Hun Manet is refining Cambodia’s authoritarian model

The prime minister has made repression less visible and more sophisticated, strengthening the authoritarian system he inherited.Former member of parliament, Cambodia, and vice president of the Cambodia-national-rescue-party" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="133748" data-entity-type="organization">Cambodia National Rescue Party.Published On 7 Aug 2026When Hun Sen handed Cambodia’s premiership to his eldest son, Hun Manet, in August 2023, many diplomats and regional observers saw the succession as an opportunity for change. The carefully stage-managed handover fuelled hopes that a new generation of leaders, headed by a prime minister educated at West Point, New York University and the University of Bristol, might reopen Cambodia’s political space after decades of authoritarian rule.Writing at the time, I argued that this optimism was misplaced, not because the leadership was changing, but because the political system was not. Western policymakers were eager to believe that a dynastic transfer might create room to recalibrate relations with Phnom Penh. But they failed to recognise how deeply the Cambodian People’s Party’s survival depended on preserving the very institutions that had forced opposition figures such as me into exile. Hun Sen’s sweeping crackdowns on the opposition, independent media and civil society were not aberrations, but expressions of a governing model he had built and the ruling elite continued to sustain: one based on patronage, coercion and the elimination of political competition. As long as that model remained intact, there was little reason to expect a new leader to rule any differently.Three years on, this assessment has been borne out. Hun Manet has not governed as the liberal reformer many hoped he would. Instead, he has preserved the foundations of his father’s rule while making its repressive machinery less visible and more institutionally sophisticated. Although violence has become less conspicuous, the regime increasingly relies on elite patronage, legal repression, digital surveillance and tighter control over communications. The result is a quieter but arguably more resilient authoritarian state.