2026/03/24 by Sreang Chheat, Melissa Curley · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Cambodian History and Society #Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies #Transboundary Water Resource Management
paper · doi:10.1080/09644016.2026.2643999
openalex publication_date 2026/03/24 · openalex created_date 2026/03/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
We examine how authoritarian regimes in mainland Southeast Asia engage with civil society’s environmental advocacy in lower Mekong hydro-politics. A case study of activism in Cambodia and Vietnam (2011–2019) against Laos’s Xayaburi dam analyses why these states tolerated civil society advocacy, while generally constraining it. Drawing on critical state theory and captured governance concepts, we argue that Cambodia and Vietnam’s roles as ‘instrumental partners’ in anti-Xayaburi campaigns show different patterns of authoritarian intensification but reveal two similar dynamics. First, when state policy goals align with civil society objectives domestically, repression of environmental activism can be strategically recalibrated to suit state political agendas. Second, this creates expanded advocacy space regionally. Ongoing domestic repression may mitigate future transnational advocacy. State-civil society relations are mostly preset under authoritarian rule, however, if interests and temporal alignment are possible, transboundary goal-based partnership can be a strategy for both state and civil society, even if short-lived.