[Tlc] C-book reviews

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Forwarded from Sophal Ear.
Thanks,
justin

Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 30, No. 1 (2008), pp. 140–43 DOI: 10.1355/cs30-1g
© 2008 ISEAS ISSN 0219-797X print / ISSN 1793-284X electronic
BOOK REVIEWS

International Democracy Assistance for Peacebuilding: Cambodia
and Beyond. By Sorpong Peou. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007. Hardcover: 261pp.

Dancing in Shadows: Sihanouk, The Khmer Rouge, and the United
Nations in Cambodia. By Benny Widyono. Lanham, Maryland:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Softcover: 321pp.

Recent studies of Cambodia centre on the Khmer Rouge period, but
both books under review cover the more recent period of Cambodia's
democratic experiment during and after the United Nations Transitional
Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) sponsored elections of 1993. Both
are written by two eminently qualified individuals: a seasoned
peacekeeper and international bureaucrat originally from Indonesia
— Benny Widyono — and a Cambodian-Canadian scholar of post-conflict
peacebuilding and democratization — Sorpong Peou.

To be sure, Widyono's and Peou's books fall under different
genres: the former is a vivid autobiographical narrative while the
latter is a study teeming with erudition. But they each represent
valuable contributions to the body of knowledge on post-conflict
Cambodia, as well as the practice and theory of peacebuilding and
democratization. Combining them both in a single book review is a
challenge to say the least. Suffice it to say that Widyono's writing
could use the precision and clarity of a more scholarly and rigorous
methodological style, while Peou's work could, at times, be livenedup
a bit with a more personal narrative style. Widyono's book is
engrossing — though riddled with annoying erratas — while Peou's
first three chapters (contained in Part 1: The Analytical Framework)
are outstanding in terms of reviewing the scholarly literature and
establishing a conceptual framework.

Peou introduces the concept of Complex Realist Institutionalism
(CRI). While I am uncertain as to the utility of the concept, the
literature review is exceptional as is the structured analysis across
three levels: the state, the political arena and civil society. Does Peou
deliver? For the most part, he certainly does: it is a work of great
attention to detail, and one which can hardly be faulted. My only
critique would be that for someone with so much direct experience
of Cambodia, Peou's chapters in which he presents evidence in
support of CRI, seem second-hand and bogged down by minutia.

Moreover, some of Peou's claims go unreferenced (as for example
on p. 107 regarding several royalist ministers conducting secret
negotiations with Hun Sen), and his reliance on Khmer Intelligence
(11 endnote citations) a website and e-mail service of dubious
provenance that he warns us about on p. 44. Methodologically,
he uses "democratic consolidation as the dependent variable,
institutionalization as both an independent and a dependent variable,
structural factors as the main independent variables, and international
democracy assistance as the intervening variable" (p. 45). Using
institutionalization as both independent and dependent variables
would seem to introduce a priori endogeneity into the model from
a conceptual standpoint.

Twain's original dictum, "There are three kinds of lies: lies,
damn lies, and statistics" appears appropriately enough (p. 41) in
Peou's fierce defence of his methodological approach to his single-case
rich description study of Cambodia's experience with international
democracy assistance building. While he summarizes his methodology
as both quantitative and qualitative, in fact it reflects far greater
comfort in the qualitative realm. No-one would fault him for doing
so, but it is initially off-putting — indeed almost defensive when
he writes "Even behaviourists who take pride in scientific inquiries
do not always rely exclusively on quantitative data" (Endnote 21,
p. 220). There is clearly a place for both, and often times, one
complements the other as when many countries are statistically
analyzed and the results of which guide the choice of case studies
of the type Peou does, so as to avoid selecting on the dependent
variable (democratic consolidation in this case).

Speaking of documentation, Peou's later chapters contained in
Parts 1–5, are so mired in details that the reader can lose sight of the
forest for the trees were it not for a succinct paragraph at the end of
every chapter that summarizes the main findings. Nevertheless, Peou
provides rich description of the recent developments in Cambodian
politics beautifully, and excellent value-added for scholars interested
in explanations of "why international donors may succeed in putting
war-torn countries on the path of democratic transition and negative
peace, but fail to consolidate the gains they make" (p. 5). The
answer is complicated, but meticulously and systematically laid out
across more than a dozen chapters. There are limits, constraints and
impediments to democratic consolidation, institutionalization and
democracy assistance. Cambodia is a prime example of this.

In contrast, Widyono mangles quite a few names and,
occasionally, facts. On p. 182, he mistakenly calls the Independence
Monument the "Democracy Monument", on p. 240, when he means
to name Son Sen, a Khmer Rouge leader who, along with 13 members
of his family, was allegedly mowed-down by a truck on Pol Pot's
orders, he names the late Son Sann, a leader of the non-Communist
Resistance and founder of the Khmer People's National Liberation
Front and its offshoot, the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party. On
p. 282, Widyono writes that three international judges and two
Cambodian judges serve on each panel of the Extraordinary Chambers
in the Courts of Cambodia (aka "The Khmer Rouge Trials"), yet the
numbers are reversed — it is in fact two international judges vs.
three Cambodian judges (with the requirement of a supermajority
— one international judge must vote with the Cambodians for rulings
to pass). The list goes on.

What is also left out is Widyono's own involvement in resuscitating
the Trials themselves when the UN announced that it would stop
negotiations with Phnom Penh on 8 February 2002, a position that
was reversed when Phnom Penh got the UN General Assembly
(GA) to pass a Resolution on 21 November 2002 requesting that
the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, resume negotiations. Widyono
advised the Permanent Mission of Cambodia to the United Nations
in 2002 and should take credit for this. As has often been said,
"success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan". Perhaps the
jury (or the paternity test) is still out or the father is uncertain of
whether his child is a prodigy or an enfant terrible? In any case,
it is no secret that Phnom Penh lorded over its Permanent Mission
regarding the GA Resolution. Another interesting angle is Widyono's
own Indonesian background, which brought to bear the parallels
of GOLKAR with the Cambodian People's Party (CPP). While he
mentions Prime Minister Hun Sen confiding in him that GOLKAR
(and UMNO in Malaysia) were models for the CPP (pp. 146–7),
it may well have as much to do with Widyono's own vision for
Cambodia in 1996 (one which he shared with me) in which he
spoke approvingly of a GOLKAR model for Cambodia.

A colleague of mine, Colonel Ty Seidule (US Army), is fond
of adapting Twain's earlier mentioned aphorism into: "There are
three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and Generals' memoirs".
While Widyono was no generalissimo, as "Shadow Governor" in
Siem Reap during UNTAC and later as the UN Secretary General's
Representative to Cambodia from 1994–97, he saw more than most,
and his memoirs — which he himself admits required debate on
"how frank I should be when describing people I had contact with
in Cambodia" (p. xxviii) — is an honest and valuable rendition of
five years in Cambodia at a time of maximum democratic hope for
the country. If nothing else, it is a nuanced settling of accounts
("A Personal Note"; p. 249). This is the stuff of which memoirs are
made — and worth reading!

Both Widyono's and Peou's books dovetail on the general period
of governing Cambodia during and after UNTAC, and are important
contributions for any scholar interested in the country, peacebuilding,
democratization and its discontents.

SOPHAL EAR is an Assistant Professor in the Department of National
Security Affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey,
California, USA.

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education & Advancement, Volume 3
www.JSAAEA.org
Special Issue on Southeast Asian American Demographics

Response—Public Policy/Political Science

Sophal Ear
United States Naval Postgraduate School

Introduction

Mark Pfeifer's (2007) excellent descriptive overview of current demographics of Southeast Asian American populations based on the most recent figures from the U.S. Census and the Current Population Survey offers scholars of social science and public policy a golden opportunity to reflect on the diverse trajectories of the Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese communities as they integrate—for lack of a better word—into the salad bowl that is American society.

It seems apparent that out of these four communities, the Vietnamese community is distinct in its higher level of convergence with mainstream American society. This is true across a number of indicators: Income, divorce rate (to be sure, not necessarily a desirable convergence), household and family size, and educational attainment.
>From an economics and public policy perspective, educational attainment portends well for the Vietnamese community as education provides skills and knowledge necessary to improve productivity for better paid employment. This largely explains the convergence in income. If nothing else, the credential itself—for example a Bachelor's degree—is a signal of employability, all else being the same.

Household and family size signals reproductive trends that emerge with higher levels of income. As income grows, families choose to have fewer children in a trade-off between quality and quantity. Of course, in traditional societies, children are a form of social protection in the absence of formal social security or retirement systems. The rise of the nuclear family, however, poses new risks for the community. Will grandparents live with their children and grandchildren or will they live alone or in nursing homes? With affluence comes change.
In this short article, I identify through the lens of political science, economics, and public policy some of the challenges facing Southeast Asian American communities as teased from Pfeifer's (2007) overview of the 2005 American Community Survey.

Progress Since Initial Resettlement

My assessment of progress in Southeast Asian American communities since initial refugee resettlement is limited and based only on general historical impressions, since I do not have access to the initial refugee resettlement figures which date back to the 1980s and 1970s. For example, while Cambodian refugees who arrived prior to 1980 could have been Cambodian diplomats, students, or employees of the U.S. Government (Voice of America, the State Department, etc.), the composition of refugees after 1980 would have been much more diverse in origin. Variation in socioeconomic and demographic background in these initially resettled refugees could have been significant. Thus, while the Boat People may have been individuals with significant means (to afford paying their way onto even a rickety boat, Cambodian refugees in the 1980s were likely overwhelmingly of an agrarian background and unlikely to be the bourgeoisie of Cambodia since, after all, the Khmer Rouge targeted that group for elimination. The progress of the Vietnamese American community, as evidenced in the 2005 American Community Survey, has been most impressive, and perhaps may be partly explained by the high level of human capital they brought with them from initial resettlement. Not surprisingly, the remaining Southeast Asian American communities have yet to achieve parity across a number of demographic and socioeconomic indicators with middle America.

Challenges and Implications for the Future

I have chosen three areas of interest to examine cleavages in the Southeast Asian American communities. These are homeownership rate, disability rate, and youth.

Homeownership Rate

The large discrepancy between Cambodia/Hmong vs. Vietnamese/Laotians in this area, if it is not a result of statistical error, suggests that Cambodians and Hmong still have very far to go, and need to have specific programs targeted at them to increase the likelihood of realizing the American Dream. Programs like Acorn (www.acorn.org) need to be made aware of this, if they have not already partnered with these communities.

Disability Rate

While all four Southeast Asian American groups were below the figures for the United States as a whole in terms of disability status (14.9%) this could reflect the conversion of Aid to Families with Dependent Children and/or General Assistance benefits (both of which are time-limited) into Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for disability, a trend that has taken place in the aftermath of welfare reform; SSI is the new welfare.

Youth

The Hmong community is the youngest in terms of age with a median of 18.3 years. The largest population increases from 1990 to 2005 were as follows, based on my calculations of the data as reported by Pfeifer:

24.3% for Vietnamese
16.9% for Cambodians
5.76% for Laotian
1.39% for Hmong

Because of the Hmong community's young age distribution and its large household and family sizes, the Hmong population stands in distinct contrast from the Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian communities. Furthermore, the influx of recently resettled refugees (15,000 in 2004/06) is a daunting challenge facing policymakers in local communities. Seen another way, this is also an opportunity for transformation through renewal. Education, for example, can transform lives at any age, but especially at 18 years of age. Special attention should be made to not lose a generation of Hmong because policymakers were too slow to recognize important demographic patterns when they emerged.

Caveats on the Data Itself: Accuracy, Fairness, and Holes

Adapting a phrase from Benjamin Disraeli, Mark Twain (1906) once said that "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." While I am neither a novelist nor a statistician and cannot prima facie determine the accuracy and fair representation of Southeast Asian American communities from these statistics—depending on sampling techniques, size of the sample relative to the population (as a rule of thumb, 25% minimum)—the following caveats did come to mind.

Income

The income figures could be somewhat misleading, only because the distribution of Vietnamese and Laotians are clustered in California, which has a high cost of living. Indeed, while incomes are on parity or slightly higher than the overall U.S. levels, the largest proportion of Vietnamese live in western states where the cost of living is high. Their purchasing power is likely diminished as a result. For this reason, a dollar in Texas can buy more than in California.

Educational Attainment

The Vietnamese community has achieved parity with respect to Bachelor's degrees, but I would surmise that compared to the Asian community as a whole, it still lags. This raises an important caveat. Should we be comparing each group's performance relative to the U.S. population in general or to the Asian community in particular? In this respect, the Asian alone or in combination for both sexes who have attained a Bachelor's degree or higher is well above the United States population average of 17.2% at a whopping 32%.1

Conclusion

While the data collected in the 2005 American Community Survey is useful, I can imagine that additional variables presented in a longitudinal manner would allow for more in-depth comparison, especially in determining progress made within each community. For example, referring to a 1998 study on Cambodian-Americans (United Way of Greater Los Angeles Study), historian David Chandler said "The Cambodians are the worst group in every category except arrests … The worst literacy, the lowest voting record, the lowest income, the highest infant mortality. In arrests they are fourth or fifth up from the bottom" (as quoted in Mydans, 1999). Mydans' New York Times article was subtitled "In the Killing Fields, Even the Future Died" and prompted my own indignant response entitled "Why Cambodia is No Basket Case" (Ear, 1999). What progress has been made to date? There is little indication from the 2005 American Community Survey that such dire predictions can be made. The road ahead will not be easy, but steady progress has been made and more progress will be made as time passes.

I could not agree more with Pfeifer's conclusion that to "provide a fuller picture of contemporary Cambodian, Hmong, Lao and Vietnamese lives in the United States, additional case studies are needed (utilizing both qualitative and quantitative data) of the socioeconomic experiences and continued social adaptation of these four groups at the local level in both urban and rural settings in the different regions of the United States" (p. 17-18).

As a Cambodian-American scholar, my personal reaction to the 2005 American Community Survey is that these figures suggest that while the Vietnamese community has converged to a large extent into middle America, there is a long road ahead still for Cambodians, Laotians, and Hmong. From homeownership to income to educational attainment, these are the key challenges facing these communities.

Endnotes
1. Data calculated from http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/cps2005/tab01-10.xls

References

Ear, S. (1999, January 29). Why Cambodia is no basket case. Jinn Magazine, Retrieved June 2, 2008 from http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/5.02/990129-cambodia.html

Mydans, S. (1999, January 10). The world: The Khmer Rouge legacy; In the Killing Fields, even the future died. The New York Times, section 4, p.1.

Twain, M. (1906). Chapters from my autobiography. North American Review 186. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved May 23, 2007 from www.gutenberg.org/etext/19987

About the Author

Sophal Ear, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he teaches courses on Southeast Asia, stabilization and reconstruction, and research methods. Prior to joining NPS, Dr. Ear was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University where he taught policy and administration in developing countries. He has consulted for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Dr. Ear was a USAID grantee for the past decade, and was an Assistant Resident Representative for the United Nations Development Programme Timor-Leste (East Timor) in 2002-2003. A graduate of UC Berkeley and Princeton University, he moved to the United States from France as a Cambodian refugee at the age of ten.


______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
3046 INTN
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu