In the Shadow of the Constitution

The Micropolitics of Constitutional Contestation in Cambodia
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-009-30949-3
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 320 Seiten

Reihe: Comparative Constitutional Law and Policy

Across the world, the significance or role of Constitutions is too often understood in ways that ignore how they actually touch the lives or shape the political imaginations of ordinary people. Similarly, countries in the Global South, those that are not conventional liberal democracies, and those that have recently experienced conflict are generally underrepresented in the comparative constitutional law literature. Drawing on ethnographic insights and case-studies in Cambodia, this book provides a socio-legal account of constitutional practice under authoritarian rule and sheds light on how otherwise overlooked actors engage with constitutional language and assert constitutional agency. The Cambodian constitution is often dismissed as irrelevant, but its promises, principles and specific provisions actually matter deeply, both to the politically engaged and to ordinary people. This book highlights how many everyday contestations – over politics, religion and culture – take place In the Shadow of the Constitution.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lawrence, Benjamin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction; 2. Locking in a constitution, locking out the people; revisiting Cambodia's post-conflict constitution-making process; 3. Constitutional lawfare: the macro- and micropolitics of constitutional legitimacy in Cambodia's authoritarian turn; 4. Keeping the spirit alive? Constitutional mobilisation and the expanded legal complex; 5. Saffron suffrage: the constitutional politics of the Buddhist Sangha; 6. Of art and order: the ministry of culture's code of conduct for artists and performers; 7. Conclusion; Appendix: on methodology; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Lawrence, Benjamin
Ben Lawrence is a Career Development Fellow at Durham Law School, who has previously held positions at the National University of Singapore and the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London).