Nicholas Farrelly

• University of Tasmania

This volume is available Open Access to download for free on the Routledge website - just click on the DOI

The history of independent Myanmar is replete with authoritarian and illiberal political regimes that have repressed the prospects of representative governance and limited the opportunities for economic development. A period of political and economic reform between 2011 and 2021 – which can now be considered an interregnum – ushered in hope and opp...

Widespread suffering in Myanmar did not begin with the February 2021 coup. The coup exacerbated all aspects of suffering and spread it more widely throughout society, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Myanmar before the coup was far from perfect. Civil conflicts between various ethnic armed groups and the military have been a constant fea...

This chapter provides the historical context for the February 2021 coup including the previous period of military rule and the period of reform between 2011 and 2021 under President Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi. The last section examines the February 2021 coup, which ended the military’s democratic experiment, and its consequences. As the countr...

There is no obvious end to the ongoing tragedy that faces the Muslim Rohingya communities of western Myanmar. Yet, with two important international legal cases underway at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court there are now important opportunities to maintain pressure on Myanmar’s government. Myanmar’s current gove...

Understanding news and current affairs in Myanmar requires a detailed understanding of the complex historical and ethnic dynamics that have contributed to its contemporary society. Myanmar faces significant political, social and economic difficulties, but these difficulties can differ enormously for individuals depending on a variety of ethnic, eco...

There are myriad societal issues facing Myanmar and its political leaders, particularly the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Aung San Suu Kyi, but few are as intractable as the status of the Rohingya ethnic Muslim minority from Rakhine State. The future of Myanmar society and its place in the international system is now tied to the resolutio...

This book provides a sophisticated, yet accessible, overview of the key political, economic and social challenges facing contemporary Myanmar and explains the complex historical and ethnic dynamics that have shaped the country. With clear and incisive contributions from the world’s leading Myanmar scholars, this book assesses the policies and polit...

After decades of mismanagement and direct military rule, Myanmar's contested transition to a more democratic government has rapidly shifted the outlook in this significant Southeast Asian nation. Since 2011, the removal of Western sanctions and new foreign investments have resulted in high rates of economic growth and an expanding middle class, alb...

Successive Myanmar governments have enlisted illiberal means in attempts to end the world’s oldest civil wars. Since the 1990s, state-led attempts at peace-building have offered ethnic armed groups limited political autonomy or institutional recognition. Many of the 1990s ceasefire agreements, and the new wave agreed since the transition to partial...

Myanmar’s first Hluttaw (Administrative Assembly, which ran from 2011 to 2016) proved that transitions from military dictatorship to new forms of government can occur rapidly, and unexpectedly. The formation of its new legislative culture introduced significant changes to Myanmar society. It also showcased a deliberate effort to evoke earlier syste...

This chapter links the development of Minimal English to the concerns of practitioners and analysts of international affairs. Using examples from the Asian region, the authors suggest that, in this new era of multipolar intercultural relations, the need for neutral languages for coordination is greater than ever. A case study of US–China relations...

Farrelly provides an in-depth assessment of identity-based conflict dynamics within Myanmar’s gradual shift to a more democratic system of government. Civil conflicts, that long raged in the country’s ethnically distinct corners, encourage the fortification of political discourses about identity, unity, and non-disintegration. With its difficult hi...

Thailand faces immense challenges as it adjusts to the end of King Bhumibol Adulyadej’s 70-year reign. Its support for the geopolitical agendas of the Western democracies can no longer be taken for granted. For now, Nicholas Farrelly argues, Thailand’s military leadership is preparing for further turbulence and conflict.

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-...

This article reassesses notions of 'electoral authoritarianism' as applied to the changed political terrain in Myanmar. It examines the various mechanisms through which the lingering influences of earlier political contestation are being integrated into transitional Myanmar's public and social life. While the evolving Myanmar system is inevitably i...

Indonesia's educational landscape has changed in the last two decades. The pressures of globalization have led to the rising popularity of international education offered by international schools, which purport to nurture ‘global citizens' who are internationally minded and skilful at engaging with the Other. This article explores the role of an in...

In the period of social and political transformation that followed the election of President Thein Sein, ethnic politics remained a major preoccupation for the Myanmar government, ethnic peoples and the international community. Explaining the varieties of ethnic political interests that are emerging requires a new analytical framework in which the...

Since the revolution of 1932 that ended absolute monarchy, Thailand has experienced sporadic military interventions, with 19 coups and coup attempts over those decades. This article explains these military interventions by emphasising the cultural aspects of Thai coup-making at the elite level. Concretely, the article shows that episodic military i...

After five decades in which military dominance defined post-colonial politics, Burma has recently embarked on a long-delayed process of political reform. The gradual democratisation of the country's political institutions has meant that the history of its two twentieth-century coups is increasingly overlooked. This article presents a focused study...

Scholars of civil–military relations have long been puzzled by the fact that despite a series of mutinies, Papua New Guinea (PNG) has never seen a full-blown military takeover. Indeed, when PNG became independent in the early 1970s, some veteran PNG watchers had predicted that the country was likely to follow in the footsteps of many coup-prone Afr...

Parts of mainland South East Asia claim the tragic distinction of hosting the world’s longest running civil wars. Some of these wars began in the 1940s; fighters from World War II enjoyed no respite as they were quickly drawn into the local conflagrations that followed the global war. While combat, support, training and supply have remained largely...

During 2011 the unresolved legacies of recent political conflict continued to overshadow prospects for reconciliation in Thailand. The pivot for the current troubles is the coup of 19 September 2006 when the army leadership, in concert with palace insiders, deposed the electorally successful government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The coup...

Given the vast scope of the Asian mega-region, in this chapter we are confine our discussion of the response to organized crime to India, China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and to ASEAN, with a specific focus there on the sub-region known as the ‘Golden Triangle.' In doing so we are conscious that we neglect some important countries and sub-regi...

This article is the first thorough examination of the Thai handbooks that are produced to explain agricultural and environmental knowledge. These khu-meu (handbooks) and tamra (textbooks) come into use when knowledge is moving from one party to another. They also establish symbolic correlations within the human, terrestrial world, or between the hu...

One of the key tools for achieving India's stated ambition of stopping national fragmentation in the Northeast is the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (1958) (AFSPA). This article assesses Indian Government efforts to manage the parts of the Indo-Burmese borderlands that are subject to this law. It compares the approaches of governments on the Bur...

Discussions of resource management and development in northern Thailand often emphasize the threat of eviction faced by uplanders living in forest reserve zones. This “specter of eviction” is to be found in official government policy, in academic accounts of highland development, and in the activist writings of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)....