Crafting Parliament in Myanmar's Disciplined Democracy (2011-2021)
Abstract
In January 2011, parliament was restored in Myanmar after two decades of military rule. Startlingly, it began to repeal obsolete laws, scrutinize government expenditures, summon ministers to the floor, and discuss the state’s annual budget. It also allowed its elected representatives to make public the grievances collected from constituents infuriated at enduring practices of land confiscation, petty corruption, and everyday abuses of power. Yet ten years later in February 2021, parliament was shut down, again, by another coup d’état. What has been learned in the span of a decade of post-junta legislative resurgence? How could an elected legislature resurface—and function—in a country that had only limited experience with parliamentary affairs and representative politics since its independence from British rule? What lessons can be drawn from the Myanmar case for parliamentary institution building and legislative developments (and decay) in post-authoritarian and praetorian contexts? This book offers a compelling account of Myanmar’s halting efforts to develop the institutional framework and practice of a parliament-based democratic governance between 2011 and 2021. It charts the stages of such a parliamentary resurgence, tracing its causes and exploring how various institutional and political legacies both informed and constrained the re-establishment and operations of the Union legislature, or Pyidaungsu Hluttaw . Embracing both ethnographic observations and a methodical engagement with legislative proceedings and historical material, Renaud Egreteau investigates how parliamentary life has (re)emerged in the 2010s. His analysis concentrates on key legislative mechanisms, processes and tasks pertaining to government oversight, budgetary control, representation and lawmaking and interrogates how they have been learned, (re)appropriated, and performed by Myanmar’s new breed of civilian and military legislators until the 2021 army takeover.
... Its victory was met with widespread euphoria, but ultimately the NLD failed to consolidate Myanmar's democratic transition (Swe, 2021). This is perhaps not surprising given its centralised and personality-based leadership culture; its inexperience in government; and the fact that it had to contend with the military's ongoing presence in political and economic life (Egreteau, 2022). The NLD nonetheless remained the dominant party in electoral terms, if nothing else due to strong popular sentiment against the involvement of the military in politics (Swe, 2021). ...
The concept of authoritarian innovations provides a means of interpreting labour governance practices that claim to uphold democratic values and international labour standards while restricting labour participation and genuine voice in the workplace. Two underexplored dimensions of this literature are (a) how authoritarian practices are utilised by power elites in ‘hybrid’ state formations and (b) under what conditions they may be discarded in favour of a return to direct forms of coercion and violence. In this article, we examine these questions with reference to Myanmar, where there was a decade of experimentation with democracy before a reversion to military-dominated authoritarian rule in February 2021. In the first half of that decade, space opened under a military-led government for decidedly more democratic labour relations, although labour governance reforms were designed and operationalised in ways that constrained the strength and reach of trade unions. In the second half, a democratically elected civilian-led government presided over the contraction of the space available to organised labour. By tracking the alignment of meso-level authoritarian practices against the changing macro-level character of Myanmar's political landscape, this article contributes to theoretical debates within the emerging literature on authoritarian innovations in labour governance.
This chapter outlines key discourses pertaining to digital media and networked societies (and States). The Deleuzian principle of asignifying rupture posits an important opportunity to understand the nature of digital rhizomorphic publics in Southeast Asia, particularly in de-territorialising and re-territorialising between different societal causes and collectives. Alongside notions of belonging and identity, this chapter redefines collective responsibility as Connective Responsibility—regenerative and resilient given its colonial past, and critiques certain forms of solidarity as an outcome of collective guilt and/or saviourism. Movements of the individual between digital spaces and communities can propel a resilience that is continuous, creative, and inclusive. An analysis of 11,615 scraped data followed by a survey with 3856 respondents across the region provides insight on the perception of societies with regard to their systems of governance and key societal challenges to be addressed. The findings suggest the need for an inclusive digital ecosystem and several key ethical considerations in its implementation. Case studies from Malaysia and the region affirm that participatory modes of engagement and decision-making are essential to re-conceptualise the meaning and practice of “governance” in this region. Beyond the Marxist framework of data colonialism lies a productive approach to capacity-building affordances, collaborative actions, and participatory environments towards a rhizomorphic ecosystem of co-governance in this region.
Retired military officers often continue to wield significant influence in regimes built after the end of junta rule, sometimes helping to bridge enduring civil–military divides. Myanmar’s recent legislative elections offers a counterintuitive case. There has been a rapidly decreasing influence of military retirees in the electoral landscape shaped in the 2010s. I reveal this decline using data on the sociological background of candidates for the 2015 and 2020 elections. Then, building on field interviews with retired officers who ran for office, I offer five explanatory propositions: (1) the depletion of moral capital held by soldiers; (2) military socialisation and the difficulties for veterans to transition to political life, with rivals from other sectors emerging as better equipped; (3) the existence of worthier avenues for power, influence and wealth acquisition; (4) the failure of the authoritarian successor party to manipulate votes and be voted back into office; and (5) the lingering authority and political sway of serving officers. The findings illuminate the persistent insulation from Myanmar society of its active military – even before the 2021 coup – and challenge the claim that veterans can help close the widening gap in Myanmar’s civil–military relations.
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