Cambodia - Donor playground? Defeat and doctrinal dysfunction in a hoped-for client state

Abstract

This paper suggests that we may learn much about mainstream doctrines and practices of governance from watching what happens when they engage with international development issues. Cambodia is an illuminating example. Despite apparent material, organizational and intellectual superiority, Western engagement with poor countries often fails: Cambodia points us towards possible explanations as to why. The paper suggests that the lack of success in development intervention has had much to do with patterns visible in Western policy and governance doctrines: a desire to base the organization of interventions on cause-effect principles; an associated reckless application of imagined generic cause-e..