2013, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/cambodias-free-trade-union-offers-minimum-wage-plan. Also teachers attempt to demand a minimum wage of at least 1 million Riel, or about US$ 250, while their current salaries are about a half of the demanded minimum wages. Mony Say, "Avoid Corruption in the Education Sector Is the Key Reform," Voice of America (Khmer), October 24, 2013, http://khmer.voanews.com/content/ anti-corruption-in-education-key-to-reform-cambodia-khmer/1775751.html 260 Ms. Kea, 70 years old, is one of participants in the CNRP national demonstration. She reasoned her presence in the demonstration and her dedication of time and money with the better future of young people and the next generation. Kasariya Tin, "Many Reasons behind Participation in the National Demonstration by the Cambodia National Rescue Party," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), October 29, 2013, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/news/politics/ reasons-demonstrators-joint-cnrp-demonstration-10292013035222.html?searchterm:utf8:ustring=CNRP +demonstration 261 "Census Info: Dependency ration – Percentage, 2008," the National Institute of Statistics, accessed January 22, 2014, http://data.nis.gov.kh/censusinfo/libraries/aspx/dataview.aspx .

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family members. While both old and young Cambodians think of family rather their individuals, children are morally responsible for their elderly parents and the living of latter is economically dependent on their children‘s earnings at least at their later ages or after their retirement262. Also, most young Cambodians generally stay under the same roof with their parents until they get married and can afford to buy a house, as can be seen by the dependency ratio published by the National Institute of Statistics in 2008263. Furthermore, political discussions, argued Conroy Meredith et al, happen only among close friends but sometimes possibly among acquaintances through social networking sites264. Likeminded people and hidden identities are the main reasons for a closed grouping and necessary support through social media265. In Cambodia, youth manage their informal groups among peers either by direct contact or through a virtual community. Internet cafes and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter become their new means of socialization and, perhaps, political participation and mobilization. The economic growth in the last decade has improved people‘s living, businesses and lifestyles. The internet cafe has become a new locus of socialization for young Cambodians and middle-income people while its businesses have blossomed throughout the country. In the capital city of Phnom Penh alone, more than 300 internet cafes were recorded in 2013266. ―Politikoffee‖, one of the well-known informal groups, was initiated by young Cambodians in their 20s to have a regular discussion at the BBC café among friends from various disciplines and crossing fields of works such as political science graduates, teachers and entertainment reporters267. This group uses Facebook to arrange their discussions of a dozen regular members and to share information of their meeting results on various topics from current affairs of domestic politics to the future of their country among hundreds of their page fans.

262

Harry C. Triandis, Christoper McCusker and C. Harry Hui,"Multimethod Probes of Individualism and Collectivism," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59:5 (November 1990): 1006-08. 263 "Census Info: Dependency ration – Percentage, 2008," the National Institute of Statistics, accessed January 22, 2014, http://data.nis.gov.kh/censusinfo/libraries/aspx/dataview.aspx . 264 Meredith Conroy, Jessica T. Feezell and Mario Guerrero, "Facebook and Political Engagement: A Study of Online Political Group Membership and Offline Political Engagement," Computers in Human Behavior 28 (2012): 1536. 265 Ibid, 1537. 266 Suy Heimkhemra, "Cheap Data, Better Tech Putting More Cambodians Online," Voice of America (VOA), March 25, 2013, http://www.voanews.com/content/cheap-data-better-tech-putting-more-cambodiansonline/1628531.html 267 Kevin Ponniah, "Political eyes on youth vote," The Phnom Penh Post, July 9, 2013, www.phnompenhpost. com/national/political-eyes-youth-vote .

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Other informal groups and individuals use Facebook to mobilize youth for political support. The ―I Love Cambodia Hot News‖, which has approximately 300,000 fans including oversea Cambodian youth, is believed to be a CNRP affiliated Facebook page and used to promote the popularity of the opposition, especially during the 2013 national election and the post-election demonstrations268. This page becomes a tool for spreading information and a new locus for sharing views and criticizing the government. Another Facebook page, ―Thy Sovantha‖, is run by a 19-year pro-CNRP activist and has around 220,000 fans269. This page is used to spread information of social injustice, especially during violent crackdowns by the authorities on demonstrators who demanded election investigations and reelections, and to provide a platform whereby its fans share their grievance against the government. Yet, it is not least to notice that both ―I Love Cambodia Hot News‖ and ―Thy Sovantha‖ pages have a large disproportion between the number of their fans and the number of likes and comments, in the sense they have never surpassed 40,000 and 30,000 likes or comments respectively. Thus, these pages are suspected of buying credits through Facebook ―Boost Post‖ for their selfadvertisement. Yet, political socialization through peer networks remains less influential when compared to familial socialization. The main reason may be less open and less widespread discussions about politics among friends in the absence of trust, and a high ratio of family dependency in the kingdom. Thus, political discussions appear to happen often and to be freer among family members than among friends. According to the IRI survey on Cambodian Public Opinion in January-February 2013, only 12 percent of respondents agreed that their friends inspired their decisions to vote for a particular political party during the July 2013 election while 29 percent believed their decisions were under the influence of their parents‘ preferred parties. Yet, political socialization either within families or among peers remained less influential when these factors were compared to the political-self of the young voters based on their better education, standing at no less than 40 percent270 (Figure 3-12). In other words, this data shows that the higher knowledge of youth is a more decisive factor while the familial environment

268

I Love Cambodia Hot News Facebook page, accessed February 14, 2014, www.facebook.com/ilovecambodia hotnews.real?ref=ts&fref=ts 269 Thy Sovantha‘s Facebook page, accessed February 14, 2014, www.facebook.com/khmer.samakiknea?ref= ts&fref=ts 270 The International Republican Institute (IRI), Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: October 28-November 10, 2013 (IRI: Phnom Penh, 2013), 15. See "IRI Cambodia Survey: Declining Optimism on Country‘s Direction; Strong Support for Democratic Reforms," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 13, 2014, www.iri.org/sites/default/files/2014%20January%2023%20Survey%20of%20Cambodia %20Public%20Opinion%2C%20October%2028-November%2010%2C%202013.pdf

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continues to be significant and amicable socialization is also considerable in transmitting political behaviours and attitudes among family members and friends271. 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% Decisive Factors

20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Better Education

Family

Friends

Figure 3-12 Better Education, Family and Friends in Defining a Preferred Party Source: Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: January 12-February 2, 2013 by the IRI272

In brief, the human resource development in Cambodia is far better than 30 years ago. Most Cambodian youth are literate and the vast majority of young children annually enroll at schools. This great development in the national education system shows a clear generational gap within this sector, especially between the pre- and post-Khmer Rouge generations. While more than a majority of elderly people in the previous generation are illiterate, almost all young Cambodians in the next generation are literate and a significant proportion of them have at least secondary education. These phenomena have two consequences for not only the Cambodian elderly and youth but also among youth themselves. Cambodian youth are very likely to participate in politics compared to their parents and other elderly people in the previous generation. Also, they are believed to inspire their parents and their friends in terms of political behaviours and attitudes. In this regard, it is important to notice that the familial environment and political socialization appear to have a greater impact on the political identity of both old and young Cambodians than peer cultures. Therefore, this variable of better education is strongly believed to reinforce the dramatic shifts in young demographics in Cambodia, making changes in structures of the political institutions necessary. If the 271

More than 70 percent of respondents were from rural areas, so the findings would have been changed if the proportion of respondents from both areas was considered. Ibid, 45. 272 The International Republican Institute (IRI), Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: January 12-February 2, 2013 (IRI: Phnom Penh, 2013), 15. See "IRI Cambodia Survey Finds High Interest in National Elections," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 13, 2014, www.iri.org/news-events-presscenter/news/iri-cambodia-survey-finds-high-interest-national-elections .

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reorganization of the political institutions proceeds slowly because of the political will or pressures of the regime‘s elderly senior members in power, the state institutions need to provide Cambodian people, especially the young, more public space as an alternative, which is discussed and analyzed in the following section.

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IF THEY ARE PROVIDED AN ALTERNATIVE TO THE FORMAL POLITICAL STRUCTURES FOR GETTING INVOLVED IN DECISION MAKING PROCESSES, THEN A CONFRONTATION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND THE YOUNG IS REDUCED TO MINIMUM AND A SEVERE FORM OF COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE CAN BE AVOIDED The year 2013 was marked by an increasing number of protests regarding land disputes, election irregularities, and a growing activism of youth in politics through social media. Rather than taking actions before the competent state institutions, young Cambodians sought recourses through informal structures. Consequently, a confrontation between elderly political leaders and their young citizens sometimes led to physical harm and deadly clashes. An emergence of this generational confrontation and severe forms of collective violence may be a result of a decline in the public trust towards the state institutions in representing their interests and a limited public space for exercising their freedom and liberty to demand from the government an increasingly egalitarian society. In this sense, if Cambodian people, especially the young, are provided an alternative to the state institutions for getting involved in decision making processes, then a confrontation between the government and the young is reduced to a minimum and severe forms of collective violence can be avoided as can be seen in the following discussions. Land disputes spread throughout the country and, then, protests happen regularly. Since 2000s, a smooth function of the state institutions in Cambodia has been threatened due to the absence of any effective policy for curing this social disease (Figure 3-6). This social calamity appears unlikely to be alleviated. According to the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC), in 2011 alone, 60,000 people were forcefully evacuated273 while the worse year of land disputes was reported in 2012 due to the multiplying number of struggles between authorities and people274. In January 2014, people protested against the local authorities in Banteay Meanchey province in regards to a controversial distribution of land plots for implementing the government policy of economic land concessions, so nearly 200 families occupied the land in disputes to prevent the private

273

"Ee Sarom," Civil Rights Defenders, accessed February 18, 2014, www.civilrightsdefenders.org/uncategorized/human-rights-defender-of-the-month-ee-sarom/ . 274 "Report: A Turning Point? Land, Housing and Natural Resources Rights in Cambodia in 2012,"ADHHOC, accessed February 17, 2014, www.adhoc-cambodia.rog/?p=2849 .

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companies and the local authorities from doing their surveying275. In February 2014, local authorities in Pursat province forcefully evacuated people by burning down their homes and leaving more than 100 families homeless. This led to protests demanding fair compensation and a release of their representative from a criminal charge276. In the aftermath of the announcement of the election result, a number of mass demonstrations led by the opposition party occurred throughout the country, especially in the capital city of Phnom Penh, demanding investigations into election irregularities. The CNRP was discontented with decisions of the National Election Committee and the Constitutional Council, both were accused of being biased towards the ruling party, leading to month-long mass demonstrations. With the support of garment workers, on December 7, 2013, the number of participants in the mass demonstrations was estimated at around 20,000277. Yet, on December 21, 2013, this figure jumped up to at least 100,000, though the opposition leader, Sam Rainsy, claimed a figure of up to 500,000278. It was the first time in history that discontented Cambodians had demonstrated in such a large number against the government and the ruling party, far more than what happened in 1998 (Table 3-6)279. Estimated Largest Number of Protesters

1998

2013

By Reporters and Authorities

15,000

100,000

By the Opposition

35,000

500,000

Table 3-6 Number of Protests 1998 & 2013 in Comparison Source: The Phnom Penh Post280

275

Sophorl Mony Sourn, "Nearly 200 Families Push Company Machines from the Land in Disputes," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), January 20, 2014, www.rfa.org/khmer/news/land/banteaymeanchey-01202014052959.html . 276 Rotha Chin, "People in Pursat Province Continues to Protest Demanding a Release of a Women and a Stop of Home Evacuation," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), February 14, 2014, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/news/land/ villagers-in-pursat-continues-protest-02142014043302.html . 277 Alex Pettiford and George Nickels, "Demonstrating restraint," The Southeast Asia Globe, September 7, 2013, http://sea-globe.com/cnrp-demonstration-phnom-penh/ . 278 Sokchea Meas and Daniel Pye, "CNRP‘s Sunday ‗tsunami‘," The Phnom Penh Post, December 22, 2013, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/cnrps-sunday-tsunami ; Bannett Murray and Khouth Sophak Chakrya, "Size me up: calculating crowds at Cambodia‘s demonstrations," The Phnom Penh Post, January 3, 2014, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/size-me-calculating-crowds-cambodia%E2%80%99s-demonstrations . 279 James Eckardt and Sotheacheath Chea, "Diary of a Demonstration," The Phnom Penh Post, September 4, 1998, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/diary-demonstration . 280 James Eckardt and Chea Sotheacheath, "Diary of a Demonstration," The Phnom Penh Post, September 4, 1998, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/diary-demonstration ; Sokchea Meas and Daniel Pye, "CNRP‘s Sunday ‗tsunami‘," The Phnom Penh Post, December 22, 2013, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/

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Yet, the mass demonstrations in 1998 and 2013 had less violence and no casualties though it had a very large scale of participants when compared to the demonstration in 1997. On March 30, 1997, while the Khmer National Party, the then Sam Rainsy Party, gathered a crowd of around 170 people and was demonstrating before the National Assembly to call for judicial reforms281, four grenades were thrown into a crowd listening to Sam Rainsy leaving at 19 death and 150 injuries282. This event was underlined by two surrounding situations. First, the demonstration took place in a tense political situation, just four months earlier before the coup of 6-7 July. Second, during the demonstration, military forces from the bodyguard unit of the Second Prime Minister were deployed to control the situation while police had a light presence at the time283. Until the present, both the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the domestic courts have not identified perpetrators yet. Labour strikes are the most common form of protests used by trade unions to demand better pay and work conditions. This form of protests has grown in number since 2003 while its nature has recently changed from peaceful to violent strikes since last year. The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC) reported a total of 817 strikes from 2003 to 2013 but the year 2012 was known as the worst year with a skyrocketing number of 121 cases, up from 34 cases in 2011, equivalent to a jump of 255.9 percent284 (Figure 3-13). In early 2013, during a labour strike in Prey Veng province, three garment workers were badly injured by a gun shot and an ex-Bavet town governor was lately found guilty of ―unintentional violence‖ with an imprisonment of 18 months, yet he remained free until the present285. On January 3, 2014, during labour strikes for minimum wages of US$ 160 per month on the Ven Sreng road, peaceful protests have turned into violent when situations of confrontation between garment workers and military police became tense, leaving at least 4

national/cnrps-sunday-tsunami ; Bannett Murray and Sophak Chakrya Khouth, "Size me up: calculating crowds at Cambodia‘s demonstrations," The Phnom Penh Post, January 3, 2014, www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/sizeme-calculating-crowds-cambodia‘s-demonstrations . 281 Sokha Cheang and Liam Cochrane, "Grenade victim‘s painful years of justice denied," The Phnom Penh Post, April 9, 2004, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/grenade-victims-painful-years-justice-denied . 282 Peter Sainsbury, "FBI grenade investigation continues," The Phnom Penh Post, October 15, 1999, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/fbi-grenade-investigation-continues . 283 FBI Report, "FBI report on Rainsy rally bombing," The Phnom Penh Post, October 15, 1999, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/fbis-report-rainsy-rally-bombing . 284 "Strike Report," Garment Manufacturer Association in Cambodia (GMAC), accessed January 20, 2014, http://gmac-cambodia.org/strike/ . 285 Titthara May and Stuart White, "A year after trial, still free," The Phnom Penh Post, February 27, 2014, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/year-after-trial-still-free .

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people killed, 1 missing and 38 injured286, following the event of a deadly gun shot on Kbal Thnol Sky Bridge. 140 120 100 80 Garment strikes

60 40 20 0 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Figure 3-13 Growing Number of Labour Strikes 2003-2013 Source: Garment Manufacturer Association in Cambodia (GMAC) 287

Like the situations in the 1997 demonstration, the labour strike of January 2013 took place in the nearly same situations. The strike was held immediately following the successive demonstrations in December 2013 by the opposition party, the CNRP, calling for investigation into election irregularities. That means it happened under a tense situation when the CNRP demonstration had more than 100,000 participants and the CPP won a very slight victory in the 2013 national election, which clearly threatened the ruling party‘s legitimacy and may have led to a removal of the ruling party from power if the labour strikes were not under control. Also, unlike the demonstrations in December 2013, during the strikes in January 2014, military forces were dispatched instead of police while their presence may have led to a deadly clash with garment workers and most of the strikers on the scene were young. Growing problems of the labour strikes really test the ability of the government on how effectively it intervenes in solving complaints of the garment workers. Yet, the government seems to be ineffective in solving and preventing further labour disputes. The government‘s failure in representing the worker‘s interest may have a relationship with the absence of its 286

"Summary Paper When Freedom Meets Oppression: Timeline of Recent Events, January 31, 2014," LICADHO, accessed February 17, 2014, www.licadho-cambodia.org/reports/files/192LICADHOTimeline LethalViolence2014-English.pdf . 287 "Strike Report," the Garment Manufacturer Association in Cambodia (GMAC), accessed January 20, 2014, http://gmac-cambodia.org/strike/ .

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clear policy and autonomy in treating parties in disputes fairly based on the principles of the rule of law. In regards to the problems of the minimum wage, the Labour Advisory Committee288 has no willingness to review it annually in a response to economic growth, increasing gains of the manufacturers and high inflation289. When the nationwide strikes broke out everywhere in 2013, the committee decided to increase minimum wages per month for the garment sectors from US$ 75 to $US 95 within only less than a year290 while an increase of US$ 16 needed 10 years from 2000 to 2010 (Table 3-7). Yet, the latest agreed minimum wage remained far lower than the minimum livable wage for the garment factory workers of between $US 157 and $US 177 in a study by the ministry itself291 (Table 3-8). Table 3-7 Development of Approved Minimum Wages in Garment Industries 2000

2007

2010

March 2013

December 2013

US$ 45

US$ 50

US$ 61

US$ 75

US$ 95

Source: The Phnom Penh Post292

288

The Labour Advisory Committee is composed of representatives from the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training, the Garment Manufacturer Association in Cambodia (GMAC) and trade unions including the Federation of Trade Unions. 289 In a letter signed by representatives of the undersigned associations representing the U.S. and Canada retail and fashion factories on January 15, 2014, they asked for a regular-scheduled wage review mechanism. See GMAC‘s Facebook page, accessed January 20, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/gmacpage 290 Kunthear Mom and Teehan Sean, "Extra $5 ‗won‘t woo workers‘," The Phnom Penh Post, January 1, 2014, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/extra-5-percentE2percent80percent 98wonpercentE2percent80percent99t-woo-workerspercentE2percent80percent99 . 291 Pheap Aun and Matt Blomberg, "Labor Ministry Ignored Its Own Research on Minimum Wage," The Cambodia Daily, February 12, 2014, www.cambodiadaily.com/news/labor-ministry-ignored-its-own-researchon-minimum-wage-51977/ 292 Shane Worrell and Kunthear Mom, "Wage increase sewn up," The Phnom Penh Post, March 22, 2013, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/wage-increase-sewn; Kunthear Mom, "Minimum wage ruling set to spark garment protests," The Phnom Penh Post, July 9, 2010, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/minimum-wageruling-set-spark-garment-protests; Kunthear Mom and Shane Worrel, "Further wage increases eyed," The Phnom Penh Post, August 26, 2013, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/further-wage-increases-eyed ; Kunthear Mom and Teehan Sean, "Extra $5 ‗won‘t woo workers‘," The Phnom Penh Post, January 1, 2014, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/extra-5-%E2%80%98won%E2%80%99t-woo-workers%E2%80%99

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Table 3-8 Minimum Wages in Textile, Garment and Shoe Industries 2014-2018

Source: The Statement of the Labour Advisory Committee dated on December 24, 2013 293

The ineffective intervention by the government gradually led to a loss of confidence among the parties in disputes, the trade unions and the manufacturers. While the trade unions perceived that the government tends to be more protective of the garment employers by prioritizing a protection of industry in the sector, the GMAC, the representative of the 400 garment and footwear factories, alleged that the government politicizes labour disputes by being ―too patient‖ towards violent and unlawful strikers294. As a consequence, some garment factories such as the SL refused to implement the order issued by the ministry in November 2013, which required the employer to reinstate 19 fired union representatives to work in order to end a three-month-long strike295, eventually resulting in an outburst of collective violence. Besides protests, social media has recently become an emerging platform where Cambodian youth actively got involved in politics. While various types of social media such as Facebook, 293

"Statement of Labour Advisory Committee 2014," Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), accessed February 19, 2014, www.gmac-cambodia.org 294 "Statement of GMAC On: Violent and Non-Procedural Strike at Apple Apparel," the Garment Manufacturer Association in Cambodia (GMAC), accessed January 20, 2014, http://www.gmac-cambodia.org/ . 295 VOA, "The SL Factory Denies to Accept Representatives of the Trade Union Required by the Government," Voice of America (Khmer), November 23, 2013, http://khmer.voanews.com/content/cambodia-factory-refuse-tohire-back-workers-as-ordered-khmer/1794331.html ; Dara Mech, "SL Factory Refuses to Reinstate Fired Union Representatives," The Cambodia Daily, November 26, 2013, www.cambodiadaily.com/archives/sl-factoryrefuses-to-reinstate-fired-union-representatives-47912/ .

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Twitter, YouTube, and blogs have become popular in Cambodia, Facebook is the most popular with a total number of around 1 million users296. Recently, Cambodian youth complained the government about its intervention into minimum fees of phone calls297 and the negligence of the municipality in auditing private concessionary businesses, who have exclusive rights over parking fees of bicycles, motorcycles and cars in all markets in the capital city298, leading to the government‘s immediate and positive reactions to their complaints. In mid-February 2014, Prak Sovannary, a wife of a human rights activist and the president of the Independent Democracy of Informal Economy Association (IDEA), Von Pov, posted on her Facebook account Pov‘s letter encouraging his supporters to continue to fight for their freedom299. Also, blogs are used by communities that are victims of forceful evacuation, with most of the activists in their 20s and 30s. The ―Save Boeung Kak300‖ was created in 2007 by some Boeung Kak families, who were victims of forceful evacuation, in order to update news regarding their campaigns and activities301, and to mobilize support from key aid donors such as the World Bank302 and the Asian Development Bank303 in putting pressures on the government. The recent social disorders can be partly explained by youth exclusion from decision making bodies of the state institutions and a failure of the institutions in representing the interest of the majority, if not the public interest, and partly by a very limited public space for the public 296

Various sources provided different data but the total number of Facebook users was estimated at around 1 million by 2013. The Internet World Stats recorded Facebook users in Cambodia at around 750,000, Voice of America (Khmer) reported the total number at approximately 1 million, and Radio France International numbered Facebook users at just above 1 million. "Asia Marketing Research, Internet Usage, Population Statistics and Facebook Information," Internet World Stats, accessed November 11, 2013, http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia.htm#kh ; Sophat Seung, "Social Networking Sites Help Politicians and Voters Come Much Closer," Voice of America (Khmer), July 27, 2013, http://khmer.voanews.com/content/ social-media-brings-voters-and-parties-closer-cambodia-khmer/1710960.html ; Sophak Srey, "Facebook Changes Society and Khmers‘ Attitude," Radio France International (Khmer), January 11, 2014, www.khmer.rfi.fr/facebook-contribue-changement-societe-et-attitude . 297 Sakhon Gneum, "Youth Push the Government to Stop Invention into a Fix of Minimum Fees for Mobile Phones," Voice of Democracy (VOD), December 14, 2013, http://vodhotnews.com/17898 . 298 Zakarya Tin, "City Hall Announced Revision of Documents Determining Deposit Fees for Bicycles, Motorcycles and Cars," Radio Free Asia (Khmer), November 29, 2013, http://www.rfa.org/khmer/news/socialeconomy/overcharge-of-moto-cycle-at-market-11292013071949.html 299 Teehan Sean and Channyda Chhay,"Detainee speaks out online," The Phnom Penh Post, February 17, 2014, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/detainee-speaks-out-online 300 "Save Boeung Kak Campaign: Join Us!"Boeung Kak (blog). Accessed January 19, 2014, http://saveboeungkak.wordpress.com/ "Save Boeung Kak Campaign: Join Us!," Boeung Kak Victims, accessed January 19, 2014, http://saveboeungkak.wordpress.com/ . 301 Post Staff, "2007 Year in Review," the Phnom Penh Post, December 28, 2007, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/2007-year-review . 302 Sean Teehan and Khouth Sophak Chakrya, "US House passes B Kak bill," The Phnom Penh Post, January 17, 2014, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/us-house-passes-b-kak-bill . 303 Alex Devine, "Loans to Keep Pace With Reform, ADB Says," The Cambodia Daily, February 28, 2001, http://www.cambodiadaily.com/archive/loans-to-keep-pace-with-reform-adb-says-20103/

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to make demands to the government for an increasingly egalitarian society. Young Cambodians, the majority group of the total population, are seriously marginalized in the main decision making bodies of the state institutions such as the National Assembly (Table 31 and Table 3-2) and the Senate (Figure 3-4 and Figure 3-5). In addition, they have a very limited public space that cannot be widely used as regular and persistent platforms to work out their demands with the state. Thus, the public space including civil society organizations, protests and social media appears very likely to become the final ground upon which young Cambodians fight with the state to take control for demanding an egalitarian society. Civil Society Organizations: Absence of Platforms for Cambodian Youth In aftermath of the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements, the non-governmental organizations experienced an exponential growth in the number. The number of civil society organizations (CSOs) registered at the Ministry of Interior has grown from 1 in 1991 to 2,675 at the end of 2010 while, of this number, 316 were international NGOs304. These organizations have different tasks that include development and advocacy but the government tends to be more favorable to the former than the latter. The advocacy NGOs are subjected to the government‘s close watch so that it has had many attempts to have a stronger legal framework controlling them such as an NGOs draft law305. Yet, a careful attention of the government to the NGOs does not always necessarily lead to a general conclusion that low participation of young Cambodians in the non-government organizations has resulted from the government‘s strict censorship to their freedom of associations and political rights. As we see below, the absence of persistent and regular platforms for youth, and the political will to integrate youth into society are the main arguments explaining why Cambodian youth have no more alternatives beside the state institutions to challenge and change the state norms for a fair distribution of the economic progress. Some programs in Cambodia are run by local and international NGOs to target young people whereas many local NGOs include their names with the term youth. Pilot programs and civil society organizations exclusively working with youth neither integrate them successively into society or provide them platforms for participatory democratic processes. In other words, neither provides effective means for this majority group to achieve their demands but rather 304

Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, NGO Forum and MEDiCAM (2010), Coventry, L. (ed) Moving from Aid Effectiveness to Development Effectiveness; cited in Monika Nowaczyk, Democratic Ownership in Cambodia: Progress and Challenges (Phnom Penh: Alliance 2015, March 2011), 2. 305 Ibid, 4-5.

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improves their awareness and cognitive development, so it seems they have very narrow alternatives beside the state institutions. Young people can rarely find the organizations that are available to bridge the gaps between them and the state institutions, as can be seen below. Some NGOs programs target potential young leaders and engage them in political affairs of their neighborhood. For example, in the 2007 Commune Council election, 6,397 young election observers, or 67 percent of the total observers, were employed by the Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL) while young observers from the Neutral and Impartial Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (NICFEC) numbered 4,125, or 75 percent of the total306. Yet, their political participation seems to be limited to election observation during the election days. Also, they are engaged in this kind of participatory democracy that happens only every five years. Besides election observation, other pilot programs have been initiated to promote participation of young people in democratization processes of the country. Two out of many successful programs have been promoted and supported by the International Republican Institute (IRI), the US-based organization, in the area of youth empowerment. The ―Next Generation307‖ (or ―Nek Bantor Ven‖ in Khmer) is a weekly contest program broadcasted on MyTV and Vayo FM and usually joined by young people under 25 years from both youth organizations and political parties. They debate some challenging issues Cambodia faces today and recommend some useful solutions. Also, the ―Advanced Democracy Seminar308‖ provides 4 week training on democracy, community improvement and fundraising for young people in communities by expecting them to help their communities through their initiatives of small development projects at the end of the program. Two other famous programs are managed by the Transparency International (TI) Cambodia in order to involve youth in building a more transparent and accountable society. The ―Youth Empowerment for Transparency and Integrity‖ (YETI), an annual youth camp, brings young Cambodians from across the country together to share knowledge and experiences of corruption for better understanding social transparency and accountability, and provides them

306

COMFREL, "Participation of Youth in Elections," Neak Kloam Meul 73 (July 2007): 2. "Cambodian Youth are Voices for Change Through ‗Next Generation‘ Show," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed January 05, 2014, http://www.iri.org/news-events-press-center/news/cambodian-youthare-voices-change-through-percentE2percent80percent9Cnext-generationpercentE2percent80percent9D-show 308 "Cambodian Youth Have an Impact in Their Communities," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed January 05, 2014, http://www.iri.org/news-events-press-center/news/cambodian-youth-have-impacttheir-communities 307

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more opportunities for group networking309. Also, the ―Youth Forum‖ provides opportunities for youth from various countries across the region to share experiences on how they participate in building a corruption-free society and make an equitable society by holding leaders responsible for their wrong doing310. Moreover, many local non-governmental organizations appear to specifically dedicate their missions and goals to youth development and integration. Yet, most of them limit their activities merely to develop youth‘s awareness in civic and political engagement (Table 3-9). They are unable to provide more regular and persistent platforms for young Cambodians to work out their demands as well as to challenge and change the state norms for an increasingly egalitarian society311. Only a very few of them support youth with stable and nationwide structures but attempt to mobilize them for political purposes. Out of at least a dozen youth organizations, the ruling party‘s Union of Youth Federations of Cambodia (UYFC) has the largest horizontal and vertical organization structures for achieving its missions312. The UYFC commits itself ―to mobilizing local and oversea youth for development of Cambodia towards independence, peace, liberty, democracy and prosperity, to protecting youth‘s interests and to building a good relation and cooperation with other local and international youth associations and organizations‖313. The union has its formal branches at the capital, provinces, cities and district for territorial administration314 and informal branches at ministries of the government as well as public and private universities

309

"3rd Youth Camp, Youth Empowerment for Transparency and Integrity (YETI)," Transparency International Cambodia, accessed January 05, 2014, http://ticambodia.org/index.php/whatwedo/event/percent203rd-youthcamp-youth-empowerment-for-transparency-and-integrity-yeti. 310 "Over 600 Gather at a ‗Youth Forum‘ to Promote Integrity, Learn about the Impact of Corruption on Their Life," Transparency International Cambodia, accessed January 05, 2014, http://ticambodia.org/index.php/whatwedo/event/youth-forum-involving-young-people-in-the-fight-againstcorruption 311 Local non-governmental organizations working in areas of youth are more than dozen such as Youth for Peace, Youth Star, Khmer Youth Association, Youth Council of Cambodia, Cambodia Indigenous Youth Association, Child and Youth Education Organization, Khmer Youth Association and Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia. 312 According to the article 2, paragraph 1 of the Status of the Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia, the UYFC succeeds its missions from the Association of Cambodian Youth and the Association of Cambodian Youth‘s Solidarity Front, which was established on December 2 nd, 1978. The 2nd December Day is the day of the CPP‘s revolutionary force establishment to fight against the Khmer Rouge and becomes the national holiday in Cambodia for commemorating a sacrifice of the forces during the war. "About the UYFC: the Status of the UYFC," Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia (UYFC), accessed January 11, 2014, http://www.uyfc.org/about-us/. 313 Article 2, paragraph 2, of the Status of the Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia. "About the UYFC: the Status of the UYFC," the UYFC, accessed January 11, 2014, http://www.uyfc.org/about-us/. 314 Article 9 of the Status of the Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia. "About the UYFC: the Status of the UYFC," the UYFC, accessed January 11, 2014, http://www.uyfc.org/about-us/.

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for national administration315. It is also worth to note that the organization and functioning of the UYFC are suspected of causing the 2011 National Policy on Cambodia Youth Development to be unenforceable316 due to its competition with the organization of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. However, it appears very likely that the UYFC mobilizes young Cambodians nationwide behind itself and rallies them to support the Cambodian People Party (CPP) instead of integrating them into society and providing them means for having impact on the national policy of development317. Its activities particularly concern cultural events like Khmer New Year (Angkor Sang Kran) and other volunteer work during international events such as Summit of World Heritage Committee. Sometimes, it is involved with commemorative activities of the ruling party such as 2nd December Day (the establishment of the revolutionary military forces against the Khmer Rouge) and 7th January Day (the victory day of the revolutionary army forces over the Khmer Rouge). Recently, according to the information announcement dated July30, 2013318, the UYFC supported the 2013 election result while 315

The organizational structures of the UYFC are actively engaged through Facebook such as the Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia, UYFC Phnom Penh (Uyfc Phnom Penh), UYFC Koh Kong (Uyfc Koh Kong Province), UYFC Kampong Chnang (Uyfc Kampong Chhnang), UYFC Kandal, UYFC Banteay Meanchey (សហភាពសហព័ន្ធយុវជន្កម្ពុជា ខេត្តបន្ទាយមាន្ជ័យ), UYFC Kampong Thom (Uyfc Kg-Th), UYFC Battambang (Uyfc Battambang), UYFC Ministry of Interior, UYFC Ministry of Environment (សហភាពសហ ព័ន្ធយុវជន្កម្ពុជា ក្កសួងបរ ិស្ថាន្), and UYFC University of Puthisastra (UP-UYFC). It is just a few examples to name the existing formal and informal networking groups of the UYFC in Cambodia. 316 According to the National Policy on Cambodia Youth Development endorsed by the Council of Ministers during the Plenary Session on 24th June 2011, the NYDC is required to establish a secretariat general and subcommittees to administer its works of making, implementing and evaluating the youth national policy at both horizontal and vertical levels such as Ministerial Youth Development Councils (MYDCs), Municipal and Provincial Youth Development Councils (M/PYDCs) as well as City and District Youth Development Councils (C/DYDCs). Until today, the national organ does not function yet. A failure of this national policy is suspected to have a relation with strong control of the UYFC in both the state administration and territorial administration. "The National Policy on Cambodia Youth Development," the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, accessed February 23, 2014, http://www.moeys.gov.kh/kh/policies-and-strategies.html . 317 The President of the Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia is Hun Many, a member of the National Assembly from the CPP and the youngest son of the Prime Minister Hun Sen, the longest-serving Prime Minister in the region. Also, its alliance with the Cambodian People‘s Party is specified in the Status of the UYFC disposed at the Minister of Interior for its registration and legal recognition as an NGO. According to the article 2, paragraph 1 of the Status of the Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia, the UYFC succeeds its missions from the Association of Cambodian Youth and the Association of Cambodian Youth‘s Solidarity Front, which was established on 2 December 1978. "About the UYFC: the Status of the UYFC," the UYFC, accessed January 11, 2014, http://www.uyfc.org/about-us/. 318 "Public Announcement on the Organization of the National Election of the National Assembly in the 5 th Mandate," Union of Youth Federation of Cambodia (UYFC), accessed January 11, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/pages/percentE1percent9Epercent9FpercentE1percent9EpercentA0percentE1percent 9Epercent97percentE1percent9EpercentB6percentE1percent9Epercent96percentE1percent9Epercent9FpercentE 1percent9EpercentA0percentE1percent9Epercent96percentE1percent9Fpercent90percentE1percent9Epercent93p ercentE1percent9Fpercent92percentE1percent9Epercent92percentE1percent9Epercent99percentE1percent9Eper centBBpercentE1percent9Epercent9CpercentE1percent9Epercent87percentE1percent9Epercent93percentE1perc ent9Epercent80percentE1percent9Epercent98percentE1percent9Fpercent92percentE1percent9Epercent96percent

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other local319 and international320 NGOs working in election monitoring reported many election irregularities and frauds, and the international community321 also raised concerns over the election irregularities and the legitimacy of the newly established single-party parliament in according to the constitutional values of liberal multi-party democracy.

Table 3-9 Summary of the Main Missions for Some Programs and NGOs

Source: Data from NGOs websites as presented earlier. E1percent9EpercentBBpercentE1percent9Epercent87percentE1percent9EpercentB6-Union-of-YouthFederations-of-Cambodia/570451822970578; 319 Zakariya Tin, "Cambodian NGOs Reveal Poll Fraud," Radio Free Asia (English), November 27, 2013, www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/report-11272013162936.html 320 "Cambodia: Ruling Party Orchestrated Vote Fraud," Human Rights Watch, accessed February 19, 2014, www.hrw.org/news/2013/07/31/cambodia-ruling-party-orchestrated-vote-fraud . 321 Lauren Crothers, "Australian Senate Calls For Election Investigation," The Cambodia Daily, February 15, 2014, www.cambodiadaily.com/news/australian-senate-calls-for-election-investigation-52316/ ; Stuart White, "Foreign envoys turn out in force," The Phnom Penh Post, September 24, 2013, www.phnompenhpost.com/ national/foreign-envoys-turn-out-force

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Protests: Restricted Freedom of Association and Assembly A protest is another option for public space. It can be done in forms of either demonstrations or strikes. Differences in levels of education, living standard among the young population and their parents‘ past experience may be the main factors explaining why they prefer protests than other forms of the public space including civil society and media. Some social and political analysts such as Dr. Kem Ley and journalists such as Kevin Ponniah noticed there are gaps between rural and urban youth in terms of education, knowledge of the information communications technology and their accessibility to the internet, so they behave towards and perceive politics differently, especially their means of involvement322. Yet, it is also important to notice in the public opinion survey that parents remain influential over a preferred party of their young children during the 2013 national election, and their frightening experiences of civil wars are likely transferred to their children as well323. Thus, most of the young with lower education and in the working class prefer protests rather than civil society and social media whereas a few of them under an influence of their parents‘ story during the Khmer Rouge and their counterpart, the well-educated young in the middle-income class, are more likely active in campaigns on social media and use it to support protests. In Cambodia, labour strikes happen very often when compared to demonstrations (Figure 3.13). The demonstrations are tightly controlled by the government in terms of authorization rather than the notification, the limited number of the participants and specified location without marching while physical injuries and deadly clashes may sometimes happen, perhaps, due to violent crackdowns by the authorities. During the protests against the 2013 election result, the mass demonstrations of the opposition party were subjected to approvals of either the Minister of Interior or city hall in Phnom Penh, and conditioned with a definite place, Democracy Square, a defined date and time, and limited participants of no more than 10, 000324. Unlike demonstrations, labour strikes appear to be less restrictive, for neither

322

Kevin Ponniah, "Political eyes on youth vote," The Phnom Penh Post, July 9, 2013, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/political-eyes-youth-vote . 323 The International Republican Institute (IRI), Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: October 28-November 10, 2013 (IRI: Phnom Penh, 2013), 15. See "IRI Cambodia Survey: Declining Optimism on Country‘s Direction; Strong Support for Democratic Reforms," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 13, 2014, www.iri.org/sites/default/files/2014%20January%2023%20Survey%20of%20Cambodia %20Public%20Opinion%2C%20October%2028-November%2010%2C%202013.pdf 324 Notification letter No. 1943 dated on December 13, 2013, issued by the Ministry of Interior on the Notification on the Peaceful Demonstrations on Every Sunday from December 15, 2013 by the CNRP. See "Legal Documents: Notifications," The Ministry of Interior, accessed February 17, 2014, www.interior.gov.kh/en/2011-05-10--03-18-12/2011-11-08-04-03-40/980-2013-12-13-09-21-39 . Also, the letter No.645 dated on September 5, 2013, issued by the city hall Phnom Penh on the Peaceful Demonstrations at the

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authorization nor notification is required and the strikes are usually, but not always, perceived as less disposed to violence compared to demonstrations. Labour strikes are normally used by trade unions to demand the government and factories provide better paid and better work conditions. Workers participating in these labour strikes are generally young, yet not every young worker is a member of the trade unions. This means that some of them have no representatives for their legal interests. According to the Cambodia Labour Force and Child Labour Survey 2012: Labour Report, 29.1 percent of the total labour force, or equivalent to 2,153,152, were aged from 15 to 24 years while workers in the industry and garment sector took up to 37.5 percent of the 319,042 employees who were members of the trade unions325. However, the number of union members in the garment sector remains smaller than the real number of the garment workers standing in between 400,000 and 500,000326. In other words, more than 25 percent of the reported garment workers nationwide have no means of protection for their legal interests. However, freedom to assemble has been recently restricted and labour strikes have changed from peaceful to violent in nature. During nationwide strikes demanding for minimum wages of $US 160 per month, the government took coercive measures by using lethal forces on protesters, leaving at least 4 people died, 1 missing and more than 30 injured327. Thereafter, the government issued a decision limiting freedom of assembly by banning gatherings of 10 people or more, leading the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC) to criticize the government for allowing of ―no space for freedom of assembly‖ 328. During the assessment of the human rights‘ record in Cambodia by the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, some member states such as Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, the Czech Republic, the U.K., the U.S. and Germany were among those who asked Cambodia about its

Democracy Square on September 7, 2013 by the CNRP. See "The City Hall Approved the CNRP‘s Request on the Peaceful Mass Demonstration at the Democracy Square," The City Hall Phnom Penh, accessed February 17, 2014, www.phnompenh.gov.kh/kh/news---4389.html . 325 NIS and ILO, Cambodia Labour Force and Child Labour Survey 2012: Labour Force Report (NIS: Phnom Penh/ILO: Geneva, November 2013), 52, 89. "Cambodia Labour Force and Child Labour Survey 2012: Labour Force Report," International Labour Organization, accessed January 19, 2014, http://www.ilo.org/asia/WCMS _230721/lang--en/index.htm 326 Daniel de Carteret and Hor Kimsay,"Garment workers call in to hotline to ask questions," The Phnom Penh Post, October 31, 2013, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/garment-workers-call-hotline-ask-questions . 327 "List of the dead and missing men from January 3, 2014 demonstration," The LICADHO, accessed February 17, 2014, www.licadho-cambodia.org/reports/files/190LICADHODoc-BiographyDeaths+Missing-English.pdf 328 "ADHOC Statement: No Space for Freedom of Assembly in ‗Freedom‘ Park," ADHOC, accessed February 17, 2014, www.adhoc-cambodia.org/?p=4299

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ban on freedom of assembly and the use of lethal force by the government on protesters on January 3, 2014; they called for a restoration of the freedom to assemble in the kingdom329. The fierce crackdowns by the authorities and the ban on the freedom of assembly are unlikely to prevent renewals of strikes in the country rather more severe forms of collective violence are the concern. In a letter issued by 18 trade unions and associations on February 13, 2014, the government and factories were asked to solve the problem of the $US160 minimum wage with a threat of renewed national strikes330. Though garment workers have different reactions to requests for renewed strikes for minimum wages, their increasing aspiration and a belief of attainment are the main factors making renewed strikes possible. Ms. Pheaktra, a pregnant garment worker, said that “[As] a worker, you come here from the provinces, and you see everyone living-off in the city, with their children getting a good education, and you start saving with some hope...But for me, at best, I might be able just to keep my child in school.‖. Also, Cheat Sethikar, a supervisor at a shoe factory, strongly believed ―[The] government can fix this [lowering taxation of import tariffs]‖, so inflation would be reduced and the monthly minimum wage of $US 130 would be sufficient for the costs of living of the workers331. Social Media: Partly-Free and Supplementary Media Another alternative to the political institutions is social media. Social media refers to a public space where individuals can create, share and exchange information in the forms of pictures, images, sounds, symbols and words within virtual communities through a set of internetbased applications332. Unlike traditional media and new media, it is initiated by any individual having access to the internet by making information spontaneously available. The most important part of its process is feedback or comments, so some scholars call it ―interactive media‖. All of these underlined functions lead some scholars such as S. Coleman333 and Sonia Livingstone334 to feel optimistic of social media in making democracy deliver its utmost 329

Lauren Crothers, "Restore Free Assembly, UN Rights Council Says," The Cambodia Daily, January 29, 2014, www.cambodiadaily.com/news/restore-free-assembly-un-rights-council-says-51097/ 330 Sourng Sopheary, "18 Trade Unions and Associations Asked Workers to Renew Strikes in Any Form," The Radio France International (Khmer), February 17, 2014, www.khmer.rfi.fr/18-unions-plan-to-havedemonstration 331 Mech Dara and Alex Willemyns, "Garment Workders See Renewed Appeal in Strike," The Cambodia Daily, February 17, 2014, www.cambodiadaily.com/news/garment-workers-see-renewed-appeal-in-strike-52327/ 332 Deborah Gambs, "Occupying Social Media," Socialism and Democracy 26:2 (June 2012): 55. 333 S. Coleman, "The new media and democratic politics," New Media and Society 1:1 (1999): 67-73; cited in Sonia Livingstone, "Interactivity and Participation on the Internet: Young People's Response to the Civic Sphere," in Young Citizens and New Media, ed. Peter Dahlgren (New York: Routledge, 2007), 104. 334 Sonia Livingstone, "Interactivity and Participation on the Internet: Young People's Response to the Civic Sphere," in Young Citizens and New Media, ed. Peter Dahlgren (New York: Routledge, 2007), 104.

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values and persuading young people, who are disengaged from traditional forms of political participation, to return back to political activity. The most popular types of social media in use in Cambodia are blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. There appears to be a loss of trust by Cambodian youth not only with state institutions but also with traditional media. Only non-censored and interactive media are their preferable means. A growing popularity of social media may result from an absence of independent media335. During the 2013 national election, social media, especially Facebook, provided a more pluralistic political environment where users shared information and exchanged political viewpoints, and may have had an impact on youth political behaviours and attitudes336. While the ruling party was believed to have the edge in youth campaigns through its dominant control over classical structures such as traditional media, state institutions, universities and youth associations, Facebook and informal networks were considered as the ―the biggest factor‖ mobilizing the support of young voters for the opposition party337. Cambodia‘s press freedom was ranked at 143rd338 out of 179 countries in 2013 by Reporters Without Borders, worse than in 2011-2012 at 117th339. According to the 2012 COMFREL report, all 11 television stations and more than 100 radio stations were owned by the government, senior members of the Cambodian People Party (CPP), allied tycoons and family members of the government and the CPP; but no more than four radio stations were considered ―independent‖ of the government340. In other words, Cambodian people have no choice regarding their sources of information on television programs while very limited sources for Khmer-language radio programs run by foreign broadcasters are kept open.

335

Press freedom in Cambodia was classified as "not free" by Freedom House in 2011 and ranked 128th out of 178 countries in 2012 Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, "New Media and the Promotion of Human Rights in Cambodia," (Phnom Penh: CCHR, July 2012), 6. 336 Soeung Sophat, "Social Media's Growing Influence on Cambodian Politics," Asia Pacific Bulletin 222 (July 23, 2013):2. 337 Kevin Ponniah, "Political eyes on youth vote," The Phnom Penh Post, July 9, 2013, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/political-eyes-youth-vote . 338 "2013 World Press Freedom Index: Dashed Hopes After Spring," The Reporters Without Borders, accessed February 20, 2014, www.en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2013,1054.html 339 " Press Freedom Index 2011-2012," The Reporters Without Borders, accessed February 20, 2014, https://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html 340 COMFREL, "Final Assessment and Report on 2012 Commune Council Elections," (Phnom Penh: COMFREL, October 2012), 30; cited in Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, Repression of Expression: The state of free speech in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: CCHR, September 2013), 16.

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The private sector dominated both television and radio broadcasts whereas the government appeared to concentrate on radio rather than television broadcasting services. The Bayon341 Radio and Television broadcasting services are run by a daughter of the Prime Minister, and the Cambodian Television Network342 (CTN) is owed by an advisor to the Prime Minister. The Ministry of Information operates the National TV of Kampuchea (TVK) and the Radio National of Kampuchea (RNK)343. In the domain of television broadcasting, Bayon television‘s coverage accounted for 54.20 percent of the territory in the kingdom in mid-2011, which was followed by CTN at 41.70% and TVK at 33.35 percent344 (Figure 3-14). By mid-2012, the broadcasting coverage by Bayon television expanded to 75 percent while the coverage by CTN was reduced by around 4 percent and TVK remained unchanged345. It was not different for radio stations (Figure 315). Bayon radio had coverage over 62.50 percent of the total territory in mid-2011 whereas the state-run radio RNK and the private-run radio KCS came in second and third at 58.35 percent and 54.17 percent respectively346. By mid-2012, Bayon radio expanded its broadcasting capacity up to 75 percent of the territory while the other two radio stations, the RNK and the KCS, remained unchanged347. The real broadcasting capacity of each television and radio stations may actually cover a larger territory than the prescribed data since some stations may broadcast services to neighboring provinces.

341

Bayon television and radio broadcasting services belong to Hun Mana, the director general and a daughter of the Prime Minister Hun Sen. Vong Sokheng, "Prime Minister Hun Sen disowns adopted daughter," The Phnom Penh Post, November 1, 2007, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/prime-minister-hun-sen-disowns-adopteddaughter 342 The CTN belongs to Kith Meng, the Chairman and an advisor to the Prime Minister Hun Sen. "Kit Meng: ‗Mr Rough Stuff‘," Cambodia Watch-Australia, July 28, 2011, www.camwatchblogs.blogspot.co.nz/2011/07/kitmeng-mr-rough-stuff.html 343 "Ministry of Information: National TV of Kampuchea and National Radio of Kampuchea," the Ministry of Information, accessed February 27, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/english.html . 344 "Statistics of Radio-Television Operating in the Kingdom of Cambodia in the First Semester 2011," The Ministry of Information, accessed February 20, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/khmer/visuallist/txt_khmer/ Visuallist2011/ Radio_TV.pdf 345 "Statistics of Radio-Television Operating in the Kingdom of Cambodia by Mid-2012," The Ministry of Information, accessed February 20, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/khmer/visuallist/txt_khmer/Visuallist 2011/2012/ Radio_TV2012.pdf . 346 "Statistics of Radio-Television Operating in the Kingdom of Cambodia in the First Semester 2011," The Ministry of Information, accessed February 20, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/khmer/visuallist/txt_khmer/ Visuallist2011/ Radio_TV.pdf 347 "Statistics of Radio-Television Operating in the Kingdom of Cambodia by Mid-2012," The Ministry of Information, accessed February 20, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/khmer/visuallist/txt_khmer/Visuallist 2011/2012/ Radio_TV2012.pdf .

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80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% Bayon 40.00%

CTN

30.00%

TVK

20.00% 10.00% 0.00% TV Broadcasting Power by mid-2011

TV Broadcasting Power by mid-2012

Figure 3-14 Broadcasting Power Shared by the 3 Biggest TV Stations over the 24 City and Province 348 Source: Ministry of Information349

80.00% 70.00% 60.00% 50.00% Bayon 40.00%

RNK

30.00%

KCS

20.00% 10.00% 0.00% Radio Broadcasting Power by mid-2011 Radio Broadcasting Power by mid-2012 Figure 3-15 Broadcasting Power Shared by the 3 Biggest Radio Stations over the 24 City and Provinces 350 Source: Ministry of Information351

348

Bayon television broadcasting services expand over 13 city and provinces out of the 24 followed by CTN at 10 and Kampuchea TV at 8. By mid-2012, the coverage of the Bayon TV expanded until 18 city and provinces while CTN broadcasting coverage was reduced to 9 city and provinces and the TVK remained the same. 349 "Statistics of Radio-Television Operating in the Kingdom of Cambodia in the First Semester 2011," The Ministry of Information, accessed February 20, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/khmer/visuallist/txt_khmer/Visuallist2011/ Radio_TV.pdf ; "Statistics of RadioTelevision Operating in the Kingdom of Cambodia by Mid-2012," The Ministry of Information, accessed February 20, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/khmer/visuallist/txt_khmer/Visuallist2011/2012/ Radio_TV2012.pdf . 350 In mid-2011, Bayon radio broadcasting services extend over 15 city and provinces followed by FM National at 14 and KCS at 13. By mid-2012, Bayon radio broadcast expanded its coverage over 18 city and provinces while other two radio stations, FM National and KCS, remained unchanged in its capacity of coverage.

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Social media seems to supplement rather than to replace the roles of the traditional media while the latter remains the most common means of getting information in Cambodia. While the accessibility of the internet remains limited in terms of demographical proportion and geography, traditional media such as television and radio are still the primary sources of information and news. Bayon, CTN, TVK and RNK may have greater roles in controlling information and producing footage of both the government and the ruling party. However, Cambodian people still have four radio stations that are recognized as "independent 352". The two most popular foreign-run radio programs broadcast in Khmer, the Voice of America (Khmer) and Radio Free Asia (Khmer), buy broadcasting time from the above four neutral radio stations and cover sometimes sensitive issues criticizing the government and threatening the special interests of ruling party members, which are normally uncovered by almost all of the other television and radio stations353. According to a 2011 survey conducted on 209 university students by the Department of Media and Communication (DMC), the Royal University of Phnom Penh, television was the most popular and the most often used means of getting access to information and news. The survey found that 72 percent of the respondents watched television and 66 percent accessed the internet ―(almost) every day‖ while only 22 percent listened to radios354 (Figure 3-16). However, 58.41 percent of the households nationwide in 2008 owned at least a television set, but only 3.65 percent of the total households owned a personal computer and only 320 internet cafés operated throughout the country355 (Figure 3-17). Yet, 40.81 percent of total 351

"Statistics of Radio-Television Operating in the Kingdom of Cambodia in the First Semester 2011," The Ministry of Information, accessed February 20, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/khmer/visuallist/txt_khmer/Visuallist2011/ Radio_TV.pdf ; "Statistics of RadioTelevision Operating in the Kingdom of Cambodia by Mid-2012," The Ministry of Information, accessed February 20, 2014, www.information.gov.kh/khmer/visuallist/txt_khmer/Visuallist2011/2012/ Radio_TV2012.pdf . 352 COMFREL, Final Assessment and Report on 2012 Commune Council Elections (Phnom Penh: COMFREL, October 2012), 30; cited in Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, Repression of Expression: The state of free speech in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: CCHR, September 2013), 16; "Freedom of the Press 2013: Cambodia," The Freedom House, accessed February 20, 2014, www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedompress/2013/cambodia#.UwYo-H8aySO . 353 Both Voice of America and Radio Free Asia were recently accused by Cambodia‘s government of being proopposition and backed by the foreign government, specifically inferred the United States, because of their coverage on sensitive issues, which are normally not covered in state and private television news programs, radio programs and newspapers. Kevin Ponniah, "RFA, VOA accused of ‗serving‘ opposition," The Phnom Penh Post, January 30, 2014, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/rfa-voa-accused-percentE2percent80percent98 servingpercentE2percent80percent99-opposition . 354 Peou Chivoin and Chea Lyda, "Lack of Rights-Conscious Citizenship or Civic Identity in Transition? Civic Engagement and Attitude of University Students," Cambodian Communication Review 2011 (December 2011), 20. See "Publications: Cambodian Communication Review 2011," The Department of Media and Communication, accessed February 20, 2014, www.dmc-cci.edu.kh/publication-2/ 355 Department of Media & Communication, "Cambodian Media Snapshot 2011," Cambodian Communication Review 2011 (December 2011), 5-7.

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households had at least a radio set356. The findings from this survey show interesting results. That means that both television and radio remain common means that are used for getting information and entertainment notwithstanding the audience‘s ages and education where the internet is a popular and emerging tool used by educated young Cambodians for communication. However, getting access to information through the internet is constrained by the limited availability of the internet itself and information technology devices. 80% 70% 60% 50%

TV

40%

Internet

30%

Radio

20% 10% 0% (Almost) Everyday Access

Figure 3-16 The (Almost) Everyday Access to TV, Internet and Radio Source: The 2011 Survey by the DMC357

70.00% 60.00% 50.00% 40.00%

TV

30.00%

Radio

20.00%

Personal Computer

10.00% 0.00% Possession of Households at Least a Set in 2008

Figure 3-17 Percentages of Households Possessing TV, Radio and Personal Computer Source: The 2008 National Census of the NIS cited by the DMC358

356

Ibid, 5. Peou Chivoin and Chea Lyda, "Lack of Rights-Conscious Citizenship or Civic Identity in Transition? Civic Engagement and Attitude of University Students," Cambodian Communication Review 2011 (December 2011), 20. See "Publications: Cambodian Communication Review 2011," The Department of Media and Communication, accessed February 20, 2014, www.dmc-cci.edu.kh/publication-2/ 358 Department of Media & Communication, "Cambodian Media Snapshot 2011," Cambodian Communication Review 2011 (December 2011), 5-7. 357

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Moreover, the internet in the kingdom is not totally free though its growth has caught the attention of many analysts. According to a recent report by Freedom House, the US-based watchdog on freedom worldwide, the situation of the internet in Cambodia in 2013 was classified as ―partly free‖ due to the closing of at least three blogs and some internet cafes 359. Also, the government‘s censorship on both the content and comments of social media such as blogs and Facebook are the major concerns, for the website operators sometimes are subjected to blocks while bloggers and internet users may be charged with criminal and civil offenses alike. Mostly oversea blogs are carefully censored by the government. ―Reahu‖ is a blog created by a Khmer-American artist. In 2009, access to ―reahu.org‖ was blocked under an order made by the Minister of Post and Telecommunication after a post of bare-breasted Apsara (angels scripted on Angkor and other temple walls) was criticized and allegedly accused by the Ministry of Women‘s Affairs and the public of undermining Khmer culture and morality360. ―KI-Media‖ is an anti-government blog, especially against the ruling party and the Cambodian-Vietnamese friendship. In early 2011, while KI-Media was blocked and the government denied its involvement361, some senior government officials were cited in regard to the government‘s attempts to close this website362. Sharing information and comments on the social media sometimes makes internet users fear of incitement and defamation charges. Both civil and criminal offenses are possible in Cambodia though the cyber-law draft is still in process. In December 2010, soon after his distribution of anti-government information by KI-Media to his colleagues, Seng Kunnaka, a security guard employed by the United Nations World Food Programme, was charged with

359

Sok Khemara, "Cambodia‘s Internet Only ‗Partly Free‘, US Watchdog Says," The Voice of America (English), October 16, 2013, www.voacambodia.com/content/cambodia-internet-only-partly-free-us-watchdogsays/1770244.html . 360 Brendan Brady, "Government moves raise censorship fears," The Phnom Penh Post, March 3, 2009, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/govt-moves-raise-censorship-fears 361 Summer Walker, "ISP denies blocking blog site," The Phnom Penh Post, January 20, 2011, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/isp-denies-blocking-blog-site . 362 During the meeting with ISP, the speech of the Minister of Post and Telecommunication, So Khun, in the minutes was cited and reported for having requested ISP such as Oneline, Wicam, Metfone and Ezecom for cooperation and reports with the ministry. The government‘s attempts to block this webpage was not new but dated back to the late 2010. In a conversation dated on December 16, 2010, the Radio Free Asia was told by H.E. Var Kim Hong, the Chairman of Cambodia-Vietnam Joint Border Commission,that ―the government would shut down KI-Media by December 31st, 2010‖. Thomas Miller, "Ministry denies blocking website," The Phnom Penh Post, February 15, 2011, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ministry-denies-blocking-website ; "LICADHO Condemns Censorship of Web Sites Critical of Government," The LICADHO, accessed February 21, 2014, www.licadho-cambodia.org/pressrelease.php?perm=238 .

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incitement and imprisoned for 6 months363. Very recently, in early February 2014, Ms. Dourng Zorida, a famous actress and an anchor, was put on trial before the municipal court of Phnom Penh after she made a comment on her Facebook account, and was ordered to pay Ms. Tan Theara in compensation364. These above examples show clearly that both criminal and civil charges are made if grounds for offenses are justified. In short, recent confrontations and collective violence between the government and its young population appear very likely to have a close relationship with the very narrow public space for exercising freedom and liberty in seeking a more egalitarian society. Land dispute protests, election irregularity demonstrations and a growing activism of youth on social media threaten a stability of the political community and sometimes lead to severe forms of collective violence. These social phenomena show Cambodian youth have very few alternatives to the state institutions for challenging and changing the national policy despite being the majority group of the population. Therefore, this very limited public space makes the bad situations of the state institutions‘ failure in representing the public interest worse and, in turn, leaves more room for either generational confrontations or collective violence. Thus, regular and persistent platforms for youth involvement in decision making processes are better built by the civil society organizations including trade unions and youth nongovernmental organizations for bridging the gaps between them and the state institutions such as the parliament and the government. Also, more free space is needed for improvement of both traditional media and social media whereby conciliation between state norms and social norms can interact and challenge reciprocally for effective national policy. SUMMARY Having analyzed the data for each of the three hypotheses, it was found that most of the results supported the hypothesis statements though very few of the results were not really convincing the third hypothesis. The first hypothesis that a dramatic shift in young Cambodians demographics from the minority to the majority group of the total population leads to necessary changes in structures of political institutions is very likely to be convincible. This research found that there is a positive correlation between compositions of the legislative organs and a failure of the state institutions to represent the interest of the 363

Summer Walker, "ISP denies blocking blog site," The Phnom Penh Post, January 20, 2011, www.phnompenhpost.com/national/isp-denies-blocking-blog-site . 364 Neary Khmer, "Trial on Actress Dourng Zorida for Public Defamation," The Free Press Magazine and Radio, February 1, 2014, http://www.fpmonline.net/article/50737

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majority, young Cambodians. From this result, it was found that the old political leaders, who represent a minority group of the old population, mainly focus on their personal and familial enrichment at the expense of others, especially youth, and sometimes are unable to implement their roles as representatives of the interest of the majority due to their conflict of interests. Consequently, changes in the structures of the National Assembly and the Senate become necessary to build the public trust on the state institutions. The second hypothesis that young Cambodians are more likely to participate in politics and more capable of mobilizing old people including their parents and peers for political engagement due to their better education was found to be conclusive. The data shown there were a clear cut of the generational gaps in terms of education, emphasizing a variable of differently shared societal experiences and, in turn, making a possibility of the political participation very likely not only for themselves but also their parents, friends and other people. It is concluded with closely positive relations among the higher levels of education, the growing number of literacy and an increasing political engagement of Cambodian youth. Finally, the results from testing the hypothesis that a confrontation between the government and Cambodian youth is reduced, and a severe form of collective violence can be avoided if they are provided an alternative to the formal structures for getting involved in decision making processes were partly unclear but decisive. The Findings affirmed closely positive relations between recent social disability and collective violence, and a very limited public space though further more data on the majority of the NGOs working with youth was necessary for more convincing results. However, the presented data was just enough to convince the correctness of the proposed hypothesis. During the analyses of the three hypotheses along with the proposed theoretical frameworks that set the bases for this research, several issues arose from the findings. Though the proposed theoretical frameworks generally worked well with the case of emerging young demographics in Cambodia, Gellner‘s theory on severe forms of collective violence appeared to not suit well whereas a gap in Barakat‘s case study was filled in by the findings of this research. Severe forms of the collective violence may happen in cases of either discriminatory treatment of a particular group by the state institutions or a prolonged economic disparity of any neglected majority social grouping and very narrow means for the majority social grouping to improve their more egalitarian status in the society. Also, higher levels of education and the higher number of literacy of the Cambodian youth are the convincing 100

variables for a growing political participation in both formal and informal political structures in the Kingdom. This finding fills in the Barakat‘s survey on the fact that young pupils of better education has roles in transmitting their political behaviours and attitudes to not only their parents but also their friends.

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CHAPTER 4 - CONCLUSION This Thesis is set out to establish whether an emerging of youth class as the majority group of the total population would lead to an expansion of the liberal democracy in Cambodia, to measure what consequences of their emergence and to find out what mechanisms can be used to ensure both participatory democracy and an increasingly egalitarian society without harming the stability of the country. From the analyses of the proposed theories in the provided context, the conclusion that dramatic shifts in young Cambodian demographics from the minority to the majority of the population necessitate the reorganization of the state institutions such as the National Assembly and the Senate, Cambodian youth of better education are more likely to participate in politics and more capable of mobilizing others for political engagement, and an alternative to the state institutions in case of the loss of trust by the public is necessary to reduce the generational confrontation and to avoid severe forms of collective violence, is generally supported and justified. However, some theories by Anderson and Mannheim cannot separately be applied in practice due to its imperfection while others by Huntington, Barakat and Gellner likely respond to the problems partly. A transformation of Cambodia from a country of old population to that of the young population certainly has impacts on the organization of the state institutions, which is adaptable with the former majority group, the then old generation. Cambodia has already become a country of the young population since 2008 when Cambodians under 35 years old made up around 70 percent of the total population but only the year 2013 shown a change in the political landscape of the liberal democracy in the kingdom. This may be explained by an emergence of Cambodian youth as not only the majority group of the population but also a dominant group of the total voters in the 2013 election. Generational gaps and differences in ideologies between elderly political leaders and Cambodian youth were the two main reasons explaining why the CPP lost its popularity among young voters while the CNRP got big gains from them. Also, these young voters unlikely owned their deference to the CPP because of its revolutionary legend but rather its current performance, especially a fair and widespread distribution of social revenues. During the third and fifth mandates, most of the CPP members in both the National Assembly and the Senate were at their late 50s and over while the opposition parties, the SRP and the CNRP, were in a contradictory trend. Therefore, the political agendas of the opposition parties such as employment and minimum wages directly addressed the problems of the young voters whereas the ruling party laid down the national policy such as road constructions, school building and state reforms that unlikely responded to 102

immediate concerns of young voters, on one hand, and, on the other hand, were uneasily noticed. Cambodian youth emerge as the young generation of new education. Thus, unlike their parents, these young people are more likely to engage in politics, for their better understanding of prime causes of hardship and social issues. They are not only never exposed to civil wars like their parents and unlikely to be influenced by their parents due to their higher levels of education. Rejuvenation and standardization of the national education system in the post-Khmer Rouge regime, especially in 1996, put a clear cut between the pre- and the post-Khmer Rouge generations. Yet, political behaviours and attitudes of both parents and friends of lower education may be inspired by Cambodian youth of higher education through either face-to-face or internet-based networks. These factors likely had a close relationship with a growing youth activism in the pre- and the post-national election in 2013 with support of elderly people. In the aftermath of the 2013 election result, streets in the capital city, Phnom Pen, were full of Cambodian youth while Facebook was loaded with a plenty of pictures, videos and caption by young netizens. However, though a growing youth activism may reinforce a picture of the liberal democracy, it does not automatically lead to a just and stable society. The year 2012 was recorded as the worst year of human rights violation including land rights and worker rights since the number of land disputes was multiplied and the number of labour strikes skyrocketed. Also, in 2013, protests increased in number and scales of participants. Most importantly, natures of protests changed from peaceful to violent, leaving more than hundreds died and injured. Until now, situations of confrontations between the government of the elderly political cadres and young protesters remain tense, and are still prone to severe forms of collective violence. By analyzing the past events in accordance with the proposed theories, integration of Cambodian youth into the state institutions such as the National Assembly and the Senate, and a provision of more public space through regular and persistent platforms of civil society, social media and protests are very potential solutions for contemporary problems in Cambodia, for both traditional structures of the state institutions are dominated by the elderly political cadres, and the public space is left with a very narrow room for an exercise of liberty and freedom by youth to work out their demands with the government. Unless an alternative is provided, their loss of trust in the state institutions leads to a swap of their means of demands from the state institutions to the public space such as protests, so there is still more room for both 103

generational confrontations and collective violence, eventually threatening the stability of the country. Moreover, the proposed theories that are used to build theoretical frameworks of the research generally respond well to the real issues. Yet, some theories would not perfectly suit the problems if it was applied separately. First, theories proposed by both Anderson365 and Mannheim366 appear to be supplementary to each other rather exclusively right in a case of Cambodian youth. If Cambodian youth were defined in accordance to Anderson‘s claim, then they would be young Cambodians who are aged from 15 to 24 years old. Cambodian young voters in this age rank were the least likely group to vote in the 2013 election when compared to older voters in their late 20s and their 30s due to their studies and work, their disinterest and a lack of documents367. Thus, the theory of the generational unit by Mannheim perfectly added Anderson‘s, so the Cambodian youth of the 15-34-years group made a turning point of the political landscape in 2013. Second, Hungtinton368‘s argument mainly focuses on generational confrontation within leadership of the state institutions while Barakat369 limited a scope of his study only to the transmission of the political behaviours and attitudes by the parents of higher education to their children. Yet, in Cambodia‘s case, this generational confrontation also exists between the elderly political leaders, who exclusively dominate both the state institutions and so control the public space, and their young people. Also, Cambodian youth have higher levels of education, and most of them are literate, so it appears likely that they have an influence over political behaviours and attitudes on not only their parents but also their friends. Third, Gellner370 attributes severe forms of collective violence to a discriminatory treatment of the state institutions. Yet, his argument appears only address the case of Tunisia but not Egypt. Though Egyptian youth were not seriously ignored like Tunisian youth, they made up most of the total population at the time, and their marginalization happened for decades with

365

Anderson, Java in a Time of Revolution: Occupation and Resistance, 1944-1946, 3. Mannheim, 288-290; cited in Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 15. 367 The International Republican Institute, Survey of Cambodian Public Opinion: January 12-February 2, 2013 (IRI: Phnom Penh, 2013), 23, 25. See "IRI Cambodia Survey Finds High Interest in National Elections," The International Republican Institute (IRI), accessed February 13, 2014, www.iri.org/news-events-presscenter/news/iri-cambodia-survey-finds-high-interest-national-elections 368 Huntington, 14-15. 369 Barakat, 215. 370 Gellner, 109. 366

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the fragile economy of Egypt371. Even worse, Egyptian youth were silent by oppressive measures of the government, making their discontents passive. These two examples show clearly Gellner‘s theory only partly solves the problems. Thus, it can be learnt that, thought Cambodian youth have never been seriously neglected, their prolonged passive discontents and the absence of an alternative to the state institutions still provide room for severe forms of collective violence such as recent deadly clashes between the authority and the labour strikers. This research is expected to produce outcomes having impacts on behaviours and attitudes of the government, civil society and youth. The topic of the thesis itself is new, in the sense that there is not any scientific study using a measurement of the proposed theoretical frameworks and the fact. It provides a clear picture of how youth generation may likely have impacts on Cambodia‘s democracy through the public space, especially protests and social media, and, in turn, may push their integration into the state institutions. The result of these findings helps all social stakeholders to see Cambodia‘s contemporary problems from a dimension of youth rather than a very limited dimension such as gender. Indeed, gender issues should be looked from a dimension of youth‘s issues rather than only a quota of women integration into the state institutions. Given that most women who interest in becoming civil servants are old and illiterate whereas most young women prefer to work in a private sector for better income, then the policy on women quota in the state administration agreed by the government and the nongovernmental organizations does not work and solve the real problems of inequality. Demands for women in leadership positions may not meet the real supplies, on one hand, and on the other hand, problems of generational gaps do still exist even among women themselves. Also, potential solutions are suggested in response to the problems of generational gaps and its relations with recent confrontations between the government of the elderly political leaders and their young citizens. The solutions are based on theoretical analyses in parallel with a growing youth activism in the country, which already led to serious collective violence. As potential mechanisms, youth integration into the National Assembly and the Senate, and a provision of more public space as an alternative to the state institutions, given that these young people lost their trust, may help the national policy of the government work effectively for the benefits of this new majority class, reduce generational confrontations to minimum and avoid severe forms of collective violence. Regarding the Senate, this legislative body 371

Nevens 45; Murphy, "Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systematic Failure," 9; Sullivan, 317.

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better changes its functions as a real Upper House of Parliament rather than a consultation body if the ages of its members are kept for 40 years old and older. For the public space, social media such as Facebook, blog, Twitter and YouTube may provide an alternative to the state institutions and other forms of the public space through its regular and persistent platforms since young Cambodians likely loss their trust in the institutions, and freedom of assembly, association and press is carefully censored. Take China as an example, whereby there is a very strong censorship on the public space and no direct representative democracy. Yet, due to social media, matters of corruption372 and sex scandals373 challenge the regime and some senior party members alike. This new form of media probably provides an effective alternative for young netizens to challenge and changes not only the state norms but also behaviours and attitude of bureaucrats. However, the initiatives of the nongovernmental organizations are indispensable in giving regular and persistent platforms for these young citizens to get involved in the decision making processes such as citizen journalism trainings, blogs or websites where young Cambodians can either share information or complaint about a failure of the national policy and the government‘s performance and networks of civil society organizations working in the same field for having a greater bargaining power with the government. Though findings of this research generally show fruitful inputs into work and policy of the government and non-governmental organizations, many constrains may have impacts on the consistent result of these findings and so prevent the paper from producing its full result. Firstly, the thesis‘s findings base on the already-set frameworks and a quantitative method. That means the result of the findings may be predictable and set in advance, so it sometimes may not perfectly respond to the problems yet. As this topic is new, further research may build on these three hypotheses but need to use a qualitative method to find out opinions and feeling of Cambodian youth, their parents and elderly political leaders of both the ruling and opposition parties. The qualitative method may be used as a reference either to reset the theoretical framework of research or to support the theoretical frameworks and hypotheses. Secondly, during the research, other research questions such as the integration of Cambodian youth at the local level and initiators of the recent collective violence came up, so the 372

David Wertime, "Party Foul," The Foreign Policy, January 9, 2014, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014 /01/09/party_foul_chinas_corruption_crackdown_survey 373 Liz Carter, "Not Safe for (Government) Work," The Foreign Policy, January 17, 2014, www.foreignpolicy. com/articles/2014/01/17/not_safe_for_government_work_chinese_naked_officials

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following researchers may consider these issues as well. Unlike the National Assembly and the Senate, the Commune Council had a gradual increase of young councilors between its second and third mandates. The number of young councilors stood at 1.43 percent in 2007374 and significantly went up to approximately 5 percent in 2012375. It seems like the government prefers youth integration into the local administration through its policy of decentralization376 and deconcentration377than the national administration. Also, both quantitative and qualitative methods may be useful to find out who normally initiate collective violence, especially in recent deadly clashes between the authority and protesters, and what circumstances result in an outbreak of the violence. Answers to these questions lead to better understanding whether youth integration into the state institutions at both the national and local levels helps reduce generational confrontations and whether more public space as an alternative platform beside s the state institutions can prevent the future collective violence. If the combined methodologies were used and primary data was collected for analyses, the research would have produced more convincible and persistent findings. Thus, it could provide effective inputs into the national policy for the development and the political stability of the country. Therefore, this new social phenomenon demands for more research immediately since the current problems remain manageable.

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COMFREL, "Participation of Youth in Elections," Neak Kloam Meul 73 (July 2007): 2. COMFREL, Summary Findings on Commune Council Election 2012 (Phnom Penh, July 2012), 9. 376 In 2001, the National Assembly adopted the Law on Commune Council Election, which was promulgated by the Royal Decree (Kram) No. NS/RKM/0301/04 dated on March 19, 2001. See "Legal Documents: Law on Commune/Sangkat Council Election," The National Election Committee, accessed March 3, 2014, http://necelect.org.kh/nec_english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=186&Itemid=208 377 In 2008, the National Assembly adopted the Law on the Elections of the Capital, Provincial, Municipal and District Councils, which was promulgated by the Royal Decree (Kram) No. NS/RKM/0508/018 dated on May 24, 2008. See "Legal Documents: Law on the Election of Capital/Provincial, Municipal/District/Khan Councils," The National Election Committee, accessed March 3, 2014, http://necelect.org.kh/nec_english/index.php?option =com_content&view=article&id=186&Itemid=208 375

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