Controlling the Opposition Abroad: Cambodia’s Extraterritorial Activities in Long Beach, California

This article presents findings from research conducted in Long Beach, California on the history, motives, and functions of the Cambodian People’s Party Youth Organization (CPPYO), a network of Cambodians outside the country who support Cambodia’s long-time ruling party, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). Officially, the CPPYO, headed by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s son, Hun Manet, was created to promote the current government and to provide political options for Cambodians living abroad. However, many Cambodians in the Long Beach area see the CPP’s presence in the US as invasive and as a threat to their autonomy. To understand how the CPPYO functions in Long Beach, we make use of Gerschewski’s three pillars of authoritarian stability¹ and Glasius’ framework for identifying extraterritorial authoritarian practices.² We conclude that the CPPYO is primarily a strategy for repressing opposition abroad, but that it also contributes to the ruling party’s legitimacy through the participation of Long Beach Cambodian Americans, who accept the CPP’s authoritarian control as a condition for participating in Cambodia’s socioeconomic system. This study contributes to a growing body of research interested in identifying and interconnecting the various legitimation processes, strategies, and practices developed by autocracies to stabilize rule at home and abroad.³

[i] Johannes Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars of Stability: Legitimation, Repression, and Co-Optation in Autocratic Regimes,” Democratization 20, no. 1 (January 1, 2013), https://tinyurl.com/y4shf3uj.

[ii] Marlies Glasius, “Extraterritorial Authoritarian Practices: A Framework,” Globalizations 15, no. 2 (February 2018): 179–97, https://tinyurl.com/nav3k986.

[iii] Glasius, “Extraterritorial Authoritarian Practices”; Alexander Dukalskis and Johannes Gerschewski, “What Autocracies Say (and What Citizens Hear): Proposing Four Mechanisms of Autocratic Legitimation,” Contemporary Politics 23, no. 3 (2017): 251–68.

控制海外反对派：柬埔寨在加州长滩的境外活动

关键词：境外威权主义, 跨国社交领域, 柬埔寨裔美国人, 柬埔寨人民党青年组织, 长滩柬埔寨社区, 合法化, 压制, 拉拢。

本论文报告了在加利福尼亚州长滩就柬埔寨人民党青年组织（CPPYO）–一个支持柬埔寨长期执政的柬埔寨人民党（CPP）的海外柬埔寨人网络——的历史、动机和功能进行研究得到的发现。官方而言，柬埔寨人民党青年组织由柬埔寨首相洪森之子洪马内领导，是为宣传现政府和给居住海外的柬埔寨人提供政治选择而创立的。然而，很多长滩地区的柬埔寨人认为柬埔寨人民党在美国的存在是侵入性的，对他们的自主性造成威胁。为理解柬埔寨人民党青年组织如何在长滩运作， 我们利用了格舍夫斯基(Gerchewski)的威权政体维持稳定的三个支柱理论和格雷修斯（Glasius）用来识别威权主义境外实践的框架。我们得出结论认为，尽管柬埔寨人民党青年组织主要是一个压制海外反对派的策略，但它也通过居于长滩的柬埔寨裔美国人的参与增进了执政党的合法性——这些柬埔寨裔美国人接受柬埔寨人民党的威权主义控制作为其参与柬埔寨社会经济体系的一个前提条件。本研究对致力于辨识专制国家为维护在国内和海外的统治而进行的各种合法化过程、策略和实践及其它们之间的关系这一日渐兴盛的领域做出贡献。

Translated by Li Guo