Invoking Law in a Lawless Land: Hybrid Legal Tactics in Authoritarian Cambodia

• In Event: Accessing Justice Amidst Inequality: Claims-Making in the Global South

Abstract

How do citizens get their grievances addressed in a post-conflict, authoritarian country? Existing scholarship argues that citizens in authoritarian settings use the law when the state actively encourages them to channel their grievances through legal institutions. Other scholarship argues that people will abandon formal legal systems that do not address their claims by seeking refuge in another normative system. I, however, find that even when authoritarian states actively discourage citizens from directing their grievances to state institutions, subaltern actors still engage with the law by mixing and matching practices from a multiplicity of normative orderings to produce what I called “hybrid legal tactics.” Based on qualitative, interpretive fieldwork on a grassroots, environmental group called the Prey Lang Community Network (PLCN) in four provinces in Northern Cambodia, this paper explores how and why marginalized citizens continue to engage with a faltering legal system under authoritarianism. Using semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this paper shows how cultural norms and practices, such as traditional beliefs and ritualistic performances are powerful tools in helping subaltern actors make law matter. The paper ends by reflecting on the significance of studying subaltern populations’ engagement with the law in authoritarian context, highlighting the relationship between human agency and justice under repression.

Author

• Farrah Tek, University of Minnesota