Myanmar: The Challenging Transition from Military to Democratic Government

State Administration
● Myanmar is a centralized unitary state.
● There are two tiers of government: the central government and the governments of the
seven regions and seven states.
- Regions have Bamar-majority populations.
- States are composed of mostly ethnic minorities.

● Under the 2008 Constitution, state and regional governments consist of:
- a partially elected unicameral parliament (hluttaw),
➢ The hluttaw is composed of two elected members per township, representatives of
“national races,” and appointed military representatives making up one quarter of the
total representatives.
- an executive led by a chief minister
➢ is selected by the president from among elected or unelected hluttaw members and is
confirmed by the hluttaw.
- a cabinet of state or region ministers, and
➢ is a military officer nominated by the commander-in-chief
- state or region judicial institutions.

● Townships - are the critical building blocks of the national administration (Saw and
Arnold 2014). The townships consist of village tracts and village or municipal quarters.

● General Administration Department (GAD) of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA)

- its primary responsibility is the management of Myanmar’s public administrative
structures.
- supports coordination and communication among the Union government’s ministries
and connects the capital, Naypyitaw, to approximately 16,000 wards and village tracts.
- serves as civil service to governments in the regions and states

● Bureaucratic inertia and the dominance of vested interests make the civil service an
obstacle for the implementation of policy measures on the ground.
Civil-Military Relations

Burma/Myanmar is the paradigmatic case of a “praetorian state”

➢ emerges in countries with low levels of political institutionalization and high levels
of political mobilization, fragmented political parties and civilian elites, and a
politically self-conscious military.

MILITARY - acting either as

Key for Political the actual ruler or controlling
politics behind the scenes
Developments through a chosen civilian
agent.

the lack of weak

sustained mismatch between institutionalizatio
the organizational n of civilian
support for strength of the
democratic organizations
Tatmadaw
structures

The enigma of durable military rule in Myanmar lies in the ability of military elites to create a
well-organized and cohesive military institution, solving credible commitment problems between
military factions and maintaining respect for hierarchy among officers.

Three factors helped the Tatmadaw avoid the characteristic instability of military
regimes:
1. First, military rule in Myanmar was the result of a “corporative coup” (Brooker 2009).
2. Second, the military government established a buffer of legitimacy after 1962 by creating
mass organizations like the BSPP and, after 1988, the USDA/USDP, stressing the
military’s leadership on the “Burmese way to socialism” and the struggle to defend the
nation against separatist insurgencies in the periphery.
➢ Following the “8-8-88 Uprising,” the Tatmadaw successfully recalibrated
its own strategy of legitimation.
➢ after taking power in 1988, SLORC created a new institutional structure
that extended direct and complete military control over the political
system.
➢ The police were reorganized and put under the direct control of the
Tatmadaw
➢ regime also expanded its propaganda activities to portray the military as
the only reliable and functioning national institution (Than 2006, p. 245;
Steinberg 2007, p. 126).
 3. Third, the different military governments managed to alleviate the tensions between the
interests of the military-in-government and the military-as-institution that make military
regimes prone to collapse (cf. Geddes 1999).
➢ latent factional conflict were always defused before they could threaten
military cohesion or regime survival
➢ The Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence (DDSI) became the
most important government instrument for opposition surveillance and the
internal affairs of the Tatmadaw.
➢ the army was modernized and military units were stationed in strategic
locations all over the country

Through all this, the junta managed to preserve the coherence of the military institution with the
help of several counter-strategies. These included frequent personnel rotations, the
appointment of loyal commanders for key positions, and the co-optation of potential military
counter-elites (Kühn and Croissant 2011,p. 147).