The National League for Democracy (NLD) is a decisive actor in Myanmar’s ongoing political transformation process and yet a clear understanding of its structure is absent from the discourse on the party. This article analyses the NLD based on Richard Katz’s and Peter Mair’s “three faces of party organisation.” It examines the relationship between the NLD in public office, the NLD on the ground, and the NLD central office. The findings characterise the NLD as a highly centralised party in which most decision-making power is concentrated at the party’s central office. Select layers of the party’s network retain the power to influence important decisions, such as the nomination of candidates for elections. Yet, their ability to do so is due to the lack of rules and regulations. This article argues that the structure of the NLD is the product of the dynamics that governed the formation and development of the party under authoritarian rule. Fears of a partial authoritarian resurgence at the hands of Myanmar’s armed forces (Tatmadaw) and the perception that its authoritarian structures constitute a competitive advantage within Myanmar’s hybrid regime inform the NLD’s decision to refrain from reforming and democratising its structure. Yet, leaving the party’s structure unchanged stands to negatively impact the party’s political profile and its role in Myanmar’s political transformation process. In the long term, it might endanger the party’s stability and contravene the party’s political principles. The article draws on interviews with NLD politicians conducted during an extensive research stay in Myanmar from 2018 to 2019.
For the most time since independence in 1948, Myanmar had been ruled by a ruthless military junta which also controlled large swathes of the economy. In 2008, the military promulgated, as part of its so-called "roadmap to democracy" process, a new constitution which foresaw the holding of free and fair elections for the country's new bicameral parliament. Notably, the military retained a de facto veto over future constitutional changes by reserving a quarter of the seats in both houses of parliament for military appointees. The new constitution also stipulated that the ministries for defence, home, and border affairs needed to be headed by military appointees, thus enshrining prerogatives for the military and paving the way for a system of hybrid governance. 2011 marked the beginning of a process of political transformation, with Senior General Than Shwe stepping down as head of the armed forces and as head of state. His hand-picked successor in the latter office, Thein Sein, became the first democratically elected president of Myanmar. Thein Sein proved willing to work with Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the oppositional National League for Democracy (NLD) which successfully registered for national elections later in the year. In the parliamentary byelections of 2012, the NLD won forty-three of the available forty-five seats, with
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