In the Shadow of the Constitution: The Micropolitics of Constitutional Contestation in Cambodia [Hardcover]

Highlights how Cambodia's constitution shapes everyday social, cultural and political contestations.This is the first in-depth study of constitutional law and politics in Cambodia, based on ethnographic insights and case-studies that offer a novel approach to understanding the importance of constitutions worldwide  particularly in non-democratic contexts  from the bottom up.This is the first in-depth study of constitutional law and politics in Cambodia, based on ethnographic insights and case-studies that offer a novel approach to understanding the importance of constitutions worldwide  particularly in non-democratic contexts  from the bottom up.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.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 alÃW