Inside Myanmar's Turbulent Transformation

Abstract

Since constitutional government began in 2011, Myanmar's shift from an entrenched military regime has drawn wide interest from policy analysts. This article explores the context of Myanmar's fragile democratisation from the ground up. It explains two interlocking characteristics: the fundamentally novel character of reform and the endurance of age-old conundrums. For longer term success, ensuring that Myanmar has adequate capacity-at institutional and human levelsto manage its turbulent transformation will not be easy or cheap. This will also require a move away from stale rhetoric about nondisintegration, national solidarity and the perpetuation of sovereignty. The next step is to develop a culture of adherence to free and fair elections, followed by a wide-ranging democratisation of how post-dictatorship politics is conceived.

Myanmar: Surveillance and the Turn from Authoritarianism?

“…In no other countries can the military veto proposals in parliament, thus the Myanmar military's veto capacity over the constitutional changes proposed by the elected members of the parliament "singles out Myanmar's Constitution from all others in the world and is out of step with international constitutional standards," and the tenets of democracy as they are internationally understood (Patel et al 2014: 10). 4 Thus many scholars and analysts agree that Myanmar's transition is rather a "regime maintenance," that is, an attempt to sustain authoritarianism by creating institutions that facilitate elite power-sharing, opposition co-optation, the institutionalisation of military dominance (Prager Nyein 2009; Bünte 2011; Croissant and Kamerling 2013) or a "partially civilianized form of Myanmar's long-established authoritarian regime" (Huang 2016: 3; see also Farrelly and Win 2016). Based on the studies of new institutionalism within authoritarian states that emphasize the stabilizing functions of political institutions such as elections, legislatures, and parties, and their importance to the reproduction of authoritarian rule, Croissant and Kamerling (2013) argue that the political institutions created in the 2008 constitution embody a survival strategy for the military.…”

Introduction: Development Challenges in Myanmar: Political Development and Politics of Development Intertwined

“…While transitional periods can constitute windows of opportunity for inclusion of a number of previously excluded groups, the persistence of traditional norms and influences is commonplace. In fact, consistent and predictable democratic consolidation tends to be the rare exception, while a partial reversal to some form of authoritarianism is the rule (Diamond 2002;Schedler 2006;Hadenius and Teorell 2007;Farrelly and Win 2016).…”

In the Absence of the Rule of Law: Everyday Lawyering, Dignity and Resistance in Myanmar’s ‘Disciplined Democracy’

“…Those elections set in train a purported political transformation that further crystallized when Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD were democratically elected to lead a civilian government in November 2015 (Fink, 2013; Kipgen, 2016; Simpson et al, 2017). Some commentators expressed cautious optimism that the country was finally undergoing the long anticipated, albeit partial, transition (Dukalskis, 2015; Farrelly and Win, 2016; Ganesan, 2017; Holliday, 2014). However, events since the 2015 elections have confirmed that both the practice and culture of authoritarianism persist, which naturally have a chilling effect upon the emergence of the rule of law (McCarthy, 2018).…”