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Fifty two years ago, the Kingdom of Cambodia became an independent state. A former colony of French Indochina i.e. an associate member of the French Union, Cambodia gained sovereignty in 1954 at the Geneva Conference. Since then Cambodia has been trying to build stable political institutions, but from the long-term perspective this process has been hampered by the internal conflict, directly at first and later indirectly and generated by several foreign-policy actors. The multi-stage civil war of 1970-1991, characterized by the autogenocide of the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979) ravaged the country and cost it several million lives. International community led by the UN brokered the Paris Peace Agreement in 1991 and in 1993 organized the most complex and expensive elections in history. Since then, Cambodia has held multiparty elections in regular electoral cycles in 1998 and 2003; nevertheless and despite the fifteen years of peace, the country has just begun its democratic transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]