Myanmar is in the midst of momentous political changes. Over the past two years, the country's new quasi-civilian government has taken unprecedented steps to end half a century of military rule, economic stagnation, and international opprobrium. This chapter assesses the significance of the ongoing reform process, considers why the government is changing tack now, and identifies some of the main challenges and risks ahead. The analysis reveals a government that is defying conventional wisdom and low expectations, yet at the same time faces such major structural obstacles that one should be cautious about assuming that the end point of the transition will be democracy.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE REFORM PROCESS

The conventional view leading into the 2010 elections was that this was purely a cosmetic move to shore up the existing regime and unlikely, therefore, to result in significant change (for example, Lintner 2011; Nyein 2009; for a dissenting view, see Pedersen 2011). Early developments seemed to support this pessimistic view. In its efforts to maintain control of the transition, the military government made a mockery of democratic elections and managed to secure, by hook and by crook, a landslide victory for its own party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) (Englehart 2012). It subsequently appointed a new cabinet made up largely of former senior military officers, led by the prime minister of the previous regime, General Thein Sein, now President U Thein Sein. This, however, is when the expected story of continuity ended and real change began. Once in office, the new government proceeded in short order not to try to shore up the existing regime, but effectively to start unravelling it.

The reforms undertaken by the post-2011 government are well known, and a few highlights will suffice here (for more detail, see Holliday 2013; International Crisis Group 2012, 2011). Most of the country's 1000-plus political prisoners have been released; opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been elected to parliament, where she now chairs the Committee for the Rule of Law; a ceasefire has been reached with the Karen National Union (KNU), thus ending the world's longest-running armed insurgency; trade unions have been legalized; and the media has been freed to publish real news and honest criticism of the government.

The economic reforms set in train in Myanmar in recent times have succeeded in a number of ways, but not least in commanding international attention. Passenger planes flying into Yangon these days are as full as the hotels to which they bring their human cargoes, cargoes that include some of the titans (as well less exalted members) of the global business food-chain. In a world in which investors everywhere imagine themselves as beset by risk and stagnation, Myanmar has emerged as an unlikely field of opportunity for those who are, to use the fashionable phrase of our times, “seeking yield”.

Beyond the headlines of the business pages, Myanmar's economic reforms are incomplete, greatly contingent upon shifting alliances, and rather more fragile than supposed. Yet they are authentic and tangible too. As one anonymous contributor to a recent meeting of diplomats put it:

The purpose of this chapter is to undertake a stock-take of Myanmar's economic reforms: to determine the reality behind the rhetoric, to identify the fundamental from the superficial, and to distinguish that which will last from the merely ephemeral. In practical policy terms, the paper will examine Myanmar's new exchange rate regime and its strengths and weaknesses, the ramifications of the country's new Foreign Investment Law, mooted changes in banking laws, some changes in agriculture, and some very counterproductive changes to land laws. Highlighted too will be efforts to create institutions for revenue transparency in the extractive and energy sectors, and for fiscal reform generally.

THE FLOATING OF THE KYAT

The most important economic reform enacted by the government of Thein Sein was its decision (in April 2012) to reform Myanmar's exchange rate regime by allowing the country's currency, the kyat, to be determined via a “managed float” (Reuters 2012). Myanmar's previous dual exchange rate system—under which there was an “official” rate that set the kyat at around K6: US$1, compared to an unofficial market rate that mostly fluctuated around K1,000: US$1—had long been the most public symbol of the country's economic oddities. Under the new arrangements, an “auction” is held each morning amongst Myanmar's commercial banks to determine a reference rate for the kyat against the U.S. dollar, the Euro and the Singapore dollar.

Like much about Myanmar's transition to discipline-flourishing democracy— as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC, 1997–2011) so regularly called it—the hluttaw (parliament) established under the 2008 Constitution was widely written off before it even came into being. The conventional wisdom among commentators, analysts, and politicians was that the constitution was designed to perpetuate decades of military rule, the 2010 general election would be a sham, and the hluttaw would be a rubber stamp for the new military-backed national government. The one-sided result of that general election, the rules of which heavily favoured the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), only served to reinforce this view.

Despite the strong majority enjoyed by the USDP, and the presence of appointed military representatives, who fill 25 percent of all seats in each national, state, and region parliament, over the past two-and-a-half years the hluttaw bodies have been anything but a rubber stamp. On the contrary: one of the defining features of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, or National Parliament, has been the regular tension, and even conflict, with President U Thein Sein's government and other institutions in Myanmar's political landscape, including the judiciary, political parties, media, and civil society. The parliament has vigorously asserted its independence from these other institutions—to the point of potentially harming the reform process—and its members have taken particularly seriously the task of acting as a check on the Union government, cutting budgets and discussing and investigating reports of corruption and illegal land confiscations. As writer and historian Thant Myint-U has noted, because it is a new institution the parliament does not suffer in the same way as the judiciary and bureaucracy from corruption, red tape, and other legacies of decades of military rule (Kean 2012). For the same reason, however, the hluttaw and its members are still feeling their way around a system bequeathed by the SPDC through its tight management of the constitution-drafting process. Inevitably, this has led to some missteps and misunderstandings.

Given Myanmar's fraught political history and the binary nature of post-1988 politics, particularly in areas dominated by ethnic Burmese, a surprising degree of cooperation between its representatives has characterized the parliamentary system at the national level. Even after the addition of representatives from the National League for Democracy (NLD) in May 2012 there has been a consistent and notable lack of adherence to party political lines.

Myanmar's tumultuous post-colonial history has been characterized by decades of direct and indirect military rule and corresponding political mobilizations that have ranged from armed ethnic and ideological insurgencies to mass protests, student movements, and non-violent pro-democracy uprisings. The nationalization and mismanagement of the economy, the militarization of the state, political surveillance and oppression, and the closure of universities are all factors that have triggered the flight from Burma of millions of Burmese. Several main waves of exit can be distinguished, following major political events—(1) the 1962 military coup; (2) the installation of direct rule by the Burma Socialist Programme Party in 1974 and the U Thant funeral crisis; (3) the 1988 mass uprisings; and (4) the 2007 “Saffron Revolution” protests, respectively. The largest exodus occurred in the period from late 1988 until after the 1990 elections (held on 27 May 1990), when the military government indefinitely delayed the transfer of power to the elected opposition. The Burmese diaspora that formed as the result of these movements was comprised mostly of people who had fled repression and conflict, but it also included individuals who had left Burma for educational and professional purposes.

As a prerequisite to studying the nature of Burmese political activism and underlying domestic, transnational and international linkages, the concepts of “diaspora” and “political exiles” need to be revisited. The central defining feature of a diaspora consists in a shared identity that unites people living dispersed in transnational spaces (Soekefield 2006, p. 280) and in transnational “imagined communities” (Anderson 2001).

Political exiles “engage in political activity, directed against the policies of a home regime, the home regime itself or the political system as a whole, and aimed at creating circumstances favourable to their return” (Shain 1989, p. 15). Silenced at home, exiles exit in order to voice their discontent, but also struggle to return home, at least initially (Ma 1993). The central position of threat in the literature on exile and diaspora is paralleled in social movement theory by threat, opportunity, and the cost of contention (Goldstone and Tilly 2004, p. 179f).

Compared to classical diasporas, the Burmese diaspora of up to four millions in Thailand and smaller communities across the rest of the world is relatively large.

I propose to conclude this book by reexamining the current debate about democratization in Myanmar in terms of violence, by which I mean political violence. I have three reasons for concentrating on violence. First, most of the chapters in the book explicitly or implicitly raise questions that intersect with the problem of violence. What types of political violence are common in Myanmar today? Do they threaten democratization? How do they matter, and why?

Second, while the contents of the book raise questions about some types of political violence in Myanmar today, they omit, or pass lightly over, other types. Notably, no chapter is dedicated to communal violence, whether the violence in Rakhine State, or the growing incidence of anti- Muslim violence in other parts of the country. By concentrating on violence in this concluding chapter, I will attempt briefly to address this omission. Third, by rethinking democratization in relation to violence I hope to obtain some new perspectives on the stories and analyses offered by the book's contributors. Some of these perspectives sharpen and enhance the authors’ views. Others cast doubt on their findings. All of them speak to problems of violence as “the decisive means for politics” (Weber 2009, p. 121) in Myanmar.

The two broad categories of violence that I will use for this purpose, drawn from Johan Galtung's influential schema, are personal violence and structural violence (1969, p. 170). The categories are convenient, because they encompass a wide range of political phenomena. They also permit rudimentary analysis of these phenomena as described in the preceding chapters, and invite possibilities for further research. I begin with personal violence, and then turn to its structural counterpart.

PERSONAL VIOLENCE

Personal violence is direct. A person (or persons) commits it against another person or persons. It is visible as action, and instrumental in character (Arendt 1969, p. 46; Weber 2009). Targeted at individuals, personal violence takes the form of killing, torture, rape, and abduction, among other practices. As a collective political phenomenon it is found in war, terrorism, communal violence, pogroms, riots, and genocide, just to name a few of its most pronounced forms. I will concentrate here on collective personal violence, because the media and experts tend to point towards this sort of violence when warning of dangers to the future of democratization in Myanmar.

Since March 2011, President Thein Sein has made several major speeches in which he has acknowledged Myanmar's myriad problems and outlined a plan to introduce a wide range of reforms. His stated aim is to build “a modern, developed democratic nation”, in which the work of the central government, and state and region governments, is “transparent, accountable and consistent with the constitution and existing laws” (Thein Sein 2011). In describing this goal, Thein Sein has emphasized “the rule of law”. He has not explained precisely what he means by this term, but in 2012 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) characterized the principle as a requirement that “all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to just, fair and equitable laws and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law” (UNGA 2012).

At no time during any of these speeches has Thein Sein singled out the Myanmar Police Force (MPF) for particular mention. Nor has opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her frequent references to the need for “the rule of law” in Myanmar (Prasse-Freeman 2013a, 2013b). Foreigners interested in this issue have also tended to gloss over the policing dimension. Yet, the reforms envisaged by both the government and the opposition movement will rely in no small measure for their success on the existence of an independent and professional police force that is accountable to the public and commands the respect of the population. Also, if the armed forces (Tatmadaw) further loosen their grip on Myanmar society, the MPF can be expected to play a much greater role in maintaining law and order, and safeguarding internal security. Indeed, such a step will be essential if Myanmar is to make an orderly transition to genuine democratic rule.

As other post-authoritarian governments have found, however, the reform of the national police force presents enormous challenges. Structural and procedural changes can be made, new training programmes introduced, modern equipment acquired, proficiency levels raised, and steps taken to improve the force's public image. In some of these areas, foreign governments and international organizations can provide assistance. Such measures, however, will only scratch the surface of the problem. It is imperative that there is also a fundamental shift in the police force's professional culture and a complete transformation of its relationship with the wider community.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For stakeholders in Myanmar, the 2012 by-elections revealed the potential of the National League for Democracy (NLD) to dominate, once again, winner-take-all elections in Myanmar that are held under credible electoral conditions. Looking towards the 2015 general election, when 75 percent of parliament's seats should be contested, the NLD's landslide victory in 2012 significantly raises the political stakes.

Political actors in Myanmar are now looking ahead to 2015 to assess their prospects under the prevailing electoral system. Assuming the NLD can maintain its levels of popularity, it is possible the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system will deliver the NLD a single-party parliamentary majority in 2015, even if the 25 percent of seats set aside for the military are taken into account. As other analysts have observed, “the ruling USDP [Union Solidarity and Development Party] won only one seat in the by-election even though it garnered [close to] 30 per cent of the vote, and leaders are said to be concerned that the party could be wiped out by an NLD landslide in the elections in 2015 unless proportional representation is introduced” (Bower and others 2012). In this light, the tendency of Myanmar's FPTP system to amplify wins and losses can also be seen as a political liability, potentially undermining the fragile political calculus that since 2011 has given the reformers licence to shape Myanmar's politics positively. The NLD may, in fact, have much to gain by changing the electoral system to one that increases the likelihood that powerful political forces in the transition process still feel represented in the future parliament. The debate about electoral systems takes on another important dimension with the legitimate concerns of ethnic minorities about their representation in Myanmar's new political system. An FPTP system with a resurgent NLD poses significant challenges for ethnic minority parties. While the 2012 by-elections included few constituencies in the ethnic states, in those constituencies where ethnic minority parties did compete they only gained political ground in one seat, winning by a narrow margin over the NLD. The 2015 elections are already looming, and both the NLD and USDP are seeking to lead the nation down a path towards peace and national reconciliation. In this context it will be increasingly difficult for the NLD and USDP to ignore the calls for political accommodation by the ethnic minority parties.

There is broad agreement among observers both inside and outside the country that “something significant has happened in Myanmar” since the 2010 elections (Egreteau 2012, p. 30). However, defining the nature of this change has proved contentious.

In this debate, most attention has been focused on the elite level and the new roles of the “triumvirate” of President U Thein Sein, Lower House Speaker Thura U Shwe Mann and “opposition” leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (Tin Maung Maung Than 2012). This has meant that the political changes in Myanmar have been described as “a top-down transition” (Egreteau 2012), with democratization coming from above through an elite-led reform agenda. In this top-down reform process, local level politics in most parts of the country is assumed to be largely unchanged. As Holliday (2013, p. 100) suggests, “much changed in Myanmar in 2012, yet for ordinary people much remained the same as reform impacts were confined largely to elites”.

This case study asks whether and how things may have changed for ordinary people in rural areas in Myanmar. Is the process of political change only top-down, or are there ways in which it is also bottom-up? In other words, are rural people waiting for elite-led reforms to reach them, or are they, too, agents of democratization?

In order to answer these questions, this paper examines the situation among networks of village groups in the Ayeyarwady Delta area in southern Myanmar, and particularly their engagement in advocacy related to Myanmar's new land laws. It is based on in-depth interviews conducted in February 2013 with sixteen male and three female members of the networks. It also draws on project records and interviews with five staff from Paung Ku, a civil society-strengthening initiative started in Myanmar in 2007 by a consortium of local and international non-government organizations (NGOs).

All five staff members have been engaged with village-based groups in the Delta since 2008.

DEMOCRATIZATION “FROM BELOW”

In considering the changes in Myanmar, we first acknowledge that “democracy” and “democratization” are contested concepts. While authors such as Schumpeter (1947) focus on a narrow procedural definition of democracy (based primarily on free and fair elections), others broaden the concept to include state accountability through other mechanisms, especially through a watchdog role performed by civic organizations and media (Schedler 1999).