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Rule of law objectives have assumed an integral role in post-Cold War democratisation initiatives and state-building operations. More than US$10 billion has been spent by the international community on democratic state-building in Cambodia since the Paris Peace Agreements (PPA) were signed in 1991 and the deployment of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) (1992-93). While the 1993 Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia provides for a democratic government with separation of powers, judicial independence and human rights guarantees consistent with international legal instruments, Cambodia continues to rank poorly in international indices of the rule of law. This dissertation investigates the deficient application of the rule of law in Cambodia against the standard provided for by the text of the 1993 Constitution and the legal-institutional framework it established. The study assesses Cambodia’s performance in this area of governance against a conceptual framework for a ‘thin’, procedural rule of law consistent with the country’s civil law system and institutional structure. To investigate the rule of law in Cambodia, interviews were conducted with spokespersons for the Council of Ministers and the Ministry of Justice, National Assembly members, judges, lawyers, international and local non-government organisations, independent researchers and foreigners working within the Cambodian legal sector. The dissertation argues that the deficient application of the rule of law in Cambodia is attributable to the combination of the country’s political culture of patron-clientelism and the legal-institutional framework established during the UNTAC period. The dissertation finds that despite decades of internationally-sponsored good governance and judicial reform efforts, Cambodia is deficient across all indicators of a thin rule of law. The constitutional arrangements established during the UNTAC period provide for a parliamentary system, where the executive is embedded in the legislature, and the basic framework for a civil law system, which remains underdeveloped. In the Cambodian political context, this enables control of the legislature by the hegemonic Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). In a civil law system, the purpose of the judiciary is to give expression to the will of the legislature, as statutes are the primary source of law. The legal system in Cambodia, in turn, gives expression to the will of the CPP. The result of this is endemic corruption and political interference in the judiciary according to international standards of good governance and the rule of law.

After the collapse of the USSR, not only the former union republics, but also autonomous republics and regions inside post-Soviet Russia adopted extensions of native-language teaching in school as one of the central goals of their national revival and language revival policy. To achieve this goal, regional authorities adopted legislation and created an institutional framework for language education. Depending on the resultant configuration of the legal-institutional framework of language education, the dynamics in implementing the goal of language teaching extension in regions varied. How have different regional configurations of the legal-institutional framework affected language teaching? This study explores the position of Finno-Ugric languages in Russian regional education systems using a legal-institutional approach. The effect of the policy is studied by employing calculation of the dynamics in the relative share of native language learners in school. The empirical study demonstrates that the frameworks of teaching the native languages in Finno-Ugric republics and autonomous districts are comparable, but that access to native language learning was provided to differing degrees. Après l’écroulement de l’URSS, les anciennes républiques de l’Union, mais aussi les républiques autonomes et certaines régions au sein de la Russie post-soviétique étendirent l’enseignement de la langue maternelle dans les écoles et en firent l’un des principaux objectifs de la revitalisation nationale et de la politique de revitalisation des langues. Pour réaliser cet objectif, les autorités régionales adoptèrent des lois et donnèrent à l’enseignement des langues un cadre juridique. Suivant la configuration de ce dernier, la dynamique dans la mise en œuvre de l’enseignement des langues vernaculaires a pu différer selon les régions. Comment les différentes configurations régionales du cadre institutionnel et juridique ont-elles influé sur l’enseignement de la langue? Cet article étudie la position des langues finno-ougriennes dans les systèmes régionaux d’éducation de la Russie sur la base d’une approche juridique. Les effets de ladite politique sont étudiés sur la base de la dynamique dans la part relative des apprenants de leur langue maternelle à l’école. Il révèle que les cadres d’enseignement des langues autochtones dans les régions et républiques finno-ougriennes sont comparables, mais qu’ils permettent l’accès aux langues vernaculaires à des degrés divers.