The Political Economy of Primary Education Reform in Cambodia
Over the past sixty years, Cambodia has made great strides in expanding access to primary education. Much less progress has been made with respect to quality. That may be changing, however, with a new education minister promoting ambitious reforms with quality at their centre. The chapter explains the quality agenda as a product of new demands on t...
Facebook, Contestation and Poor People’s Politics: Spanning the Urban–Rural Divide in Cambodia?
Rural internet use, although still limited, is growing, raising the question of how rural people are using social media politically. As a vehicle of communication that permits the rapid transmission of information, images and text across space and connections between dispersed networks of individuals, does technological advance in rural areas presa...
A Path Analysis of Cambodian Faculty’s Research Intention: Focusing on Direct and Mediating Effects at Individual Level
Intention to engage in research activities has probably been one of the least investigated concepts when it comes to literature on relationship among research attitudes, research behaviors and research outputs. Only few studies in the past drew on the Planned Behavior Theory to explore how research intention mediates between certain antecedent vari...
Coming of Age in Peace, Prosperity, and Connectivity: Cambodia’s Young Electorate and Its Impact on the Ruling Party’s Political Strategies
Cambodia’s youthful population is significantly responsible for a recent unexpected decline in the popularity of the Cambodian People’s Party, which has governed since the end of the Khmer Rouge regime. This increasingly young electorate has lived through an era of peace and openness with regular multi-party elections and impressive economic growth...
Interrelations between Public Policies, Migration and Development in Cambodia
Emigration is a significant and growing phenomenon for Cambodia. Between 2000 and 2015, the stock of Cambodians abroad increased by about 160%, from around half a million to 1.2 million people. Today, about 10% of Cambodians over the age of 15 plan to emigrate. Despite the country’s steady economic growth, labour market demand has not been sufficie...
The Political Economy of Primary Education Reform in Cambodia
This paper examines the quality of primary education provision in Cambodia using a ‘political settlements’ framework developed at the University of Manchester. The framework characterises Cambodia as a ‘hybrid’ settlement with a weak dominant party and predatory administration, albeit with some islands of administrative effectiveness. Such states c...
Decentralization in Cambodia: New Wine in Old Bottles
The usual arguments for decentralization by its advocates are that it can achieve accountability, transparency, participation and democracy. In reaching these goals, however, proponents of decentralization reform have articulated concerns about whether government officials have sufficient capacity to implement decentralization policies, particularl...
Economic Effects of Migration on the Left-Behind in Cambodia
Using propensity score matching, this study examines the effects of migration on various indicators of household wellbeing in Cambodia. The results indicate that migration would reduce poverty headcount rate by 3–7 percentage points and decrease the depth of poverty. Migration is also found to reduce by 5–10 percent the hours worked by members left...
Irregular Migration from Cambodia: Characteristics, Challenges, and Regulatory Approach
The study examines the characteristics, root causes, and challenges of irregular migration from Cambodia and then discusses the regulatory approaches and policy options to manage it. It employed mixed approaches, including a survey of 507 households in six high-migration villages, focus group discussions with returned and intending migrant workers,...
Irrigation water productivity in Cambodian rice systems
Knowledge of the marginal productivity of water is crucial for decisions about its allocation between uses, which is particularly important in the context of increasing competition for water. Using primary, plot-level panel data, this article estimates the marginal productivity of water from supplementary irrigation in lowland rice systems in Cambo...