Myanmar Update Series. Singapore: ISEAS Pub., 2014. xiv, 381 pp. (Maps, tables.) US$29.90, paper. ISBN 978-981-4519-13-7.
Debating Democratization in Myanmar is the latest edited volume from the Myanmar/Burma Update conference held at Australia National University. This volume is evidence that not only is the quality of scholarly work on Myanmar advancing overall, the conference is establishing itself as a premiere academic event for the study of Myanmar. One of the most promising aspects of the work is the significant number of Burmese contributors, something that will hopefully become a trend in other scholarly compilations.
The risk of putting out a volume like this on a country in the midst of a transition is that some of the research that may have seemed innovative a year ago is more commonplace in current analysis. While this is true of a few of the contributions (for example, Thomas Kean’s solid chapter on the surprisingly active parliament), even those pieces that seem dated provide an important record of how actions were perceived at key moments in the transition. Given the mercurial nature of Myanmar analysis (witness the country’s rapid swing from being a prematurely anointed success story to a stalled and disappointing failure), these time-bounded essays are crucial in reminding us just how nascent, fragile and context-dependent this transition process is.
The book opens with an essay by Winston Set Aung, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Myanmar; like other government officials who have participated in academic conferences, he isn’t really free to offer insight beyond acknowledging that the reforms continue to face challenges. A long chapter by Morten Pedersen sets up the overall reform context and includes a useful consideration of a number of different explanations of why the reforms have occurred.
From there, the rest of the book is divided into three sections: Encouraging Signs, Anticipating Reforms and Enduring Concerns. The first section contains some of the most interesting work of the whole book. A chapter by Tamas Wells and Kyaw Thu Aung on the role of village networks engaged in land-related activism reflects the increasingly prominent role of Burmese civil society groups in conducting research and empowering local communities. It also contests the common claim that rural communities are mere objects of policy, showing their (albeit still limited) role in democratization “from below” and revealing intriguing alternate understandings of democracy that ought to be further explored. Politician Daw Than Than Nu relates a more personal story of her life in exile (she is a daughter of Burma’s first prime minister U Nu) and her subsequent return to contest the 2010 elections, with reminders of the important role that exiled Burmese have played in maintaining connections between communities. Kerstin Duell’s chapter on the participation of former exiles in Myanmar’s current politics attempts to compress too much of her rich dissertation research into too small a space, but effectively highlights an important potential fault line. Kyaw Soe Lwin’s excellent study of labour protests and related violence argues that, while an increase in political space and support from activist groups has contributed to an increase in labour protests, an additional key determining factor was the concentration of workers, which “produced a feeling of solidarity” (152).
In the second section, a chapter by Anders Engvall and Soe Nandar Lynn on economic reforms is thorough in the subjects it covers yet frustratingly includes no critical perspective on the economic development paradigm that is being unquestioningly pursued in Myanmar. Sean Turnell’s piece is much more sensitive to the political context within which economic reforms are debated. Andrew Selth’s detailed chapter on police reform is similar to his contributions on the subject to other recent edited volumes, but, given the critical role that the police will play in managing conflict and promoting rule of law, the topic deserves to be discussed regularly. A chapter by multiple authors on electoral system changes was likely more impactful in 2013, whereas today the substance of those discussions has largely been lost in political maneuvering.
Renaud Egreteau’s chapter on the continuing political salience of the military ought to be re-read on a regular basis by anyone inclined to put too much faith in the ability of the quasi-civilian government to press reforms. The hard lines taken in recent months by military leaders and MPs on the ceasefire process and constitutional reform remind us that they are not likely to easily give up their constitutionally protected role in politics. It is a discouraging marker of how peripheral ethnic concerns have remained to the reform process that Seng Maw Laphai’s powerful indictment of both the Myanmar military-government complex and the international community seems almost out of place in the volume. Given the Tatmadaw’s recent attack on a Kachin cadet school, her discussion of “institutionalized state terrorism” compels a re-examination of the assumption that the military could be a credible negotiating partner in peace. Dealing with another perennially marginalized population, Khin Mar Mar Kyi looks at the daily struggles of women, demonstrating that developmental weaknesses such as lack of infrastructure or education affect women disproportionately or in unique ways.
While these primarily empirical accounts are a valuable contribution to understanding Myanmar’s reforms, more engagement with broader theoretical paradigms could help extend the utility of the volume. Not only can Myanmar’s transition be better understood by moving beyond empirical descriptions, but studies of the country could also contribute to developing or refining theories of transitions, democracy, military rule and economic sequencing, to name just a few areas. Two notable examples here are Egreteau’s contribution and the thought-provoking concluding chapter by editor Nick Cheesman on democratization and political violence. Framed as a corrective to the fact that none of the chapters address communal or religious violence, the conclusion effectively reviews the book’s essays through this lens, demonstrating the deep interconnectedness between different manifestations of violence. Cheesman ends with the worrying yet timely warning that violence “has the capacity to insinuate itself into whatever nominally-democratic institutions emerge over the next few years” (342). Clearly, what democracy means and how it should be enacted in Myanmar will remain central elements of the debate over its transition.
Matthew J. Walton
St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
pp. 964-966