Civil Society and Political Change in Asia: Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space. Edited by Muthiah Alagappa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 552p. $85.00 cloth, $34.95 paper. Muthiah Alagappa has assembled an impressive number of essays in this volume, which is the product of two workshops in Honolulu and Phnom Penh held in 2002. It offers contributions covering 12 countries by 14 contributors, organized by country.

Civil Society and Political Change in Asia: Expanding and Contracting Democratic Space

Myanmar: A Political Economy Analysis

The article examines the role of political parties in Myanmar’s democratisation process. We argue that the substance of democratisation depends on popular representation through political parties but question their capacity to provide such representation. Examining capacity through the concept of party institutionalisation, we find that most parties have not been able to build effective organisational structures. However, we also find a degree of party institutionalisation in the form of rootedness in society. Political cleavages between those favouring authoritarian rule over democratic rule and Burman nationhood over ethnic notions of nationhood have produced divisions between state-centred parties associated with Myanmar’s authoritarian legacy and society-centred pro-democracy and ethnic parties. Although being less dichotomous than in the past, we argue that these cleavages continue to provide a basis for party identity and rootedness in society. We conclude that further development of political parties and popular representation will be shaped by the relations between parties, the state, and society – where individual parties are shaped according to their tendencies towards state-centred cartel parties or society-centred mass parties.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/186810341503400301

Political Parties and Popular Representation in Myanmar’s Democratisation Process

Kazakhstan has provided the economic exemplar for other Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries since its independence in 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union It has been classified by the World Bank as an ‘upper middle income’ country and witnessed sustained growth in spite of the global recession Political reforms however have been slower to realize, and the Presidential Republic still remains a highly centralized and autocratic regime Some 24 years beyond independence this article assesses whether the role played by the non-governmental organization (NGO) sector has changed and, as a consequence, the asymmetric state-society fulcrum has shifted in favour of a stronger societal voice in Kazakhstan It finds mixed evidence of partnership between NGOs and Government and ongoing problems in exercising public voice and moderating the power of the state

/pdf/state-society-relations-non-governmental-organisations-in-2qlmixppkc.pdf

State-Society Relations: Non-Governmental Organisations in Kazakhstan

This paper examines the remarkable political transition underway in Myanmar/Burma since the inauguration of President Thein Sein at the end of March 2011. It begins with the historical background and the political context and then addresses the main features of the economy, highlighting current performance, major reforms, and key issues. It concludes by characterising the progress to date as verging on the miraculous, while stressing that future progress is highly uncertain. The next two years leading up to a national election in 2015 are unlikely to be as easy as the past two. Outsiders can be most helpful by giving senior officials more space to concentrate on policy formulation and implantation.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/186810341203100402

Myanmar on the Move: An Overview of Recent Developments

While the general elections in Myanmar in November 2010 were widely condemned, both national and international actors approached the by-elections of April 2012 as a political rite-de-passage to improve relations between the government and the opposition inside, and between the former pariah state and the international community outside the country. An undercurrent to the government-led transition process from an authoritarian to a formally more democratic regime was the development of a politically oriented civil society that found ways to engage in the electoral process. This article describes the emerging spaces of election-related civil society activism in the forms of civic and voter education, national election observation, and election-related agency in the media. Noting that, in particular, election observation offers connections for civil society to regional and international debates, the paper draws preliminary conclusions about further developments ahead of the general elections in Myanmar expected for 2015.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/186810341203100204

Democratic Dawn? Civil Society and Elections in Myanmar 2010–2012

Participation in the administration of elections and perceptions of electoral integrity

Election management bodies (EMBs) can be classified according to different criteria; their composition is one of them. Most EMB typologies pertain to composition and recruitment at the top, and not at the level of sub-ordinate commissions and polling stations. wahlbeboachtung.org has undertaken preliminary research to compare EMB models in Europe on the basis of OSCE/ODIHR reports. This research illustrates that Austria shares a common model – political parties nominating poll workers – predominantly with countries in its eastern neighbourhood, but also indicates the need to conduct further research into EMB compositions and the correlations between various levels, not the least in the context of ongoing electoral reform debates in Europe.

EMB Composition in European Comparison

One decade after Myanmar’s military regime organized non-competitive elections that unexpectedly commenced a period of political reforms, the military leadership upended this transitional period with a coup based on a narrative of electoral fraud. Cancelling the November 2020 election results which had confirmed the voters’ preferences for civilian rule, the military has begun organizing fresh elections while concurrently leading a war against the population. Building on Schedler (2002) and the debate on authoritarian elections, this article analyses the military’s contemporary menu of electoral manipulation as a comprehensive set of intertwined strategies. It integrates the analysis of various technical elements of the authoritarian electoral process that are often only looked at in isolation. The article deconstructs the military’s election-related narratives as self-legitimation in a region where authoritarian elections are the norm. Despite considerable efforts to forge conditions in their favor and create an aura of legitimacy, however, Myanmar’s military does not appear very imaginative in this undertaking, but employs a retrograde toolbox in a brutal manner. Whether this strategy is successful will not depend on the authoritarian leaders’ skills alone, but also on recognition from domestic, regional and international audiences which the junta’s performance seeks to achieve. 

Michael Lidauer

Papers

Democratic Dawn? Civil Society and Elections in Myanmar 2010–2012

Participation in the administration of elections and perceptions of electoral integrity

EMB Composition in European Comparison

Myanmar’s Menu of Electoral Manipulation: Self- and External Legitimation after the 2021 Coup

Myanmar on the Road Towards the 2020 Elections: A Pre-electoral Assessment