Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021. 212 pp. US$105.00, cloth. ISBN 9789463726153.
The eruptive energy of Myanmar’s anti-coup contention in 2021 startled many. Revolutionary calls for mass disruption, insubordination against the new junta, and a reimagined society free from hierarchical ordering and patriarchy attracted millions of protesters. A new generation of Burmese social actors, while opposing the latest military takeover, strikingly steered clear of the decade-old, iconic leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). Anyone puzzled here should read Tamas Wells’ Narrating Democracy in Myanmar.
The central theme of the book is to reveal the competing discourses about democracy and democratization that have animated discussions about Myanmar over the past decade or so. Recognizing that powerful narratives, as contemporary “instruments of power” (171), can shape actions and beliefs, the author employs narrative research methods to identify how stories about democracy have been constructed—and promoted—by different sets of Burmese social actors during a decade of political opening (2010–2020). This approach helps Wells (an Australian academic and former development worker) with an empirical study of the idea of democracy in Myanmar’s vernacular context, without forgetting the “essential contestability” (27) of such a vexed, highly political concept as democracy. The book takes the reader through the topic in 10 short chapters, including the introduction and conclusion. Drawing on an impressive set of 65 interviews carried out in the run up to the 2015 elections, and in 2018, Wells identifies three major narratives of democracy deployed by activists, politicians, and aid workers: the liberal, benevolence, and equality narratives.
The liberal narrative, described in chapter 5, constructs Myanmar’s democratization as a Weberian process seeking to move Burmese society away from personal charismatic politics and societal fragmentation (98). To democratize, Myanmar must join the global, popular story of democracy, its proponents argue, and establish formal institutions of democratic governance and embrace universal values. This view has long been defended by the community of international aid workers, foreign diplomats, and many policy-oriented Burmese intellectuals, often trained in Western universities. In contrast, chapter 6 develops a morally-focused counter story of democracy, grounded on the country’s dominant vernacular, a Buddhist-inspired benevolence narrative. This narrative construes democracy in cultural and relational terms, emphasizes the value of discipline (sikan), goodwill (sedana), and develops a vision of a “morally transformed society” (120) based on benevolent leadership. As other scholars have examined elsewhere (and with more diligence), Aung San Suu Kyi and the literati surrounding the NLD have proved the most vigorous advocates of this alternate narrative infused by Buddhist tenants and practices (Matthew J. Walton, Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016; Michał Lubina, The Moral Democracy: The Political Thought of Aung San Suu Kyi, Warsaw: Scholar Publishing House, 2018).
Lastly, Wells elaborates a third stream of discourse about democracy, the equality narrative, in chapter 7. Proponents of this narrative—often young, highly educated Burmese urbanites generally disconnected from the country’s policy and military elites—reject not only the idea that formal, liberal institutions, such as elections and representative bodies, can magically cure the ills of an “inherently autocratic society” (152). They also oppose the traditional, hierarchical model of morally-grounded leadership, characteristic of the benevolent narrative. Democracy in Myanmar can thrive without a disciplining unity or a morally-grounded social harmony, they claim. Rather, it is through everyday revolutionary politics and contention against various systems of authority or established norms that the country and its society will achieve freedom.
This is perhaps where the author is strongest, as he helps readers move past the (often) Manichean reading of Myanmar’s politics by unpacking the many conceptual tensions about democracy that linger within pro-NLD, liberal, and progressive circles in and around the country. There are indeed many duelling visions of a democratic Myanmar, and some have been constructed in the shadows of dominant narratives articulated by an ethnic Bama, Buddhist intelligentsia, or even the military establishment and its oft-mocked “discipline-flourishing democracy.” Wells is to be commended for shedding light—well before the coup d’état of February 2021—on the lesser known stream of vernacular discourses about democratic justice and social equality that have become prominent among activists from Generation Z and others since 2021.
Wells’ investigation is guided by a distinct methodological choice. He chiefly relies on a set of field interviews conducted in either English or Burmese, and blends some fascinating quotes with personal anecdotes and historical accounts. Wells is also aware of his own research bias and the limitations that a pool of informants who are almost exclusively ethnic Bama, Buddhist, and highly educated metropolitans, bring to his study (22). For all its assets, however, the research could have mobilized more written vernacular sources—since the author is cognizant of Burmese language and was in-country when censorship was lifted in the early 2010s. The two historical chapters (3 and 4) are indeed a bit short on empirical and novel evidence, especially about how the Thakins, anti-colonial activists, and strike leaders effectively construed the concept of democracy. The study would have certainly benefited from a deeper engagement with the many memoirs or biographies of Burmese politicians, student leaders, and unionists, past and present, that have been published in Burmese during the decade of reform.
Furthermore, one would have liked to see the book’s overarching argument more clearly situated with ongoing conceptual debates about non-Western varieties of democracy. As any good social scientist, the author seeks to generalize his findings, but only by drawing lessons for democracy promoters and aid workers around the world. There are also the usual typos that only a pesky book reviewer can spot: the Saya San rebellion was not suppressed in 1921 but 1931 (57), and the surname of Ian Holliday’s co-author of Liberalism and Democracy in Myanmar (a very nice companion to Wells’ book) is David, not Roman (Roman David and Ian Holliday, Liberalism and Democracy in Myanmar, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
However, in the broader context of recent work about Myanmar’s search for an open and free society, these are minor caveats. Wells has delivered a perceptive, carefully organized study that should be listed on undergraduate course syllabi about (non-Western) democracy and read by anyone seeking an astute description of the conflicting understandings of social justice, equality, and democracy in such a fractured society as Myanmar.
Renaud Egreteau
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong