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The Symbolic Safeguard: Royal Absence in Cambodia’s Constitutional Monarchy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2022

Ben Lawrence
Ben Lawrence*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore Faculty of Law
*
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The product of an internationalized peace process, Cambodia’s 1993 Constitution restored the monarchy and endowed the Crown with a political safeguarding role that successive kings have been unable to fulfil in practice. After a brief survey of the tragic modern history of Cambodia’s monarchy, this paper outlines the formal constitutional role of the king, highlighting the central dichotomy between the provisions that promise that the king “shall reign but shall not govern” and those that provide the king a more active role as “guarantor.” The paper highlights how this fundamental ambiguity has been borne-out publicly, by focusing on a handful of specific instances in which both King Sihanouk and King Sihamoni are understood to have been strategically absent from the country to avoid signing controversial legislation. Short of providing a veto power in the legislative process, the king’s safeguarding role is shown to manifest in the symbolic denial of royal legitimacy.

Keywords

Cambodiamonarchyconstitutional lawlegitimacypolitics
Type
Monarchy and Society in Asia
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , October 2022 , pp. 382 - 398
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Asian Journal of Law and Society

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