The global landscape is marked by increasing authoritarianism. Cambodia is a paradigmatic example of the global phenomenon of deepening autocratisation in an already authoritarian country – a relatively neglected dimension of the autocratising trend. After two and a half decades of competitive authoritarian rule, in which electoral competition was real but unfair, Cambodia transitioned over 2017/18 to a hegemonic authoritarian regime, where there is no real electoral competition.

Scholarship on contemporary autocratisation processes has mostly concentrated on conceptualisation and measurement, which has been decoupled from empirical studies on countries undergoing autocratic transition. This project builds on case studies of actors involved in innovating, as well as resisting, authoritarianism, to analyse how authoritarianism is shifting.

The aim of the sabbatical is to put together the extensive research that I have conducted on Cambodia’s recent turn to hegemonic authoritarianism into a monograph that offers a theoretically coherent account of what the shift entails and how it sheds light on global autocratisation processes.

Identifying authoritarian strategies for steering Cambodia into a new era of non-competitive politics, the monograph will provide new understanding of how contemporary authoritarian regimes preserve their modes of domination by rejuvenating themselves and creating nominally democratic institutions.