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Forging Autocratic Legitimation: Charisma and Mythmaking in Hun Sen's Cambodia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Matthew Galway
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Abstract

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This essay discusses Hun Sen's rise and longevity by examining the former Khmer Rouge battalion leader's emergence from the fall of Democratic Kampuchea in 1979 and subsequent steady consolidation of political power in the years since he took over as Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (1985–89) and the State of Cambodia (1989–93). The essay explores how he accomplished an autocratic coup de grâce by ousting political rivals and then attempted to forge autocratic legitimation via self-mythologization and appeals to royal imagery. Through these means and heavy-handed repression, Hun Sen today has come to hold virtually unchecked, unmediated political power over a country that is still searching for the truth in its fraught post-independence history.

Keywords

CambodiaPoliticsAutocracyLegitimacyCorruption
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , February 2023 , e2
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2023

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