In principle, the state of Cambodia and its institutions achieved their current form as a result of the adoption of the constitution following the UNTAC supervised elections in 1993. Apart from its introduction of representative democracy, the separation of powers and a free market economy, the constitution and new
33 Kingdom of Cambodia, "Battambang Provincial Development Plan 1999-2000,"
(Battambang: Provincial Department of Planning, 1998).
34 See for example Gabriel A Almond and G Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: A
government left in place the administrative arrangements from the previous regime. These included a system of local government, provincial governors and line- department structure, largely consistent with previous regimes. The detailed form and functioning of these institutions were, however, subject to ongoing change as reforms were introduced to meet international demands and to improve their effectiveness. Appendix C illustrates the administrative arrangements for local government in the different periods of Cambodian state building.
Records suggest that from about the seventh century, a form of bureaucratic control was developed, replacing or absorbing the roles of hereditary princes.35 By the eleventh century, it has been claimed, that bureaucratic power “… rivalled or even surpassed the power of the king.”36 This state development was accompanied by an urbanization of the population in the region of Angkor involving the “herding” of people into administered areas and the “destruction” of the traditional Cambodian village.37 The granting of titles by king and dedication of religious foundations to central control were, as described in Appendix A, important factors in reorganising and consolidating state control. This bureaucratic form of state in Cambodia reached its peak in the Angkor period with the comprehensive organization of rice production and release of wealth and human resources for the construction of cities, hydraulic systems and religious monuments.
Little is known of local institutions other than references to district heads and a range of inspectors and village officials under the district head, some of whom represented the king’s interest in the territory.38 Districts had their own courts of justice which,
35 Michael Vickery, Society, Economics, and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia (Tokyo: The
Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO, the Toyo Bunko, 1998), 367-68 and 390-91. The 8th century was also a period of architectural and artistic development which
suggests growth and consolidation of central power. On titles see Vickery, Society, Economics, and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia, 300-4. See also Sachchidanand Sahai, "Les Institutions Politiques et L'Organisation Administrative du Cambodge Ancien (VI-XIII Siècles)," Publications de Lécole Française d'Extrême-Orient LXXV (1970): 72-3.
36 David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, Second ed. (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1993),
43.
37 Ibid.; Sahai, "Les Institutions Politiques," 28; George Coedès, The Making of South East
Asia, trans. H M Wright (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 100; and Vickery, Society, Economics, and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia, 312.
38 The administrative units referred to in the pre-Angkor period were roughly “city”, “district”
and “village”, though the last could apparently be similar to the first. Vickery, Society, ßEconomics, and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia, 327-28.
as well as administering regulations, controlled land transactions and boundaries.39 There is mention of village chiefs but it is not clear whether they were popular representatives or simply government agents. The role of respected elders in the villages was also considered to be important.40
Although, following the move from Angkor, the institutions for producing an agricultural surplus for religious and public works so important to Angkor had in large part become redundant, the king continued to be at the centre of a an extensive entourage of princes and appointed ministers and major officials.41 The “administrative puzzle,” as Forest called the pre-colonial governance arrangement, had two main lines of authority. One was through a number of ministers such as the prime minister and ministers of the palace, justice, navy and war. These in turn appointed support staff and officials to whom they delegated responsibilities. A second line of authority was based on partition of the country administratively into “apanages”, domains, and provinces.42 The king, his mother, the crown prince and other high royal persons held domains and, in turn, nominated provincial governors for appointment by the king.43
Governors were perhaps the main administrators in terms of ensuring peasant compliance with royal decrees. They appointed deputies as well as judges and other officials responsible for districts delineated by the governor (as many as he chose)
39 Sahai, "Les Institutions Politiques," 80. The ‘justice’ system was apparently comprehensive
and had system of procedures, specified crimes and corresponding penalties, but relied on trial by ordeal. For details of justice see ibid., 88-110.
40 Ibid., 83-4.
41 Alain Forest, Le Cambodge et la Colonisation Française: Histoire d'une Colonisation sans
Heurts (1897-1920) (Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan, 1980), 17-33. The king, he says, was surrounded by up to 7,000 persons including functionaries, princes, slaves and women (with the abolition of slavery under the French, some 3-4,000 were still employed by the king in Phnom Penh).
42 Ibid. An “apanage” is literally a “privilege.” It is a vague term and is suggestive of a titled
position with no direct responsibilities (though probably authority to extract some benefit). Tully refers to the apanages as “fiefs” presided over by high ranking members of the royal family who levied taxes on such things as crops, livestock, fruit trees, implements of farming and fishing. John Tully, France on the Mekong: A History of the Protectorate in Cambodia (Lanham: University Press of America, 2002), 36-8. Sahai also refers to the Angkorian administration being divided in four categories but says there is no basis for equating them with the apanages. Sahai, "Les Institutions Politiques," 47.
43 Forest, Le Cambodge et la Colonisation, 18-9; and Sahai, "Les Institutions Politiques." The
king administered 49 provinces grouped in 6 domains, while the obbareach (the prince nominated to succeed the king) held in “apanage” a domain of 5 provinces and the queen mother a domain of 3 provinces. The king allocated some of his provinces to his ministers – 9 each to the prime minister and minister of the Palace; and 6 each to the ministers for justice and war. Their provinces were not necessarily contiguous.
and for which he sold the title to the highest bidder. The governor also appointed village heads who in turn appointed two assistants. Governors were required to act as judges; supervise tax collection; organise corvée and arrange transport as required by the king. They were independent, so long as they submitted to the king and forwarded adequate finances. At the same time, it seems, ministers also appointed officials to the provinces to look after their separate functional interests.44
The sale of titles and positions and rent taking at all levels of the administrative pyramid were the norm. Unsalaried officials drew sustenance from a vast network of lesser officials who collected taxes from the villagers, administered corvée, recruited for military and other service, and maintained some form of local justice and security. The relationships between the various functionaries seems to have depended on power and association rather than any allocation of responsibilities and hierarchy within a bureaucratic structure and, with a certain resonance in more recent bureaucratic practices, the more positions that could be generated, the more wealth could be accumulated at the top.45 This system was dominated by the “rapacious self-interest of the rulers,” which “stunted private enterprise” and in contrast to the Angkor period, produced virtually no public works.46 Governance was little more than a means for the extraction of wealth from the peasants, whose extreme poverty and oppression was noted by travellers and colonial officials alike. Figure 5-2 shows the general steps in the extraction of taxes which roughly accords with the administrative system outlined above.
44 Forest, Le Cambodge et la Colonisation, 24. For example, the minister for justice appointed
representatives to each province to extract 1/3 of the proceeds from the justice process. Forest also refers to a high functionary responsible for agriculture who similarly extracted 1/3 in relation to property cases. The king also placed officials who extracted 1/3 of all fines. Similarly, the kings men determined the taxes for each village and advised the governor the the amount of total tax to be collected from each village in his charge. This was collected as the governor determined
45 When the King Ang Duong tried to simplify the organization, one super-governor was
involved in organising an insurrection. Ibid., 19.
46 Tully, France on the Mekong, 35, 59-60, 67. The Vietnamese had similar perceptions:
“Cambodian officials only know how to bribe and be bribed. … offices are sold; nobody carries out orders; everyone works for his own account” was general Giang’s exasperated conclusion! Quoted in Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 126.
Figure 5-2 Patronage and the administration of taxes and fines before 1891
It would appear that patronage was an “organisation parallel to the official organisation” under which each free person could choose a patron from among the functionaries and princes or their officials.47 A villager might choose a local official such as the village head who, in turn, could select a patron from the host of petty officials connected to the various administrative arms. Each patron in turn selecting a patron from a higher rank. It was a hierarchical network of associations between village and the high level patron, and would have been riddled with conflicting interests of official and patronage duties.
Patrons assisted their clients, in theory at least, in matters of justice and paid taxes for those otherwise in default. As well as functioning as an intermediary and
protecting their clients, patrons also carried complaints to the king. It is through the patron that the king would have become aware of what was happening in the provinces. For his services to clients, the patron collected a head tax payable to the sovereign (and for himself no doubt), and organised men for the army or corvée for the king as required. What is important is that, overall, the system of administration was essentially predatory and designed to extract various forms of formal and informal taxes and corvée from the people. It was not a royal administration designed to ensure the safety, welfare and prosperity of the population.