Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers 9789463726153, 9789048553792

Citation preview

Narrating Democracy in Myanmar

Publications The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a research and exchange platform based in Leiden, the Netherlands. Its objective is to encourage the interdisciplinary and comparative study of Asia and to promote (inter)national cooperation. IIAS focuses on the humanities and social sciences and on their interaction with other sciences. It stimulates scholarship on Asia and is instrumental in forging research networks among Asia Scholars. Its main research interests are reflected in the three book series published with Amsterdam University Press: Global Asia, Asian Heritages and Asian Cities. IIAS acts as an international mediator, bringing together various parties in Asia and other parts of the world. The Institute works as a clearinghouse of knowledge and information. This entails activities such as providing information services, the construction and support of international networks and cooperative projects, and the organization of seminars and conferences. In this way, IIAS functions as a window on Europe for non-European scholars and contributes to the cultural rapprochement between Europe and Asia. IIAS Publications Officer: Paul van der Velde IIAS Assistant Publications Officer: Mary Lynn van Dijk

Global Asia Asia has a long history of transnational linkages with other parts of the world. Yet the contribution of Asian knowledge, values, and practices in the making of the modern world has largely been overlooked until recent years. The rise of Asia is often viewed as a challenge to the existing world order. Such a bifurcated view overlooks the fact that the global order has been shaped by Asian experiences as much as the global formation has shaped Asia. The Global Asia Series takes this understanding as the point of departure. It addresses contemporary issues related to transnational interactions within the Asian region, as well as Asia’s projection into the world through the movement of goods, people, ideas, knowledge, ideologies, and so forth. The series aims to publish timely and well-researched books that will have the cumulative effect of developing new perspectives and theories about global Asia. Series Editor Tak-Wing Ngo, University of Macau, Macau Editorial Board Kevin Hewison, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA Hagen Koo, University of Hawaii, USA Loraine Kennedy, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Narrating Democracy in Myanmar The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers

Tamas Wells

Amsterdam University Press

Publications Global Asia 12

Cover illustration: Toca Marine / Shutterstock.com Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 615 3 e-isbn 978 90 4855 379 2 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463726153 nur 754 © Tamas Wells / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2021 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.



Table of contents

Abbreviations

7

Acknowledgements

9

Foreword

11

1 Introduction Other struggles for democracy Narrating democracy Book overview

15 18 23 26

2 Elucidating the meaning of democracy through narrative An ‘ideal type’ of democracy? Revisiting the ‘essential contestability’ of democracy Interpretivism and meanings of democracy Using narrative analysis to elucidate meanings of democracy Conclusion

31 33 37 40 42 50

3 Toward the ‘Ocean of Democracy’?

55

The British colonial administration, the Thakin and contests over meanings of democracy in late colonial Burma

British colonial administration and the ‘Ocean of Democracy’ Burmese independence leaders and counter-narratives Conclusion 4 Burma after independence

From moral to ‘disciplined’ democracy

Unity, moral democracy and the leadership of the AFPFL Military socialism The road to ‘disciplined democracy’ (1988-2011) under General Than Shwe The opposition movement Conclusion 5 A liberal narrative The challenge of division and personalised politics The vision of democratic procedures and liberal values

57 64 73 77 78 80 84 87 90 95 98 105

The strategy of capacity building Conclusions

110 115

6 A benevolence narrative The challenge of moral failure The vision of sedana The values of democracy: Obligation, unity and majority protection The strategy of moral education and the building of discipline Conclusion

119 122 129 134 139 143

7 An equality narrative The challenge of hierarchy The vision of equality The strategy of cultural reform Conclusion

147 148 156 161 166

8 Exposing the political use of narratives Narratives of democracy as instruments of power The overt and covert nature of conceptual politics Conclusion

169 170 179 184

9 Beyond an ‘ideal type’

187

Implications for democracy promotion

The implications of other struggles for democracy Conclusion 10 Playing different games

Myanmar’s future challenges

Prospects for a benevolent democracy The future of democracy promotion and governance reform in Myanmar Other struggles for democracy Index

191 195 199 201 204 207 211

Abbreviations AFPFL AusAID BSPP DFID NGO NLD OECD SLORC SPDC TRC UN USAID USDP YMBA

Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League Australian Agency for International Development Burma Socialist Programme Party (UK) Department for International Development Non-governmental organisation National League for Democracy Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development State Law and Order Restoration Council State Peace and Development Council Truth and Reconciliation Commission United Nations United States Agency for International Development Union Solidarity and Development Party Young Men’s Buddhist Association

Acknowledgements The writing of this book has been possible only through the generous support of many people over the last eight years. From the University of Melbourne, Adrian Little and Kate MacDonald have provided valuable encouragement, advice and guidance. I am especially thankful to Adrian, for inspiring my reading in valuable directions over the years of research, and to Kate, for showing extraordinary patience in providing comments through numerous drafts. Nick Cheesman, from the Australian National University, has, over the years, provided generous encouragement, thoughtful advice and eye for detail, which have shaped this book considerably. Through the period of working on this book, Pyae Phyo Maung and Win Mar Han have been extremely supportive, both in Melbourne and then in Yangon. Their friendship, advice and help with transcription of Burmese-language interviews have been invaluable. This book is dedicated to the memory of their son Ethan. I am also thankful to Nyunt Han for his friendship over the last decade, for giving his time to talk through many of the ideas contained in this book, and for his Burmese-language teaching. In the years before commencing this research, Dr Kyaw Thu and Paung Ku introduced me afresh to ‘civil society’ and ‘democracy’ and have influenced my thinking considerably over the years. They also continued to provide friendship and generous practical support and input during my field research. In conducting my field research, members of the National League for Democracy and a range of donor agency representatives were also extremely generous in supporting my access to meetings. I extend my gratitude to the many other participants in this research who were generous with their time and trust. At the time of conducting this research there remained some uncertainty about the security of people involved with democracy activism in Myanmar. Our agreement therefore was that participating individuals would not be named. I offer them my personal thanks and acknowledge their shaping of the insights contained in this book. Anna Russell, Andrew Kirkwood and Kelly MacDonald, Htar Htar and Nelson and Karl and Sue Dorning generously offered their homes and meals at various points in this research. I also appreciate the interest and feedback that Gerard McCarthy, Amy Doffegnies, Dave McClintock, Matthew Walton, Mike Griffiths, Milja Kurki, Rachael Diprose, Elliott Prasse-Freeman, Matt Desmond, Claire Light, Frederic Schaffer, Matthew Schissler and many others provided in the various evolutions of the book and its ideas. Members of

10 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

the Myanmar Research Network at the University of Melbourne have also been an encouraging support, especially Michael Breen, Vanessa Lamb, Kyi Min Tun, Anne Decobert and Aung Kyaw Kyaw. I am very thankful to the team at the International Institute of Asian Studies (IIAS) and at the Amsterdam University Press (Professor Tak-Wing Ngo, Global Asia Series Editor; Dr Paul van der Velde, IIAS Publications Officer; Mary Lynn van Dijk, Assistant Publications Officer; Dr Saskia Gieling, Commissioning Editor, and drs Jaap Wagenaar, Production Editor) and also to the manuscript reviewers. Kate Wallace’s proofreading of and feedback on the manuscript was also extremely valuable. Most of all, I would like to express my incredible thanks to my wife, Bronwyn, and our daughters, Johanna and Annamai, who have shown nothing but support along the road to completing this book. On many days where my mind was caught up in drafting, editing or reading, a house filled with laughter inevitably placed things in perspective.

Foreword Tamas Wells 15th February 2021

It is two weeks since Myanmar’s military coup. Thousands of protesters are on the streets around the country, police in bulletproof vests and riot shields are setting up perimeter lines on major roads and using water cannons to disperse crowds, and a widespread civil disobedience movement is gaining momentum with employees in many sectors refusing to work. State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and many National League for Democracy (NLD) leaders have been detained, along with a number of activists. This military seizure of power is an incredibly distressing turn for those who have participated in the research for this book and who have devoted much of their lives to service of their country. It is with admiration for their bravery and commitment that I write this foreword. One striking thing about the days following the coup – and a point which is at the heart of this book – is the degree to which the language of democracy is infused in communication, from military elites, foreign diplomats and protesters alike. As General Min Aung Hlaing attempted to justify the seizure of power, he did so through the language of democracy – by questioning the legitimacy of the November 2020 election and promising to hold fresh ‘free and fair’ elections which would bring about a ‘discipline flourishing democracy’. On the streets in Yangon, Naypyidaw and Bago protesters held signs saying, ‘Fight for democracy’ and ‘We want democracy’. North American and European leaders meanwhile condemned the coup and called for a restoration of democracy. Despite the vast gulf in aspirations and hopes for the country between Tatmadaw elites, NLD leaders, radical young activists, international aid workers and Western diplomats, the word democracy remained part of all their messages. Before the coup, it was clear that the democratic visions of NLD leadership were being challenged on a number of flanks. On one flank, the last five years have underscored the divergence between the democratic visions of the NLD and those of a Western style liberal democracy – brought most obviously to light through issues of protection of Muslim minorities or freedom of the press. In this book I argue that while NLD leaders and European or North American aid workers may share expectations of basic procedures of liberal

12 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

democracy, including elections, many of Myanmar’s democratic leaders and activists view the country’s democratization through a morally focussed story emphasising the values of benevolence, unity and discipline, rather than a story of progressive liberalisation. Though less prominent in international media, I argue in this book that the NLD also faced a significant challenge from some Burmese activists and intellectuals who sought a more thoroughgoing change in democratic culture toward greater equality and less focus on the role of a benevolent leader. On yet another flank, many ethnic minority leaders articulated a federal vision of democracy in Myanmar – a democracy without the Burman ethnocentricity that they perceived in the NLD. And there are undoubtedly multiple alternate aspirations for democracy amongst religious minorities, rural and remote communities and urban radicals. Ultimately though, it was the Tatmadaw’s vision of ‘discipline flourishing’ democracy, combined with military hardware, that proved the greatest threat – ending the NLD’s hopes of continuing their leadership and bringing about a new moral democracy in Myanmar. In times of military crackdown and appalling disregard for the wellbeing of citizens, it is easy to overlook the degree to which military elites envision a form of democracy in Myanmar, however twisted that version of democracy may be. Tatmadaw leaders wrote the 2008 Constitution – which upholds a restricted form of multi-party democracy – from a position of strength, not weakness. After the coup, a senior Western diplomat spoke to the BBC and said, ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but the armed forces really think they are working towards a multi-party democratic system’ (Head 2021). The coup does not suggest that military elites are seeking to solidify a new form of long-term dictatorship, but rather that they felt that the trajectory of the country’s democratisation had strayed too far from their vision of guided ‘discipline flourishing’ democracy intended within the 2008 Constitution. The argument of this book is that struggles for democracy in Myanmar cannot be reduced to a binary contest between authoritarians and those seeking liberal democracy. Military elites have their own heavy-handed notions of democracy, and those opposing the coup are not all aligned with each other, nor behind liberal visions of democracy. Viewing the coup, and citizen protests, through a binary lens of authoritarianism and liberal democracy, serves to obscure the diverse meanings of democracy that inspire Myanmar’s political actors. By any measure however, the immediate future for the country looks bleak. Even before the February coup, democratic leaders, activists and aid workers faced enormous challenges. Along with dealing with chronic

Foreword

13

issues of grinding poverty and ethnic and religious divisions, the COVID-19 pandemic further threatened the health and livelihoods of Myanmar people. The coup is therefore a damaging turn for the country – if the NLD administration struggled to make progress on the country’s many challenges, a context of direct military rule is likely to be worse. It is not yet clear whether the new military administration can hold on to power in the coming months, but the country may now be vaulting into a future worse than many had hoped. Head, Jonathon. 2021, ‘Myanmar coup: what will the military do now?’ BBC 14 February Last accessed 17 Feb 2021 at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56053007

1

Introduction Abstract This chapter introduces the concept of narratives of democracy and links it to the context of Myanmar and the struggles between Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and international aid workers, over the meaning of democracy. It also provides an overview of the book’s structure. Keywords: Myanmar, elections, democracy, narrative, activists, aid

Nay Pyone Latt announced on Facebook that he had won. It was not unexpected. The well-known blogger was a candidate for Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), which was the favourite to win Myanmar’s 2015 national elections. Yet, just a few years before, Nay Pyone Latt had been a political prisoner. During the countrywide 2007 protests, the so-called Saffron Revolution, the then seventeen-year-old had been accused by Burmese authorities of mobilising protest through blogs and videos. He was promptly sentenced to more than 20 years in prison. But in 2012, amidst a mass pardon of political prisoners by then President Thein Sein, Nay Pyone Latt was released. By evening on the day after the 2015 election it was clear that he had won his seat for the NLD in a landslide and would soon join the Yangon Region Parliament. By that same evening, 9 November 2015, there were crowds massing on Shwe Gone Daing Road outside the NLD headquarters in Yangon. Most in the crowd had dark indelible ink stains on their little f ingers as a mark that they had voted in the election. Many wore red T-shirts with a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi or red NLD headbands – with the distinctive white star and yellow peacock – while some waved NLD balloons or flags. News was emerging of a decisive victory in which the NLD ultimately won 255 of the 330 possible seats in the Pyithu Hluttaw, or lower house of parliament. The victory was seen by many local reporters and commentators as ushering in a new post-authoritarian era of government for the country.

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch01

16 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

The NLD victory was celebrated not only domestically but also internationally. Amongst media commentators and diplomats in Europe and North America, the 2015 elections were considered to be a pivotal moment in Myanmar’s long struggle for democracy. The White House said that President Obama had talked directly with Aung San Suu Kyi, praising her for her ‘tireless efforts and sacrifice over so many years to promote a more inclusive, peaceful and democratic Burma’ (Slodkowski 2015: 1). After 25 years of resistance to an authoritarian regime, the democracy movement – led by Aung San Suu Kyi – had won a largely free and fair election. Pre- and post-elections, a series of human rights awards and honorary doctorates and citizenships were bestowed on Aung San Suu Kyi, bringing comparisons with Nelson Mandela’s trajectory from political prisoner to inspirational national leader. This optimism was also reflected in some scholarship on Myanmar. In Journal of Democracy, Blaževič (2016: 101) glowingly said that Myanmar was like ‘a fairy tale beyond the wildest dreams of democracy advocates’. One of the most famous struggles for democracy in the world seemingly had its ‘fairy tale’ ending. From Aung San Suu Kyi to a new generation of younger NLD members such as Nay Pyone Latt, democrats in Myanmar had finally overcome their rivals. Yet, in the years following that historic 2015 election victory, the hopes – of European and North American donor agencies – for a ‘fairy tale’ ending began to unravel. The ‘democrats’ had won, but many donor agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) began to wonder if the NLD were actually the ‘democrats’ they had hoped for. At a practical level, the NLD government proved difficult for international agencies to work with. If anything, many aid workers reported that the operating environment for international NGOs and civil society organisations became more, rather than less, restrictive as government leaders sought to control flows of aid and decisions about programming. The NLD seemed to be less rather than more open to capacity-building support from international donor agencies than their quasi-military government predecessors (Décobert & Wells 2019). Progress in peace negotiations with ethnic armed organisations in the country appeared to slow rather than accelerate under the leadership of the NLD. Where the Thein Sein government had made some progress in ceasefire agreements, the sporadic ‘21st Century Panglong’ series of Union Peace Conferences under the NLD has few tangible outcomes. And after a rapid liberalisation of the domestic media context under the Thein Sein government in the early 2010s, the NLD began to restrict rather than empower media freedoms. ‘In reality’, one international NGO worker lamented about the NLD government, ‘many things kind of deteriorated’ (ibid.: 17).

Introduc tion

17

It was, however, the escalating crises in Rakhine State in 2016 and 2017 that raised most questions about a supposed victory of ‘democrats’ over ‘authoritarians’ in Myanmar. On the global stage this came most prominently to the fore in August 2017 as news of Burmese military violence against Muslim minorities in the west of the country began to spread across international media outlets. After an armed group – the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army – made small-scale attacks against several police stations, the Burmese military responded violently, allegedly committing widespread human rights abuses and ultimately driving more than half a million people – most of whom were Muslim Rohingya – across the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. The United Nations (UN) described this as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’ (UN 2017) and in September 2018 the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar found evidence of gross violations of human rights by Myanmar’s military in Rakhine State (UN Human Rights Council 2018). The violence was initiated by the Burmese military which, according to the structure of Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution, operate outside the confines of the NLD’s civilian rule. Yet the lack of outspoken criticism of the military’s actions – from Aung San Suu Kyi or other senior NLD figures – led to much international outcry. The NLD had seemingly stood by as ‘ethnic cleansing’ had taken place in the country. Over the coming months, Aung San Suu Kyi’s international reputation went from, as The Guardian observed, ‘peace icon to pariah’ (Ellis-Petersen 2018). In 2017, the New Yorker named her the ‘ignoble laureate’ (Jacobson 2017). In 2018 the US Holocaust Memorial Museum withdrew its highest award, the Elie Wiesel Award, which it had given her in 2012 (US Holocaust Memorial Museum 2021). Aung San Suu Kyi’s honorary citizenship of Canada was removed soon after. Amnesty International (2018: 1) then stripped Suu Kyi of its Ambassador of Conscience Award (granted to her in 2009), expressing its ‘profound disappointment’ in her ‘failure to speak out for the Rohingya’. What had seemed in 2015 to be a ‘fairy tale’ end to a decades-long struggle between democrats and authoritarians now seemed to be quickly unravelling. What happened to the ‘democrats’ in Myanmar? Most scholarly and popular attempts to make sense of Myanmar’s democratic trajectory before and after the 2015 elections implicitly or explicitly construct the struggle for democracy as playing out on one axis alone (Cockett 2015; Blaževič 2016; Thawnghmung 2016; Welsh, Huang & Chu 2016; Huang 2017; Barany 2018; Dukalskis & Raymond 2018). This axis is between ‘democrats’ – democratic leaders, activists and members of ethnic minority parties who favour a liberal style of democracy – and ‘authoritarians’

18 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

– military or ex-military elites – who resist liberal democracy. I am not at all suggesting that this axis should be dismissed. Andrew Selth (2018) and others (Huang 2017; Roman & Holliday 2018) are right to point to the ways in which Burmese military officers (and their families) retain significant formal and informal power. And democratic leaders in Myanmar are indeed faced with the challenge of navigating ongoing military control in many areas of policy. Yet, if considered only on this axis of authoritarianism and liberal democracy, then the actions of the NLD leaders and other democracy activists after the 2015 election may be misunderstood. Their actions may not be ‘missteps’, as suggested by Barany (2018), but rather shrewd and calculated steps responding to different logics of perceived challenges, and toward different goals. Rather than simply evaluating the actions and beliefs of Myanmar’s ‘democrats’ against the vision of liberal democracy, is there another way to understand what is happening in Myanmar?

Other struggles for democracy This book uses a different lens through which to make sense of democratisation in Myanmar and the actions of democratic leaders and activists over the last decade. I argue for greater attention to what I describe as other struggles for democracy. Not struggles on a single axis between authoritarians and democrats, but struggles within democracy movements, within democratic parties and between democratic actors and their international allies. They are not struggles to attain liberal democracy, but rather over whether or not a liberal form of democracy should be the goal. They are struggles not over material resources or state power but over who gets to define what ‘genuine’ democratisation will entail. They are struggles that are not always overt but often obscured, even from political actors themselves. Exploring these struggles for democracy brings a different emphasis than that of mainstream analyses. The last century saw profound political changes across the world, as the numbers of democratic countries contracted and expanded significantly at different times. It is thus understandable that the tendency within democratisation scholarship, which emerged as a discipline in the twentieth century, has been to portray a worldwide struggle between ‘democrats’ and ‘authoritarians’. Whether analysing the global or regional progress of democracy transitions, the focus of democratisation studies has been on shifts from various forms of authoritarianism – whether communist, totalitarian or pre-modern – to liberal democracy. Drawing on Huntington’s (1990) earlier image of democratic ‘waves’, many mainstream

Introduc tion

19

scholars continue to describe democracy as emanating out from established democracies to transitional countries. To be sure, there has been considerable attention within this literature on analysing complexities within processes of democratisation. Democratisation scholars have critiqued earlier notions of a linear progression of countries from totalitarianism to liberal democracy. There is no simple ‘transition paradigm’ (Carothers 2002) and regimes often take on different ‘hybrid’ forms, mixing features of both liberal democracy and authoritarianism. However, while the simplistic ‘transition paradigm’ may have been rejected within democratisation scholarship, the underlying emphasis has remained largely the same. Simple linearity has been replaced by a complex linearity (Teti 2012). The tendency in democratisation studies is still to consider democratic struggles as those between liberal democrats and authoritarians. There undoubtedly remains a place for analysis of democratic struggles against authoritarian regimes. Yet as the word ‘democracy’ increasingly becomes a point of consensus in international politics, it is crucial to also examine contests over its meaning. Even in 1940 – which was a low point in the democratic history of the twentieth century – T.S. Eliot famously wrote that ‘when a term has become so universally sanctified as “democracy” now is, I begin to wonder whether it means anything, in meaning too many things’ (Eliot 1940: 11-12). If democracy meant ‘too many things’ in Eliot’s time, when there were only a handful of countries laying claim to democracy, how much more divergence and contestation over the meaning of the ‘D’ word must there now be? This book opens up the examination of conceptual struggles, or, in Kurki’s (2013: 7) words, ‘conceptual politics’ around the meaning of democracy. Rather than beginning with liberal democracy as an ‘ideal type’ from which to compare all other meanings of democracy, I seek to reveal and understand the way democratic leaders, activists and aid workers in Myanmar make sense of democracy on their own terms. Myanmar may be the example par excellence of a country where scholarly focus is on a contest between authoritarians and democrats. Since 1988 the political struggles of the country have often been portrayed as though they are ‘a modern variant’ of ‘morality plays’ (Holliday 2012: 183). They present a Manichean image setting the virtuous Aung San Suu Kyi and long-suffering ethnic minorities against a brutal military. Perceptions of Myanmar since 1988 have been shaped by the compelling image of ‘the beast and the beauty’, with military leaders as the authoritarian ‘beast’ and Aung San Suu Kyi as the democratic ‘beauty’ (Zöllner 2012a). Hence, Blaževič (2016: 101) could easily frame his commentary around Myanmar as a ‘fairy tale’. This ‘Hollywood’ imagery was also prominent within reflections from aid

20 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

practitioners (Décobert & Wells 2019). One international political analyst and former donor advisor in Myanmar explained that ‘for an analyst, it was great: I’ve got a lady, I’ve got an evil junta, I’ve got a bunch of ethnic groups. […] Everyone loves a good Hollywood story, or a Disney story!’ (ibid.: 10). This civil-military struggle in Myanmar has indeed been pivotal in the country’s political trajectory. As I have said, I do not wish to underplay this, and these ongoing contests reverberate through many of the arguments of this book. Yet in order to make sense of Myanmar democratisation, there is now a critical need to examine other struggles for democracy in Myanmar. Given the powerful ways in which Burmese politics has been constructed over the last two decades – through images such as the ‘beast and the beauty’ – it is crucial to unpack and expose conceptual contests which have received less attention. Some Myanmar scholars have begun to illuminate such conceptual contests over democracy. Roman and Holliday (2018: 191) examine what they describe as ‘limited liberalism’ in Myanmar and acknowledge that ‘we have to accept that something that does not make sense to us is nevertheless sensible to others’. Yet, while nuancing Myanmar’s political trajectories in valuable ways, Roman and Holliday (ibid.) still rely on democratic liberalism as the yard stick from which they evaluate the ‘contradictions’ in the beliefs of Burmese political actors. More promisingly, G. McCarthy’s (2019) ethnographic study of central Myanmar highlights how politicians and citizens enact a – at times illiberal – concept of ‘democratic deservingness’ where distinctions are made between individuals and communities who do or do not demonstrate or perform self-reliance. Walton (2017) meanwhile argues that prominent meanings of democracy amongst Buddhist monks and politicians are guided by a Buddhist ‘moral universe’, rather than liberal values. More broadly across Myanmar and between various groups – whether ethnic, religious, gender, class or age groups – there are myriad ways in which democracy is communicated and contested. For some citizens or political actors, democracy may be a closely held value, while for others the word may hold little relevance at all. From soldiers in ethnic armed groups in Kachin state to young Burman professionals in Yangon or women’s networks in rural Shan State, the word ‘democracy’ is woven into conversations in differing ways and filled with diverse meanings. This book seeks to extend the work of Walton (ibid.) and G. McCarthy (2019) and reveal ways of understanding and communicating about democracy that defy easy categorisation, and which destabilise key assumptions within liberal democratic thought. In the coming chapters, I draw on the example of urban networks of Burmese (and specifically Burman) activists and democratic politicians and

Introduc tion

21

their allies in international aid organisations. I expose conceptual contests within and between these networks over how the story of Myanmar’s democratisation ought to be told. Various narratives of democracy – describing visions, challenges and strategies – were drawn on by these actors and held up as the only acceptable way to describe the country’s democratisation. On one hand, a liberal narrative was prominent amongst Western aid workers, emphasising the problem of personalised politics and the need for capacity building to develop formal democratic institutions and liberal values. In contrast, a benevolence narrative – which was prominent amongst Burman activists and NLD politicians – highlighted the problem of dictatorial leadership and the need for unity, discipline and selfless leadership in the country’s democratisation. Finally, an equality narrative, communicated within other activist networks, stressed the problem of hierarchy in Burmese culture and a vision of democracy as relational equality. Not all of these meanings of democracy drawn on by Burman activists and democratic leaders aligned with liberal democratic expectations. For instance, when compared with the liberal narrative, within both the benevolence and equality narratives there was far less emphasis given to formal liberal institutions of democracy. Within the benevolence narrative, the moral values of individual leaders and citizens were far more important while within the equality narrative, cultural, rather than institutional, reform was the focus. Yet neither could these alternate and at times illiberal meanings given to the word ‘democracy’ by activists or opposition leaders be easily dismissed as cynical, or simply a mask for authoritarianism. As in the example of Nay Pyone Latt and Aung San Suu Kyi, many democracy activists faced arrest, detention as political prisoners, or threats to family members by Myanmar police or intelligence personnel. Burma may have been an international cause célèbre for Western human rights organisations in the 1990s and 2000s, but this did little to help the grim realities for Burmese political activists during that time. Many of the Burmese activists and democratic leaders I met during this research had demonstrated considerable personal commitment to the cause of ‘democracy’, and some had suffered profoundly for that commitment. Simple lines cannot be drawn between ‘democrats’ and ‘authoritarians’ amongst activists and political leaders in Myanmar. Some meanings given to democracy were not liberal, yet neither could they be dismissed as cynical. As the word ‘democracy’ increasingly becomes a point of agreement between the NLD, civil society groups, ethnic minority parties and even the Burmese military, the more pressing contests are not the binary ones between ‘authoritarians’ and ‘democrats’, but those between different

22 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

narratives of democracy. The longstanding focus on the binary contest has obscured other crucial struggles. In this book, I seek to illuminate this analytical space for examining other struggles for democracy, struggles within and between democratic political parties, activists and Western aid agencies. In uncovering these other struggles for democracy, I describe the interactions and underlying contests between Western aid agencies and networks of activists and democratic leaders. I describe the connections of these Burmese actors to the governance and democracy-promotion programs of agencies such as the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Uncovering these contests – which I unpack in detail in the coming chapters – helps to develop more nuanced understandings of the actions and beliefs of democratic leaders and activists in Myanmar. Further, exposing these contests over meaning forces us to reconsider core assumptions within mainstream democratisation scholarship about the universality of liberal democratic expectations. It is important once again to stress here the diversity in the ways democracy may be given meaning by political actors in Myanmar. Drawing on the example of urban and Burman activists and democratic leaders and European and North American aid workers, I reveal struggles for democracy that lie beyond just the ‘democrat-authoritarian’ axis. These are not, however, the only other struggles for democracy in Myanmar. Ethnic minority political parties and armed groups have long engaged in contests over how notions of democracy are entwined with values of equality and self-determination for ethnic minorities. These struggles are crucial to the future of the country and, at times, ethnic politics intersects with the narratives of democracy that I describe in this book. Meanwhile, amidst male-dominated leadership in activist groups, women’s networks in Yangon have sought to promote the connection between gender equality and democratisation. Amongst church groups in Chin State or networks of Hindu business owners in Mandalay, there may be varying constructions of the vision of a democratic future for the country. The particular struggles I relate in this book – amongst activists, democratic leaders and aid workers – are crucial in making sense of Myanmar’s political trajectories and the supposed ‘fall from grace’ of the country’s democratic leaders and activists. Yet the narratives I describe emerged in very specific networks of urban bamar (Burman ethnic majority) elites who all identified as Buddhist, and in connection with networks of international aid workers. They are therefore each intrinsically limited in their portrayal of the country’s democratisation – often reflecting the particular circumstances of

Introduc tion

23

their proponents, as educated Burmese elites from the religious and ethnic majority, or aid workers from Europe and North America. In short, the narratives I describe in this book are by no means the only stories of democracy in Myanmar. Detailed tracing of narratives of democracy in rural communities, or amongst ethnic and religious minorities in Myanmar, or amongst other groups, would be a valuable endeavour and would reveal another array of conceptual contests over the meaning of democracy – contests that may diverge from, and overlap with, those I describe in the coming chapters.

Narrating democracy I use the word ‘narrative’ here intentionally, as in this book I argue that narrative theory can illuminate new dimensions of meanings of democracy. Amongst scholars who have taken interpretive approaches to the study of democracy there has, to this point, been no thorough application of narrative theory. How, then, does the concept of narrative unlock new insights about meanings of democracy? What is it particularly about attention to narrative that helps us to address questions about meanings of democracy? In this book I draw on Schaffer’s (2016) notion of ‘elucidation’ of concepts such as democracy. For Schaffer, there are three major ‘modes’ of conceptual ‘elucidation’. The first is grounding, where researchers examine the ways that political actors themselves understand a concept. The second is locating, where researchers trace out the linguistic and historical context of the way concepts are understood. Finally, researchers seek to expose how everyday concepts are embedded in relations of power. This task of exposing highlights politics in the way that concepts are used – the ways that people ‘shape’ and ‘wield’ concepts to advance particular goals (ibid.). I argue that Schaffer’s notion of elucidation – and the three modes of grounding, locating and exposing – can valuably be extended through the use of narrative theory. Simplif ied stories are a pervasive mode of understanding and communicating about political issues. Narratives play a role in making sense of the ‘flux of everyday experience’ (Polkinghorne 1995: 16). When activists or aid workers talk about democracy in Myanmar, they bring together visions, current and past challenges, and strategies by which those challenges can be addressed. We can enhance our understanding of meanings of democracy and their construction by analysing these narratives and their use. When asked in an interview or survey about how they understand democracy, an activist, for example, may reply with a vision of particular democratic values, outcomes or institutions. However, using a narrative approach, I

24 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

unpack the way visions of democracy are embedded in wider stories. This entails uncovering the counter-positions that meanings of democracy are reacting to. What are the problems that democracy is intended to solve? For instance, between the liberal and benevolence narratives that I describe in detail in this book, there were profound differences in the perceived obstacles to democracy in Myanmar. For many aid workers, personalised politics – and a supposedly unhealthy focus on Aung San Suu Kyi – was considered to be a key challenge. In contrast, some activists and members of the NLD saw the central problem not as personalised politics, but rather the problem of immoral leaders in Myanmar’s past – leaders who were motivated by power, rather than the values of selflessness and discipline. Beyond visions and obstacles, within a narrative’s plot there are also explicit or implicit strategies or interventions to address the central problem. Unpacking these wider plots – and especially their counter-positions and strategies – can bring richer understandings of how democracy is given meaning. Another distinctive feature of narratives is that they are not just an interpretation of events but are wielded politically to promote certain interests and to privilege the voices of certain actors over others. Narratives serve to construct characters in the story. Narratives inevitably create certain actors as ‘villains’ who are responsible for the main problems or challenges, others as ‘heroes’ who can help to reach the vision, while others still are portrayed as passive bystanders, peripheral to the main flow of the story. Narrators inevitably construct themselves, and their rivals, in certain ways within the story. Narratives are not just neutral interpretations but are closely associated with the positioning of actors and attempts to outmanoeuvre their rivals. In this sense, narrative theory overlaps with notions of discursive power. Power is exercised not only from above, for example, through the use of force by Myanmar’s military, but also through everyday communication and the way that certain actors can control a ‘true’ meaning of words. Power is not only material and coercive, but also discursive, as is demonstrated by the ability of political actors to position themselves or others as ‘experts’, set the agenda of action, or define what are reasonable or unreasonable courses of action in a particular situation. The way narratives are constructed can serve to produce or undermine the discursive power of political actors. Partnership meetings, evaluation workshops and project reports can be settings for conceptual contests where activists, democratic leaders and international aid workers attempt to position certain narratives of democracy as the most credible representation of vision, challenges and strategies.

Introduc tion

25

This dimension of narrative analysis reminds us that meanings given to the word ‘democracy’ are not innocent or neutral, or simply reflections of certain cultural context, but are also embedded within conceptual contests. In this way my use of narrative theory emphasises the dimension of narrativity – the focus on plot and character construction taken by Roe (1989) or Polkinghorne (1995) – but also the dimension of narrative and discursive power found in the work of Moon (2006), Little (2012) and Hajer (1995). My argument in this book is that uncovering plot and characters within narratives of democracy can contribute to each of Schaffer’s three major modes of elucidation of concepts – grounding, locating and exposing. In the task of grounding concepts and paying attention to the way actors themselves make sense of them, the narrative framework – of vision, challenges, strategies and temporal range – can reveal new dimensions of meaning that may not be immediately self-evident. These narratives can then be located through the particular way that political actors and networks adapt, reject and adopt other historical or contemporary narratives. Finally, particularly through analysis of character construction, attention to narratives is valuable in the task of exposing the political use of concepts. Through stories, political actors can position themselves in certain ways and advance their own agendas. This task of elucidating meanings of democracy is not an esoteric endeavour but has deep relevance to everyday issues. A significant amount of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) donor funding continues to be invested in democracy and governance programs around the world. Whether or not the ‘good governance’ or ‘democracy assistance’ agendas of these donors are valued by domestic or international critics, it is almost inconceivable that these vast programs will not continue in Myanmar and other transitional countries in the future. Yet despite the resources allocated to these programs, democracy-promotion scholarship and practitioner reports often pay little attention to the democratic visions of the domestic political actors that these programs engage with. The everyday practice of democracy promotion is often hamstrung by the inability of OECD aid agencies to engage with concepts of democracy that diverge from an imagined liberal ideal. Further, the other struggles for democracy that I examine in this book were closely related to some of the country’s most pressing questions of public policy and leadership. As I have described, the period of the Thein Sein government brought greater freedom to communicate between activists, democratic leaders and international aid workers, who were all seeking to progress the country’s democratisation. Yet it did not reveal a consensus

26 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

in visions of what a new democratic Myanmar ought to look like. In fact, the new openness revealed puzzling differences between different actors about appropriate responses to key issues in the country. These differences are starkly revealed through responses to the issue of violence between Buddhist and Muslim communities, the place of Western capacity building for ‘good governance’, peace negotiations with ethnic armed groups, and the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi. Throughout this book, I refer back to these tangible issues of policy and governance and how they relate to contests over narratives of democracy.

Book overview The book draws on research material from the lead-up to the 2015 election victory of the NLD and then follow-up research in late 2018. It involved 65 formal interviews, almost evenly divided between three groups: Burmese activists in Yangon (from activist organisations such as 88 Generation and local NGO Paung Ku), leaders and members of the NLD, and Western donor agency representatives. Fifty of these interviews were conducted in Myanmar between 2013 and 2015 with fifteen additional interviews in late 2018. Burmese participants all identified as Burman (or bamar) and Buddhist. The research for this book also involved observation and informal interactions with over a hundred individuals who were engaged in the democracy movement between 2013 and 2015. Formal interviews and informal interactions were in either the English and the Burmese languages, or a mixture of both. The Burmese-language interviews were transcribed into Burmese script by a native speaker who was familiar with the context of activism, political parties and aid programs. I then translated this text into English, in consultation with the transcriber. In certain instances, translations were also checked with the participants. While emphasising the particular context of participants in this research, it is also important to clarify the particularity of my own experience. This book and its interpretations of Myanmar’s politics are influenced by my own experience of working in and on Myanmar over almost fifteen years, first as an aid practitioner – for seven years based in Myanmar (2006-2012) – and then as a researcher. I return to explore this positionality further in the next chapter. This book is divided into three sections. The f irst section (Chapters Two through Four) establishes the theoretical and historical basis for my arguments about other struggles for democracy. The middle section (Chapters

Introduc tion

27

Five to Eight) examines three contrasting narratives – which I describe as liberal, benevolence and equality narratives – using examples of Burmese activists, democratic leaders and aid workers. In the final section (Chapters Nine and Ten), I then highlight the implications of these other struggles for democracy for both the study of democratisation and democracy promotion, and for the future of activism, aid agencies and democratic political parties in Myanmar. As opposed to the assumption of an ‘ideal type’ of democracy – which is present in much mainstream democratisation scholarship – the next chapter in this book begins by drawing on W.B. Gallie’s (1956: 167) notion of the ‘essential contestability’ of democracy. Meanings given to the word ‘democracy’ are inevitably open-ended and dependent on context. Recent interpretive studies have established the context-specific nature of meanings of democracy and sought to ‘elucidate’ meanings of democracy on their own terms. Chapter Two extends this work to show how attention to narratives can ground and locate meanings of democracy and expose the ways in which they can be wielded as political tools. To understand the dominant narratives described in this book, they need to be situated within the context of Myanmar’s modern history and the ways different political actors – whether independence leaders, colonial administrators, military leaders or activists – have narrated that history. This is not an attempt to construct a unitary history of Myanmar, but rather to locate and uncover struggles over the meaning of democracy during these different periods and how they shape contemporary political uses of the word ‘democracy’ amongst the networks of activists and democratic leaders that I studied. The third chapter explores the example of contrasting meanings of democracy between British colonial administrators and the Thakin independence leaders in the late colonial period in Burma. The fourth chapter follows by examining other examples of conceptual contest over the meaning of democracy in Myanmar’s history through the periods of parliamentary and military rule in the twentieth century, and then through the recent transition to democracy. This highlights how key conceptual contests in Myanmar’s history informed the contrasting ways democracy is understood and communicated amongst activists and democratic leaders today. In Chapters Five, Six and Seven, I then describe three contrasting narratives of democracy – a liberal narrative, a benevolence narrative and an equality narrative – that were prominent amongst activists, democratic leaders and their Western donor supporters in the lead-up to and following the 2015 elections. In these chapters I seek to ground and locate these

28 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

narratives in their own terms. My intention is to present the internal logic of these interpretations and the way that they, in different ways, construct forms of common sense. Chapter Eight then examines these three storylines more critically, exposing the different ways in which they were used by activists, aid workers or democratic leaders to outmanoeuvre political rivals. What, then, does this analysis of other struggles for democracy mean for the endeavour of promoting democracy? In Chapter Nine, I argue that a narrative approach challenges prevailing assumptions about the promotion of democracy, from both mainstream and critical scholars. On one hand, by largely focussing on issues of how to promote democracy, rather than what kind of democracy is being promoted, mainstream approaches often fail to recognise activists or opposition leaders as sophisticated democratic actors in their own context. On the other hand, the example of Myanmar also challenges critical democracy-promotion scholarship by highlighting that there are limits to the agenda of making democracy promotion a more inclusive and participatory endeavour. Given the significance of contests over the meaning of democracy, how might we view the future of Myanmar’s democracy? Over three decades as political prisoner, opposition leader and State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi has played a role as central protagonist in contrasting narratives of democracy. The final chapter of this book reflects on the twilight of her political leadership and the future of Myanmar’s political transitions. While most analyses track Myanmar’s progress toward a liberal democratic vision, I ask what the prospects are for alternate visions of democracy in Myanmar. I conclude that it is through greater sensitivity and attention to other struggles for democracy that scholars and practitioners can make greater sense of the beliefs and actions of political actors in Myanmar and other transitional countries.

References Amnesty International. 2018. ‘Amnesty International withdraws human rights award from Aung San Suu Kyi’. Amnesty International. 12 November. https://www.amnesty.org/en/ latest/news/2018/11/amnesty-withdraws-award-from-aung-san-suu-kyi/. Last accessed 22 November 2019. Barany, Z. 2018. ‘Burma: Suu Kyi’s missteps’. Journal of Democracy 29 (1): 5-19. Blaževič, I. 2016. ‘Burma votes for change: The challenges ahead’. Journal of Democracy 27 (2): 101-115. Carothers, T. 2002. ‘The end of the transition paradigm’. Journal of Democracy 13 (1): 5-21.

Introduc tion

29

Cockett, R. 2015. Blood, Dreams and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma. New Haven: Yale University Press. Décobert, A., and Wells, T. 2019. ‘Interpretive complexity and crisis: The history of international aid to Myanmar’. The European Journal of Development Research (1): 1-22. Dukalskis, A., and Raymond C.D. 2018. ‘Failure of authoritarian learning: Explaining Burma/ Myanmar’s electoral system’. Democratization 25 (3): 545-563. Eliot, T.S. 1940. The Idea of a Christian Society. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Ellis-Petersen, H. 2018. ‘From peace icon to pariah: Aung San Suu Kyi’s fall from grace’. The Guardian. 23 November. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/23/aung-san-suukyi-fall-from-grace-myanmar. Last accessed 22 November 2019. Gallie, W.B. 1956. ‘Essentially contested concepts’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1): 167-198. Hajer, M.A. 1995. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Holliday, I. 2012. Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar. New York: Columbia University Press. Huang, R.L. 2017. ‘Myanmar’s way to democracy and the limits of the 2015 elections’. Asian Journal of Political Science 25 (1): 25-44. Huntington, S.P. 1990. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Jacobson, G. 2017. ‘Aung San Suu Kyi, the ignoble laureate’. The New Yorker. 15 September. www. newyorker.com/news/news-desk/aung-san-suu-kyi-the-ignoble-laureate. Last accessed 22 November 2019. Kurki, M. 2013. Democratic Futures: Revisioning Democracy Promotion. London: Routledge. Little, A. 2012. ‘Disjunctured narratives: Rethinking reconciliation and conflict transformation’. International Political Science Review 33 (1): 82-98. McCarthy, G. 2019. ‘Democratic deservingness and self-reliance in contemporary Myanmar’. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 34 (2): 327-365. Moon, C. 2006. ‘Narrating political reconciliation: Truth and reconciliation in South Africa’. Social & Legal Studies 15 (2): 257-275. Polkinghorne, D.E. 1995. ‘Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis’. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 8 (1): 5-23. Roe, E.M. 1989. ‘Narrative analysis for the policy analyst: A case study of the 1980-1982 medfly controversy in California’. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 8 (2): 251-273. Roman, D., and Holliday, I. 2018. Liberalism and Democracy in Myanmar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schaffer, F.C. 2016. Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interpretivist Guide. New York: Routledge. Selth, A. 2018. ‘All going according to plan? The armed forces and government in Myanmar’. Contemporary Southeast Asia 40 (1): 1-26. Slodkowski, A. 2015. ‘World leaders laud Myanmar election as Suu Kyi secures majority’. Reuters. 16 November, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-election-idUSKCN0T20H520151116. Last accessed 27 November 2019. Teti, A. 2012. ‘Beyond lies the wub: The challenges of (post)democratization’. Middle East Critique 21 (1): 5-24. Thawnghmung, A. 2016. ‘The Myanmar elections 2015: Why the National League for Democracy won a landslide victory’. Critical Asian Studies 48 (1): 132-142. UN. 2017. ‘UN human rights chief points to “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” in Myanmar’. UN News. 11 September. news.un.org/en/story/2017/09/564622-un-human-rights-chief-pointstextbook-example-ethnic-cleansing-myanmar. Last accessed 22 November 2019.

30 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

UN Human Rights Council. 2018. ‘Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar’. OHCHR. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail. aspx?NewsID=23575&LangID=E. Last accessed 22 November 2019. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2021. Website. https://www.ushmm.org/genocideprevention/blog/museum-honors-aung-san-suu-kyi-with-elie-wiesel-award. Last accessed 1 February 2021. Walton, M.J. 2017. Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Welsh, B., Huang, K.-P., and Chu, Y.-H. 2016. ‘Burma votes for change: Clashing attitudes toward democracy’. Journal of Democracy 27 (2): 132-140. Zöllner, H.-B. 2012a. The Beast and the Beauty: The History of the Conflict between the Military and Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, 1988-2011, Set in a Global Context. Berlin: Regiospectra.

2

Elucidating the meaning of democracy through narrative Abstract As opposed to the assumption of an ‘ideal type’ of democracy – which is present in much mainstream democratisation scholarship – the second chapter in this book begins by drawing on W.B. Gallie’s notion of the ‘essential contestability’ of democracy. Meanings given to the word ‘democracy’ are inevitably open-ended and dependent on context. Recent interpretive studies have established the context-specif ic nature of meanings of democracy and sought to ‘elucidate’ meanings of democracy on their own terms. Chapter Two extends this work to show how attention to narratives can ground and locate meanings of democracy and expose the ways in which they can be wielded as political tools. Keywords: democracy, interpretivism, narrative analysis, essential contestability

Democracy is the inspiration for many social movements in today’s world. But what does democracy mean to activists or political party leaders? If democracy does not have a taken-for-granted meaning, then understanding how meanings may vary – and how these differences might help to make sense of policy decision-making and political contests – is important. Before turning to the Myanmar context in the following chapters, my argument in this chapter is that an interpretivist approach, and in particular narrative analysis, can open new possibilities in elucidating the concept of democracy across varied linguistic, cultural and political contexts (Schaffer 2016). From the work of Roe (1989) on complex public policy disputes, to Labov and Waletsky’s (1997) seminal work in linguistics, and Moon’s (2006) work on narratives of reconciliation, scholars have applied narrative theory

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch02

32 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

in a range of academic disciplines. Some disciplines have even taken a so-called ‘narrative turn’ (Ospina & Dodge 2005). The distinguishing feature of this shift is the desire by researchers to use the framework of story to understand diverse, rather than universal, meanings of concepts or events, meanings that are temporally and spatially defined (Bacon 2012). Attention to plot and characters in the way concepts are communicated by political actors can generate new insights, both into how concepts are understood by these actors and how concepts are used politically to forward certain agendas while undermining others. It is surprising, then, that there is an absence of systematic application of narrative theory to the analysis of meanings of democracy within democracy and democratisation scholarship.1 Before examining the potential of narrative in making sense of struggles for democracy, however, we must first pause for a moment. The proliferation of positivist scholarship on democracy and democratisation in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has created an edifice based around the normative notion of an ideal type of democracy, where a liberal definition of democracy is often taken for granted as the starting point of analysis. Meanings of democracy from different contexts around the world are not often seen for what they are but rather for how they deviate from this ideal type. In this chapter, I first step back into the democracy and democratisation literature and examine the notion of an ideal type of democracy, its justifications and limitations. To then outline my own framework, I proceed in three steps. First, I revisit W.B. Gallie’s (1956) notion of essentially contested concepts to establish that there is no taken-for-granted meaning of democracy. I then draw particularly on the work of Frederic Schaffer (2016) to describe interpretive approaches to elucidating – as opposed to reconstructing – political concepts. Rather than seeking to develop more and more precision in analysing an ‘ideal type’ of democracy, the approach of ‘elucidation’ seeks to make sense of concepts as they are used in lived practice. To understand the actions of political players we need to address their conceptual world and seek to engage with beliefs and actions on their own terms rather than as a deviation from an ‘ideal type’. Finally, I describe how narrative analysis – with a focus on the development of plot and characters – can extend these insights from interpretivism and illuminate new possibilities in making sense of meanings of democracy and struggles for democracy. 1 There are some scholarly references to narratives in studies of democracy and democratisation, though no systematic use of narrative theory to analyse meanings of democracy.

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

33

An ‘ideal type’ of democracy? Since emerging in the twentieth century, democratisation scholarship has proliferated and tackled an impressive array of questions aimed primarily at understanding how and why countries democratize. To support this, scholars have built up a startling array of models and categories for conceptualising these transitions from Moore’s (1966) structural preconditions to O’Donnell and Schmitter’s (1986) ‘elite pacts’. There is a tendency, however, for democratisation scholars (Doorenspleet 2005; Diamond 2008; Gat 2010) to portray struggles for democracy around the world as primarily ones between liberal democrats and authoritarians, rather than along other lines of contest. Here I argue that this linearity stems, in part, from deeper assumptions about the existence of a universal ‘ideal type’ of democratic institutions and values. While there is often acknowledgement of remaining gaps in knowledge or information, the common ontological starting point for much democratisation scholarship is that there is an ‘ideal type’ of democracy – based most commonly on definitions from Schumpeter (1947) or Dahl (1971) – that exists in a way that is broadly independent of cultural, or historical, context. Rather than being analysed according to their own context-specific logic, meanings given to the word ‘democracy’ – whether by citizens in the Arab Middle East (Jamal & Tessler 2008), in China (Shi & Lu 2010) or in Africa (Bratton 2010) – are then commonly considered in comparison to the ‘ideal type’. This ‘ideal type’ is sometimes implicit, for example, in Croissant’s (2004) sweeping analysis of countries in Asia against liberal democratic ideals. Yet it is also often made explicit. In the volume The Global Resurgence of Democracy, Diamond and Plattner (1996) outline their own liberal definition of democracy in detail and this definition then plays a central role in his analysis of democracy’s ‘global resurgence’. How then is this universal ‘ideal type’ justified within democratisation studies? There are three distinct arguments drawn on by democratisation scholars, all of which have limitations. The first prominent justification2 for the ‘ideal type’ is that history has yielded a single shared understanding; since the end of the Cold War, world opinion has coalesced around a liberal meaning of democracy. Schmitter and Karl (1991: 75) suggest that a ‘remarkable consensus’ has emerged about what is required to ‘merit the prestigious appellation of “democratic”’. Yet to argue that history demonstrates a universal liberal meaning of democracy is to 2

The structure of these three justifications is based in Dryzek’s (2016) critique.

34 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

ignore the fickle nature of democracy’s own conceptual history over the last few centuries as popular views of democracy in Europe often lurched far away from liberal ideals. Further, the empirical justification for this ‘remarkable consensus’ (Schmitter and Karl 1991) rests on public opinion survey results that give only ‘thin descriptions’ (Schaffer 2014) of meanings that citizens give to democracy. For example, drawing on public opinion surveys, Dalton, Sin and Jou (2007: 146) argue that a common understanding of democracy as ‘freedom’ has ‘diffused widely around the globe’. Schaffer (2014), however, is right to point out that identifying democracy with ‘freedom’ merely raises further questions about contextual variation in the meaning of ‘freedom’. The second justification, then, is that the concept of democracy can be logically reduced to a minimum definition. For scholars of democratisation this minimum definition is most commonly drawn from the work of Joseph Schumpeter (1947) and Robert Dahl (1971). Schumpeter confined democracy’s meaning to what he saw as its most basic procedural core (Kurki 2010) – as ‘liberal arrangements for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’ (Schumpeter 1947: 269). Two decades later, Dahl (1971) sought to round out this procedural definition from Schumpeter (1947) by outlining a wider set of criteria, including both institutions and basic civil and political rights.3 Yet the design of such ‘minimal definitions’ is based on an assumption that there is an objective and neutral way of boiling down democracy to a logical core. In the next section I argue that democracy is in fact ‘essentially contested’ (Gallie 1956: 167). There is no universal logic that can be employed to reach a ‘minimum definition’. Any articulation of a ‘minimum definition’ of democracy is necessarily entwined in certain normative commitments and context specific logics. Finally, within democratisation studies, the third justification for an ‘ideal type’ of democracy is an empirical analysis that liberal democracy has certain valued consequences. Through ‘measurement’ of democratisation in the world it may be possible for scholars to demonstrate its ‘positive correlation with particular moral goods’ (Dryzek 2016: 362). Toward this end, the Freedom House index (Freedom House 2014), Polity IV (Doorenspleet 2000) and the Democratic-Dictatorship (DD) index (Alvarez et al. 1996) all 3 Dahl’s (1971: 2) logic was that if democracy is the ‘responsiveness of government to the preferences of its citizens’, then citizens would have to be able to ‘formulate their preferences’, ‘signify’ those preferences and have them ‘weighed equally’ by government. And further, for these opportunities to exist there needs to be a certain set of liberal ‘guarantees’ – including rights to vote and stand for election and broader civil and political rights including ‘alternative sources of information’ (ibid.: 3).

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

35

attempt to rank countries according to core liberal democratic criteria. Yet linking a summary index, such as Freedom House, with certain outcomes is inherently problematic. Such indexes can never escape ‘arbitrariness in the aggregation of components’ (Dryzek 2016: 361) and the components themselves are almost always based in the previous justification of a minimal definition. 4 I agree with Dryzek (ibid.) that attempting to prove a correlation between liberal democracy and certain moral goods across the many variations of democracy in practice simply raises further questions both about the universality of liberal democracy and the desired moral goods. The point here is that these justifications play a central analytical role in democratisation studies, and support the use of a ‘precise definition’ (Tilly 2007: 7) or ‘ideal type’ from which empirical cases are measured.5 Describing and explaining democracy around the world is seen by many scholars to require an established yardstick. ‘To take democracy seriously’, Tilly (ibid.) argues, ‘we must know what we are talking about’. Huntington (1990: 9) even suggests that the serious empirical study of democracy and democratisation requires less debate about meanings. ‘Fuzzy norms do not yield useful analysis’, he concludes (ibid.). What is at stake here is the question of what ‘useful’ analysis entails, and this is where this book diverges from the mainstream democratisation literature. Where Huntington (ibid.), Tilly (2007) or Freedom House (2014) may be concerned with drawing country-level comparisons about democratisation, I take a different view of what may be ‘useful’ analysis. I seek to emphasise that a ‘precise definition’ of democracy inevitably involves certain normative commitments and context-specific assumptions, and therefore any attempt to define democracy is, in itself, a political act, an engagement in conceptual contest. Where Tilly (2007: 7) argues that taking democracy ‘seriously’ means ‘knowing what we are talking about’ (emphasis added), I suggest that taking the study of democracy seriously means knowing what political 4 Davis, Kingsbury and Merry (2012: 71) also describe indexes such as Freedom House as inherently political, as a ‘technology of global governance’. 5 This is not to suggest that these authors always apply the liberal model of democracy simplistically. Diamond and Plattner (1996: xi) warn that ‘Americans should be careful not to identify the concept of democracy too closely with their own institutions’ and Schmitter and Karl (1991: 39) highlight that the ‘specific form democracy takes is contingent upon the country’s socioeconomic conditions as well as its entrenched state structures and policy practices’. Yet, while recognising that there may be subtle variations in forms of democracy according to different contexts, many scholars of democratisation explicitly or implicitly take the position that democracy does have an intrinsic or taken-for-granted meaning.

36 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

actors themselves are talking about. What I mean by this is that the way we understand democratic actions and institutions in a country like Myanmar cannot be uncoupled from the beliefs and meanings of the political actors involved. Rather than assuming that social movements in Egypt, Myanmar or Hong Kong are all reaching toward the same ‘ideal type’ of democracy, we ought to ask protesters and activists in those contexts what it is they are struggling for, and against. Rather than beginning with a precise definition of democracy and analysing different contexts, in this book I begin with interpretations drawn on by Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and then unpack various meanings of democracy and contests between them. I suggest that this approach brings richer and more ‘useful’ insights than comparing and rating Myanmar against a constructed ‘ideal type’. My core concern is that a liberal-centric starting point can lead to an underestimation of the value and context-specific logic of local meanings, and thus obscure important other struggles for democracy. This concern also has practical implications when it comes to efforts at democracy promotion. There is a tendency in the democracy-promotion literature to debate program success through the implicit framework of progress toward the ‘ideal type’ of liberal democracy (Ethier 2003; Burnell 2008). To be sure, authors such as Carothers (2004; 2006; 2012) present many nuanced critiques of the practice of democracy promotion around the world. Yet Carothers’ emphasis is primarily on issues of implementation or strategy – the question of how democracy-promotion programs can more effectively foster liberal democracy. This means that questions about meanings of democracy, and how they may vary in different contexts, receive relatively less attention. I return to this point in more detail in the final chapters of this book, but, in short, the focus in democracy-promotion literature is largely on questions of promotion, rather than those of democracy. In elucidating meanings of democracy in Myanmar the foundations of democratisation studies are inherently limiting. Evaluating or measuring meanings of democracy from Burmese activists against the ‘correct’ yardstick of liberal democracy necessarily limits their consideration on their own terms. The ‘ideal type’ of liberal democracy can play a problematic ‘a-historical and a-cultural’ (Koelble & Lipuma 2008: 1) role in understanding democratic progress around the world. The various ways that activists understand and communicate about democracy need to be considered as more than simply deviations from a liberal democratic core.6 Yet, if democratisation scholarship 6 In the last two decades there has been a proliferation of clarifying labels for countries that are perceived to have entered a ‘gray zone’ (Carothers 2004: 8) – moving away from authoritarianism

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

37

is limited by its core assumptions, what alternative framework can be used to consider meanings of democracy and their construction through contest?

Revisiting the ‘essential contestability’ of democracy In this section I argue that W.B. Gallie’s (1956: 167) seminal idea of the ‘essential contestability’ of concepts is crucial in making sense of the way political actors give meaning to the word ‘democracy’. Gallie stresses that certain words – such as ‘democracy’ or ‘justice’ – do not have an intrinsic meaning. Essentially contested concepts are ones that ‘inevitably involve endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users’ (ibid.: 169). It is possible, when disagreeing over these concepts, for the dispute to be unresolvable and yet ‘sustained by perfectly respectable arguments and evidence’ (ibid.: 169). In other words, for Gallie, democracy has no taken-for-granted meaning. The liberal theoretical lineage of Schumpeter, Dahl and Diamond is not the only logical possibility for what meanings might be attached to the word ‘democracy’. For Gallie (ibid.), meaning relates to both normative commitments, but also to the components deemed to be part of the concept itself. In this way, contestation over a word such as ‘democracy’ can involve more than a simple normative contest. For example, there may be disagreement over the best way for elections to be conducted, and the question of whether voting should be voluntary or compulsory. To this point, democratisation scholars would agree with Gallie about the contestability of democracy. Yet Gallie goes further to suggest that concepts like justice or democracy can be both normatively contested in their application, but also contested in the very components that make up the concept. This means that contestability of concepts is on two levels. Freeden (1996: 59) makes the distinction that ‘the obvious contestability of valuejudgments will coexist with the equally important contestability of the range of components deemed to contain the empirically ascertainable units of the concept’. It is this dimension that distinguishes contestability from but not yet qualifying as liberal democracies. Categories of ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (Levitsky & Way 2002), ‘hybrid regimes’ (Diamond 2002), or ‘feckless pluralism’ (Carothers 2004) have emerged to identify particular variations against liberal expectations – what Collier and Levitsky (1997) describe as ‘democracy with adjectives’. My concern with this approach is that diverse meanings of democracy – for example, within the Burmese opposition movement – are not considered as potential alternate forms of common sense, but are described as ‘deviant’ (Seeberg 2014) from the liberal model.

38 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

essential contestability. I may make value judgements about democracy which contest with those of Burmese activists in Myanmar. Yet this does not mean that the meanings of democracy that they articulate cannot be sustained by logic. In the kinds of everyday conceptual contests that are described in the coming chapters, these two dimensions of contest – over normative commitments and over the components of concepts themselves – often intersect. Yet my point here is that the idea of essentially contestable concepts, and the challenging of the ‘ideal type’ of democracy, is a crucial contribution of Gallie and underpins the approach of this book. Gallie is, of course, not the only author to have concerns about the way meanings are attached to words.7 However, I am drawn to Gallie’s work in this study for his central concern that if concepts such as democracy are not recognised as being essentially contested in this way, it will lead to the ‘chronic human peril’ (Gallie 1956: 193) of underestimating the arguments of others. Rather than acknowledging that rival uses are ‘logically possible’ and ‘humanly likely’, they can be portrayed as ‘anathema, perverse, bestial or lunatic’ (ibid.: 193). As described earlier, my concern with the core assumption of an ‘ideal type’ of democracy is that meanings of democracy – especially ones that do not easily align with the ‘correct’ liberal components – can easily be dismissed as deviant. However much one may normatively react against rival meanings, Gallie’s plea is for recognition that rival meanings can also be forms of common sense. Further, Gallie argues that rival uses can be of ‘permanent potential critical value to one’s own use or interpretation of the concept in question’ (ibid.: 193). When considered on their own terms, rival meanings can help to sharpen one’s own interpretations. Thus the ‘peril’ of not recognising the essential contestability of concepts is not only in failing to understand the logics of others, but also in losing the opportunity to critically develop one’s own interpretations. If we establish the essential contestability of democracy, does that then mean that democracy can mean anything? Is there any firm conceptual ground at all from which to engage with struggles for democracy around the world? Gallie’s (ibid.) idea of essential contestability has not been without criticism. Most prominently, Gallie’s work has attracted explicit critique from scholars concerned about the application of his ideas to democracy (Gray 1977; Clarke 1979; Sartori 1987; Lawson 1995). The key concern for these authors is that the idea of essential contestability leaves us with an 7 For example, in the next section I outline Schaffer’s (1997) work, which draws on the work of Austin and Wittgenstein to develop an ‘ordinary language’ approach to examining meanings of democracy.

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

39

extreme relativism where democracy has no defendable core. As Sartori (1987: 3) pointedly asks, ‘Can democracy be just anything?’ In this view, acknowledgement of essential contestability allows unchecked misuse of the word ‘democracy’ by authoritarian leaders – the word ‘democracy’ can become simply a ‘cloak for authoritarianism’ (Lawson 1995: 3).8 Similarly, Gray (1977: 343) concludes that ‘any strong variant of an essential contestability book must precipitate its proponents into a radical (and probably self-defeating) skeptical nihilism’. Such a concern is valid. From Putin’s Russia (Okara 2007) to Pol Pot’s Cambodia, it is an ‘historically undeniable fact’, as Whitehead (2002: 21) suggests, that political leaders have used the ‘garb of democratic respectability’ while pursuing other objectives. In Cambodia’s case, the period of ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ resulted in the deaths of millions of citizens. The word ‘democracy’ can indeed be debased or abused. However, critics of Gallie set up an unnecessary dichotomy where one must either accept a universal meaning of democracy or descend to a view of democracy where any meaning is acceptable. Such a dichotomy is unnecessary. Whitehead (ibid.: 7) importantly employs the metaphor of meanings of democracy being ‘floating but anchored’. Democracy ‘is not a concept with a timeless single meaning that is intrinsically derivable either from logical analysis or from empirical reference’ (ibid.: 14). Yet, while there is no taken-for-granted meaning of democracy, this does not mean that democracy can mean anything at all. There is a stream of discourse about democracy which is mutually intelligible across languages and places, though there is no clear way that this ‘anchor’ can be defined.9 The anchor has ‘neither an indispensable stand‐alone core element (the “minimum” definition) nor an immutable outer boundary of meaning’ (ibid.: 14). In this sense, one can hold to the essential contestability of the concept of democracy, and yet still argue that Pol Pot’s brutal ‘Democratic Kampuchea’ was not a democracy. Democracy is not a scientific term with 8 Okara (2007: 20) critiques the use of ‘sovereign democracy’ by Russian elites, concluding that this meaning of democracy itself is simply a ‘utilitarian political technology’. 9 Frechette (2007) and Schaffer (1997), in their respective work on meanings of democracy in India and Senegal, usefully draw on Wittgenstein’s metaphor of ‘family resemblances’. Family resemblances – for example, in build, facial features or eye colour – are a ‘complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing’ (Wittgenstein 1953: 67). In relation to democracy, while there may be no essence which is common to all meanings, there is the same pattern of overlapping and criss-crossing similarities (Schaffer 1997). There are recognisable resemblances between meanings of democracy, for example, between Burmese activists and international aid workers, even though it may be impossible to identify a single common essence.

40 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

a logically precise meaning, yet neither is it a vessel into which anything can be poured. This idea of course raises further questions about what this mutually intelligible ‘stream of discourse’ that Whitehead (ibid.) refers to might include, and not include. Yet, for the purposes of this book, I take Freeden’s (1996: 92) position that ‘the absence of a view from nowhere does not endorse the view from anywhere’. In contrast to the ontological assumptions of democratisation studies, the idea of essential contestability creates a foundation for recognising the varied uses of the word ‘democracy’, raising concerns about ‘the chronic human peril’ of underestimating the value of rival positions (Gallie 1956: 193). Yet, while the idea of essential contestability forms an important starting point, it does not provide specific tools to address the questions of this book about meanings of democracy. In particular, Gallie’s work is limited in its portrayal of what ‘meaning’ itself might entail. To build a framework for examining meanings of democracy – and the other struggles for democracy that are the focus of this book – we must turn to interpretivist scholarship.

Interpretivism and meanings of democracy In the last decade, there have been several valuable interpretative studies exploring meanings of democracy amongst political actors, for example, in the works of Michelutti (2007) in India, Khanani (2014) in Morocco, Frechette (2007) with Tibetan exiles in India, and Schaffer (1997; 2000) in Senegal. In this book, I particularly seek to extend the work of Schaffer – referring to both his earlier work on ‘democracy in translation’ based on field research in Senegal (Schaffer 1997; 2000) and his later work on ‘elucidating social science concepts’ (Schaffer 2016). Schaffer draws on the works of Austin and Wittgenstein to emphasise that the meaning of democracy shifts as it moves across different languages and contexts. For example, he describes how in Senegal the Wolof word demokaraasi (‘democracy’) sometimes refers to the institutions of government, yet also includes other meanings, such as collective security. Schaffer (2000) stresses that though people may participate in the formal liberal institutions of democracy, there may be differing ‘purposes or meanings’ behind their participation; they may be sophisticated players of a different kind of ‘game’. Schaffer (1997: 44) explains that [w]hile the ideals embedded in the two concepts [English ‘democracy’ and Wolof demokaraasi] overlap at points, they diverge insofar as demokaraasi

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

41

refers to collective security in ways that democracy does not. To ignore this divergence blinds us to the fact that many illiterate Senegalese voters are playing a different game, with different aims and rules. Where an institutionalist is likely to see incompetent democrats, we discover able players of demokaraasi, a discovery that changes our understanding of the nature and purpose of Senegalese electoral institutions.

This perspective is central to the approach of this book, and echoes Gallie’s central concerns about underestimating the value of rival positions. One endeavour of interpretive studies is to uncover the ways that political actors are ‘able players’ within their own context. A core concern of this book is that meanings of democracy in Myanmar are examined – by scholars or aid workers – on their own terms rather than through an external liberal lens that emphasises incompetence. Schaffer and other interpretive scholars employ contrasting methods to the mainstream studies of democracy and democratisation – such as the Global Barometer projects – using observation and extended interviews, rather than ‘large N’ survey techniques. Yet, more than contrasting methods, these interpretive studies also bring different orientations to the study of meanings of democracy. Schaffer describes contrasting orientations between the mainstream approach – with a focus on the ‘reconstruction’ of concepts, for example, in the Global Barometer project – and interpretivist approaches – which strive for the ‘elucidation’ of concepts. Emphasising an ‘ideal type’, many studies seek ‘to generate a precise terminology that faithfully represents a reality taken to be independently pre-existing’ (Schaffer 2016: 7). In contrast, Schaffer suggests that for interpretive studies the aim is rather to ‘clarify the meaning and use of concepts in lived practices [elucidation], not to fashion precise conceptual tools of the researchers’ design [reconstruction]’ (ibid.: 7). For Schaffer, there are three major ‘modes’ of conceptual ‘elucidation’ (grounding, locating and exposing) which correspond to three ‘problems’ in positivist approaches to ‘reconstruction’ (one-sidedness, universalism and objectivity). The f irst problem with reconstruction is that of ‘onesidedness’, where researchers predetermine criteria through which to study a concept such as democracy. Yet these criteria may or may not relate to actual beliefs of activists or democratic leaders who themselves have lived experience of struggling for democracy. In contrast, elucidation requires the task of grounding where researchers examine the ways that political actors themselves understand a concept. The second problem with ‘reconstruction’, according to Schaffer, is universalism – where pre-determined criteria are

42 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

applied across temporal and spatial contexts with limited regard for the thoroughly parochial nature of those criteria. In contrast, in the task of locating, researchers trace out the way concepts are understood by political actors within their particular linguistic and historical circumstances. The final problem for positivist approaches is that of ‘objectivism’, where researchers use criteria that are deeply normative and yet bound up within an image of being value-free. To counter this objectivism, Schaffer argues that researchers must expose how everyday concepts are embedded, in an often covert way, in ‘webs of power’ (Schaffer 2016: 22). This task of exposing highlights politics in the way that concepts are used – the ways that people inevitably ‘shape’ and ‘wield’ concepts to advance particular goals (ibid.: 9). My argument in the next section is that narrative analysis can be valuable in advancing all three of these modes of interpretive analysis.

Using narrative analysis to elucidate meanings of democracy Narrative analysis has been widely employed in the social sciences to explore diverse meanings attached to political concepts. For example, Moon’s (2006) work on South Africa and Little’s (2012) work on Northern Ireland both point toward the ways in which attention to narratives can uncover conceptual contests over the highly valued word ‘reconciliation’. Yet, despite its established value in studying other concepts, there has been no systematic application of narrative theory to the study of how the word ‘democracy’ is given meaning by political actors. In this book I aim to bridge between the narrative literature and interpretive studies of meanings of democracy. I argue that attention to the construction of plot and characters in political storylines provides distinct insights that can strengthen the interpretive task of elucidation of concepts. In the last three decades, the concept of narrative has been used in a diverse range of fields, stretching across psychology, education, international relations and public administration (Polkinghorne 1995; Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber 1998; Ospina & Dodge 2005; Miskimmon, O’Loughlin & Roselle 2013). Yet, as Bacon (2012: 772) suggests, within political studies there remains relatively limited attention on the content of public political narratives and in ‘taking seriously the accounts of the political actors concerned’. He argues that ‘public political narratives’ are a ‘neglected source’ within political studies. How, then, does the concept of narrative unlock new insights about meanings of democracy? What is it particularly about narrative that helps us to address questions about meanings of democracy? In this section I first

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

43

describe how key elements of narrativity (plot and character construction) are valuable in the task of grounding and locating concepts before turning to the use of narrative in exposing the political use of concepts. Narrativity What makes a story a story? For something to be a narrative, instead of a collection of events or a policy ‘frame’, there first needs to be an overarching plot that unifies events. Narrative builds connections between experiences or events and provides them with meaning (Wagenaar 2014). A good story, as Wagenaar (ibid.: 216) highlights, can be ‘an Archimedean point in an otherwise indeterminate world’. The process of ‘emplotment’ takes enormous diversity of experiences and ideas and provides a story that can be used for understanding and communicating amongst political actors (Polkinghorne 1995). In plot formation the key elements are vision, challenges and strategies, and also temporal range. Often the most explicit element of narrative plot is vision. The vision is the culmination of the storyline and expresses an ideal state (Bruner 1991). Yet narratives also necessarily contain threats to the vision through particular challenges. For Labov (1972), there is a ‘complicating action’ that disrupts the norm or vision. Crucially, if we are only aware of the ideal state in a story, and not this breach, we may miss the significance of the story’s meaning. With knowledge of the wider story, the vision can take on a meaning that is not immediately self-evident. Hajer (1993: 44) argues that ‘whether or not a situation is perceived as a political problem depends on the narrative in which it is discussed’. A particular challenge to democracy – such as personalised political culture – might be emphasised in one narrative and ignored in another. In this sense, the meaning of the word ‘democracy’ may also change when it is placed within a broader story told by a political actor. Public opinion survey results point to the prevalence of particular meanings of democracy as, for example, ‘good governance’, ‘freedom’ or ‘social equality’. Yet ‘freedom’ or ‘good governance’ might take on different meanings depending on the challenge involved in the wider story (Wells 2018). The meaning of democracy, at least to some degree, rests on the question of what specific problem democracy is intended to solve. In other words, the meaning of democracy relies on varying interpretations of what democracy is not. Plot, however, involves more than just visions and challenges; it also contains certain strategies for dealing with the breach from the expected situation or vision. Within a narrative’s plot there are explicit or implicit

44 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

interventions that are considered to be necessary to restore, or reach, the vision. Labov (1972) describes this as a ‘resolution’ which addresses the central challenge. Yet, as with narrative challenges, these strategies may not be self-evident, even if the vision and challenge are made clear. In the coming chapters, I describe how there is no taken-for-granted strategy for fostering democracy in Myanmar. Beyond vision, challenges and strategy, a plot must also have a beginning and an end. Choosing the temporal range of a story is a crucial way in which the narrator selectively draws on certain events and information while excluding others. Polkinghorne (1995) highlights the way the temporal range of stories can reveal layers of meaning that may not be immediately obvious. What if the stories begin or end at different points? How might that reshape meanings within the story? In the coming chapters I describe how NLD leaders, activists and international donor representatives related the story of Myanmar’s democratisation within vastly contrasting temporal ranges, which in turn was significant for how they gave meaning to democracy. These plot dimensions of challenges, visions, strategies and temporal range are central to my analysis of the way democracy is given meaning in Myanmar. The categorisation of challenges, visions, strategies and temporal range also gives shape to the later chapters in this book, where I outline and analyse three contrasting contemporary narratives of democracy amongst aid workers, political leaders and activists in Myanmar. Finally, narrative theory brings a further insight not only related to narrative plot, but also to the ways in which characters are constructed through narrative. When describing political issues, narratives inevitably cast some political actors as central to the flow of events, while others are more peripheral. There may be ‘villains’ who are responsible for the main problems or challenges, ‘heroes’ who can help to reach the vision, while others still are portrayed as passive bystanders (Boswell 2013b; Stone 1997). The way stories are used to communicate about democracy is a powerful means through which actors can establish or reinforce their own influence. Narrative and exposing power This linking of narrative and discursive power is illustrated well in the work of Moon (2006) and Hajer (1995). Moon (2006) uses the concept of narrative to explore meanings given to ‘reconciliation’ through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa. Drawing on Foucault (1972), Moon (2006) suggests that discursive power is dependent on the credibility of the narrator, but also on the site or context that the narrator is

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

45

in. In relation to the credibility of actors, she describes how certain political actors (such as the South African government) were placed at the centre of the ‘reconciliation’ story, while others (particularly those who may have dissenting views) were placed on the periphery. Not every individual, or coalition, is afforded the same authority to speak ‘truth’ about a particular word. In the case of the South African TRC, the ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ were given a privileged position to speak ‘truth about the past’ (Moon 2006: 261). There could have been other relevant categories such as ‘bystanders’ or ‘beneficiaries’ of apartheid, yet the dominant narrative of ‘reconciliation’ excluded these identities as being irrelevant (ibid.). The authority to speak, however, is dependent on more than just the prestige or credibility of the narrator – it is also dependent on the site of interaction. A political actor may be afforded the right to speak ‘truth’ within particular social settings and yet be given little credibility in other spheres of interaction. For example, in the South African TRC there were certain arguments that were impossible to make within those particular spheres of interaction (ibid.). Or in the realm of environmental politics, Hajer (1995: 61) observes that the credibility of an individual or coalition may require them to align their arguments with the vocabulary of ‘ecological modernisation’. Narratives are a mechanism by which political actors can construct plot and characters, and in turn position themselves to set the agenda or establish the correct course of action. Further, the context and way in which narratives are told, in turn constructs the narrator. As Andrews, Squire and Tamboukou (2008: 3) suggest, ‘the storyteller does not tell the story, so much as she/he is told by it.’ For example, in public political narratives, actor-narrators often provide positive accounts of themselves as ‘heroes or victims’ and their opponents as ‘evildoers or fools’ (Alexander 2004: 551; Boswell 2013b). Narratives are not just neutral interpretations but are closely associated with the positioning of actors, and of the narrator themselves. Finally, Hajer (1995) argues that the unquestioned dominance of particular ‘storylines’ is often due to the way they are subtly reinforced by everyday policies and practices. Exploring the aid sector, Kerr (2008) highlights that while project monitoring and evaluation systems in aid programs are often considered apolitical by donors or aid workers, they can in fact support particular discourses. In particular, the use of logical frameworks in aid programs can tilt the sphere of interaction toward the dominance of a ‘new public management’ discourse (ibid.). In examining the increasing influence of indicators of governance, Merry (2011) similarly argues that they can become their own form of knowledge production. Despite being

46 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

framed simply as technical instruments to support policymaking, the use of these governance indicators can have ‘implications for relations of power’ (Merry 2011: 83). Routinised and seemingly apolitical social practices and policies can serve to support particular narratives while also obscuring underlying conceptual contests. I agree with Hajer (1995: 47) that narrative analysis must include a focus on ‘illumination of the smaller, often less conspicuous practices, techniques, and mechanisms’ that contribute to the dominance of certain narratives. Conceptual contest may not always be dynamic and obvious but is often routinised and almost imperceptible. Hajer (ibid.: 57) goes on to argue that not all actions are ‘the result of an active process of taking up or denying of positionings’. Political actors often do not recognise ‘moments of positioning’ (ibid.: 57) but rather assume that particular use of language is natural in that circumstance. Normalised ‘ways of seeing’ within activist networks or aid agencies can mean that the significance of a particular narrative – and its implications in constructing characters – can remain hidden. This means that the contest between different meanings is often not overt but rather ‘dumb role-playing on the part of those whose action takes place within walls of routinized liberal structures’ (ibid.: 57). Discursive power is exercised not only through the way people communicate, but also through everyday social practices that reflect, and reinforce, particular dominant stories. While the main focus of this book is on narrative as ‘text’, in Chapter Eight I also take time to describe the ways that these narratives are often embedded in seemingly neutral everyday social routines. Of course, the obscuring of conceptual contest does not mean that the dominance of certain narratives is somehow fixed or inevitable. While interactions are often routinised, actors can also show agency in attempting to reshape narratives. Hajer (ibid.: 60) describes these moments where ‘routinized proceedings are interrupted’ as ‘interpellations’. New experiences or ideas can interrupt routinised practices and narratives can be reshaped or rejected. This can happen at the individual level, but also at the intersubjective level as political actors respond to dilemmas. The challenge of analysing the discursive role of narrative is to identify both the ways in which contests are routinised and almost imperceptible, and these moments of flux (ibid.). In this way, my use of narrative theory emphasises both the dimension of narrativity – the focus on plot and character construction taken by Roe (1989) or Polkinghorne (1995) – but also the dimension of narrative and discursive power – found in the work of Moon (2006), Little (2012) and Hajer (1995). Combining these dimensions of narrative theory can contribute to

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

47

each of Schaffer’s three major modes of elucidation of concepts of democracy. First, in the endeavour of grounding concepts – focussing on the way in which political actors themselves make sense of them – the framework of narrative reveals new dimensions that may not be immediately selfevident. Schaffer’s ‘ordinary language’ approach emphasises interviewing techniques which allow participants to use the word ‘democracy’ in a variety of ways and to therefore ground meanings in word usage. The advantage of narrative analysis is in explicitly attempting to reveal the challenges that may sit around a vision and strategy of democracy. Even though a vision of what democracy is may be clearly articulated by a political actor, it is not always self-evident what democracy is perceived not to be. In the coming chapters, I describe examples of the starkly different ways in which activists, democratic leaders and international aid workers perceive the core obstacles to democratisation. These narratives can then be located through the particularity of their relationship to other historical or contemporary narratives. Where Schaffer brings the etymology of words to the fore in the task of locating concepts, a narrative approach brings to the fore the relationships and contests between stories. In this sense I do not follow Schaffer’s close linguistic distinction, for example, between the English ‘democracy’ and the Wolof demokaraasi (‘democracy’). In the context of Myanmar political elites these linguistic distinctions hold less relevance than locating meanings of democracy through examining the connections and divergence of narratives. In the coming chapters, I describe examples of narratives of democracy from the late colonial period in Burma and in the decades after independence, and the ways in which these are adapted, adopted, ignored and rejected by contemporary activists, democratic leaders and aid workers. Importantly, I highlight how political actors can draw on threads from multiple narratives, including those produced by political rivals. For example, the benevolence narrative (which I examine in Chapter Six) which is prominent within networks of activists and democratic leaders has some conceptual overlaps with the Burmese military notion of ‘disciplined democracy’. Finally, following Moon’s (2006) and Hajer’s (1995) analyses of discursive power and storylines, attention to narratives is valuable in the task of exposing the political use of concepts. Through stories, political actors can position themselves in certain ways and pursue their own goals, while at the same time marginalising the voices of others. Even seemingly routinised practices within aid programs or political parties can serve to reinforce the dominance of certain actors in defining what ‘genuine’ democracy in Myanmar should entail. By combining attention to narrativity and attention

48 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

to use of discursive power, narrative analysis can uncover new lines of analysis in the elucidation of concepts such as democracy. The limits of a narrative approach While in this book I seek to promote the value of narrative analysis, I also acknowledge its limitations and that the process of representing everyday understandings and communication in different coalitions of actors is far from straightforward. The narratives I identify in the following chapters are situated within the particular contexts of Burman Buddhist activists and leaders and a coalition of their international supporters, and therefore do not ‘represent’ Myanmar. The other struggles for democracy that I identify in this book are examples of conceptual contests between aid workers, politicians and activists. These are not the only examples of conceptual contests over democracy in Myanmar which undoubtedly also occur over many other lines of contest related to ethnicity, religion, economy and ideology. I also do not suggest that collective narratives can be identified and described in a straightforward manner. While narratives have key elements of visions, challenges and strategies, political actors do not always communicate them in a ‘neat, linear fashion’ (Boswell 2013a: 77). In my experience, key elements of the narrative were not recounted sequentially, and some elements were explicitly emphasised while others were only implied. If narratives are not recounted in a ‘neat’ and ‘linear’ fashion by individuals, then this compounds the challenge of aggregation into collective narratives. In this book, I focus at the level of networks of urban activists, aid workers and political party members rather than describing societal level narratives. Nevertheless, the narratives described and analysed in this book are not verbatim accounts from individual political actors. Rather I present these narratives based on aggregations of materials from interviews from and interactions with individuals. Even in this modest level of aggregation, there is no neat way to draw together the multiple strands of storylines. In this sense, the narratives I identify may not be the only way to conceptually organise the interpretations of activists, aid workers and political party members in Myanmar. In the examination of multiple interpretations, and the researcher piecing together narratives based on this material, there is the danger of inadvertently imposing categories of thought and overly refining stories in ways that participants did not intend. This is especially the case as the methodology of interviewing and observing can create its own particular site of communication that may or may not represent wider

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

49

communication. Participants may adapt and represent plots and characters in particular ways when being interviewed by a researcher, particularly a foreign researcher, and this may differ from other settings. For researchers using interpretive approaches, there is inevitably another layer of (researcher) interpretation. Yanow (1995: 113) clarifies this by distinguishing between individual accounts (whether a speech, policy document or oral history) as being ‘authored text’ while a narrative – which is attributed by researchers to a coalition of actors – is a ‘constructed text’. Any aggregate approach to narrative takes personal accounts from study participants and groups them with other similar accounts, to then ‘construct’ and describe a narrative. I acknowledge that the historical and contemporary narratives laid out in this book are my own constructions. My own experience working with NGOs on civil society and governance programs in Myanmar between 2006 and 2012, and then as a researcher, have shaped the way that I describe these stories. Long-term friendships with Burmese activists and international aid workers have sensitised me toward particular conceptual contests amongst urban political elites and their international allies – which I describe in the coming chapters. I recognise that the narratives I describe are a ‘constructed text’ and that the ‘authored text’ from individual political actors could feasibly be organised in different conceptual categories. Scholars of interpretivism acknowledge the dimension of ‘improvisation’ (Wagenaar 2014) involved in this step of representing interpretations in research. The interpretive step of taking interview transcripts or observations and translating them into research conclusions is not ‘mechanistic’. Yet neither is it devoid of system. For Wagenaar (ibid.) the interpretive research process can be described as ‘systematic improvisation’ – one can acknowledge the limitations in the interpretive process and yet still apply rigorous analysis in developing research conclusions. Further, along with Bevir and Rhodes (2003), I acknowledge the decentred nature of narratives, or what they describe as ‘traditions’. Narratives do not have a core definition and one of the dangers of working at the aggregate level is that ‘we can neglect the beliefs of the individuals lumped together in a tradition’ (ibid.: 2). Decentring an aggregate concept like narrative is to highlight that within a particular coalition of actors there may be more nuanced strands. For example, for Bevir and Rhodes (ibid.) this means recognising the level of a ‘British political tradition’, then a lower level of a ‘Tory’ tradition, and then to ‘One Nation’ or ‘statecraft’ strands within the Tory tradition. In other words, narratives are not homogenous, but rather a cluster of interpretations.

50 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Without shying away from the limitations of an interpretive and narrative approach, I argue in this book that there is value in examining how political actors make sense of the political world, as opposed to attempting to explain the ‘real’ political world through positivist approaches. Analysis of narratives of democracy can contribute in unique ways to the multipronged task of ‘elucidating’ concepts. In particular, in the coming chapters I also stress the connections between elite contests over narratives of democracy and everyday policy decision-making in Myanmar. Understanding the overlaps and divergence between the liberal, benevolence and equality narratives can help to make sense of widely varying reactions to Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership, to governance reform, to ethnic politics, to violence against Muslims and to other areas.

Conclusion Mainstream democratisation scholarship has generated many valuable insights into transitions around the world. Yet its common reliance on an ‘ideal type’ of democracy forecloses the analytical space required to examine meanings of democracy amongst activists or democratic leaders on their own terms. Elucidating meanings of democracy requires acknowledgement of the ‘essential contestability’ of democracy. Interpretive scholarship has begun to extend our understanding of the context specificity and malleability of meanings of democracy across cultural and linguistic settings. Narrative analysis, however, can further illuminate meanings of democracy and new axes of conceptual contest between political actors. On one hand, I have described the value of Moon’s (2006) and Hajer’s (1995) work in explicitly addressing the links between narrative and discursive power. Yet, while drawing heavily on discourse theory, Moon gives relatively less attention to other features of narrativity, for example, the different elements of plot and character formation. This contrasts with many policy-oriented narrative scholars, such as Roe (1989), who emphasise the hermeneutic dimension of meaning and, in turn, give less attention to discursive power. It is the combination of these different elements of ‘narrativity’ – related to plot formation and the exercise of discursive power – that can reveal important other struggles for democracy. How, then, might this mode of narrative analysis be employed in the case of Myanmar? In the next chapter, I turn to Burmese history and conflicting narratives produced by the British colonial administration and the Thakin independence leaders in the late colonial period.

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

51

References Alexander, J.C. 2004. ‘Cultural pragmatics: Social performance between ritual and strategy’. Sociological Theory 22 (4): 527-573. Alvarez, M., Cheibub, J.A., Limongi, F., and Przeworski A. 1996. ‘Classifying political regimes’. Studies in Comparative International Development 31 (2): 3-36. Andrews, M., Squire C., and Tamboukou M. (eds.) 2008. Doing Narrative Research. London: SAGE. Bacon, E. 2012. ‘Public political narratives: Developing a neglected source through the exploratory case of Russia in the Putin-Medvedev Era’. Political Studies 60 (4): 768-786. Bevir, M., and Rhodes, R.A.W. 2003. Interpreting British Governance. London: Routledge. Boswell, J. 2013a. ‘Between facts and fictions: Narrative in public deliberation on obesity’. PhD thesis. Australian National University. Boswell, J. 2013b. ‘Why and how narrative matters in deliberative systems’. Political Studies 61 (3): 620-636. Bratton, M. 2010. ‘The meanings of democracy: Anchoring the “D-word” in Africa’. Journal of Democracy 21 (4): 106-113. Bruner, J. 1991. ‘The narrative construction of reality’. Critical Inquiry 18 (1): 1-21. Burnell, P. 2008. ‘From evaluating democracy assistance to appraising democracy promotion’. Political Studies 56 (2): 414-434. Carothers, T. 2004. Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Carothers, T. 2006. ‘The backlash against democracy promotion’. Foreign Affairs 85 (2): 55-68. Carothers, T. 2012. Democracy Policy under Obama: Revitalization of Retreat? Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Clarke, B. 1979. ‘Eccentrically contested concepts’. British Journal of Political Science 9 (1): 122-126. Collier, D., and Levitsky, S. 1997. ‘Democracy with adjectives: Conceptual innovation in comparative research’. World Politics 49 (3): 430-451. Croissant, A. 2004. ‘From transition to defective democracy: Mapping Asian democratization’. Democratization 11 (5): 156-178. Dahl, R.A. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dalton, R., Sin, T., and Jou, W. 2007. ‘Understanding democracy: Data from unlikely places’. Journal of Democracy 18 (4): 142-156. Davis, K.E., Kingsbury, B., and Merry, S.E. 2012. ‘Indicators as a technology of global governance’. Law & Society Review 46 (1): 71-104. Diamond, L.J. 1996. ‘Is the third wave over?’ Journal of Democracy 7 (3): 20-37. Diamond, L.J. 2002. ‘Elections without democracy: Thinking about hybrid regimes’. Journal of Democracy 13(2), pp. 21-35. Diamond, L.J. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World. London: Macmillan. Diamond, L.J., and Plattner, M.F. 1996. The Global Resurgence of Democracy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Doorenspleet, R. 2000. ‘Reassessing the three waves of democratization’. World Politics 52 (3): 384-406. Doorenspleet, R. 2005. Democratic Transitions: Exploring the Structural Sources of the Fourth Wave. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Dryzek, J.S. 2016. ‘Can there be a human right to an essentially contested concept? The case of democracy’. The Journal of Politics 78 (2): 357-367.

52 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Ethier, D. 2003. ‘Is democracy promotion effective? Comparing conditionality and incentives’. Democratization 10 (1): 99-120. Foucault, M. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. Sheridan. London: Tavistock. Frechette, A. 2007. ‘Democracy and democratization among Tibetans in exile’. The Journal of Asian Studies 66 (1): 97-127. Freeden, M. 1996. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Freedom House. 2014. ‘Freedom in the World Report’. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ files/FIW2014%20Booklet.pdf. Last accessed 25 November 2019. Gallie, W.B. 1956. ‘Essentially contested concepts’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1): 167-198. Gat, A. 2010. Victorious and Vulnerable: Why Democracy Won in the 20th Century and How It Is Still Imperiled. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Gray, J.N. 1977. ‘On the contestability of social and political concepts’. Political Theory 5 (3): 331-348. Jamal, A., and Tessler, M. 2008. ‘The democracy barometers (part II): Attitudes in the Arab world’. Journal of Democracy 19 (1): 97-110. Hajer, M.A. 1993. ‘Discourse coalitions and the institutionalization of practice: The case of acid rain in Great Britain’. In F. Fischer and J. Forester (eds.), The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Durham: Duke University Press. 43-76. Hajer, M.A. 1995. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Huntington, S.P. 1990. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Kerr, R. 2008. ‘International development and the new public management: Projects and logframes as discursive technologies of governance’. In S. Dar and B. Cooke (eds.), The New Development Management: Critiquing the Dual Modernization. London: Zed Books. 91-110. Khanani, A. 2014. ‘Islamism and the language of democracy in Morocco’. PhD thesis. Indiana University. Koelble, T.A., and Lipuma, E. 2008. ‘Democratizing democracy: A postcolonial critique of conventional approaches to the “measurement of democracy”’. Democratization 15 (1): 1-28. Kurki, M. 2010. ‘Democracy and conceptual contestability: Reconsidering conceptions of democracy in democracy promotion’. International Studies Review 12 (3): 362-386. Labov, W. 1972. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W., and Waletsky, J. 1997. ‘Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience’. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7 (1): 3-38. Lawson, S. 1995. ‘Culture, relativism and democracy: Political myths about “Asia” and the “West”’. Working Paper 1995/6. Department of International Relations, Australian National University. http://ir.bellschool.anu.edu.au/experts-publications/publications/1760/culture-relativismand-democracy-political-myths-about-asia. Last accessed 25 November 2019. Levitsky, S. and Way, L.A., 2002. ‘Elections without democracy: The rise of competitive authoritarianism’. Journal of Democracy 13(2), pp. 51-65. Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R., and Zilber, T. 1998. Narrative Research: Reading, Analysis, and Interpretation. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Little, A. 2012. ‘Disjunctured narratives: Rethinking reconciliation and conflict transformation’. International Political Science Review 33 (1): 82-98. McCarthy, G. 2019. ‘Democratic deservingness and self-reliance in contemporary Myanmar’. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 34 (2): 327-365. Merry, S.E. 2011. ‘Measuring the world: Indicators, human rights, and global governance’. Current Anthropology 52 (S3): S83-S95.

Elucidating the meaning of democr ac y through narr ative

53

Michelutti, L. 2007. ‘The vernacularization of democracy: Political participation and popular politics in North India’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 13 (3): 639-656. Miskimmon, A., O’Loughlin, B., and Roselle, L. 2013. Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order. New York: Routledge. Moon, C. 2006. ‘Narrating political reconciliation: Truth and reconciliation in South Africa’. Social & Legal Studies 15 (2): 257-275. Moore, B. 1966. Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship. Boston: Beacon. O’Donnell, G., and Schmitter, P.C. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Okara, A. 2007. ‘Sovereign democracy: A new Russian idea of a PR project?’ Russia in Global Affairs 5 (3): 8-20. Ospina, S.M., and Dodge, J. 2005. ‘It’s about time: Catching method up to meaning: The usefulness of narrative inquiry in public administration research’. Public Administration Review 65 (2): 143-157. Polkinghorne, D.E. 1995. ‘Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis’. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 8 (1): 5-23. Roe, E.M. 1989. ‘Narrative analysis for the policy analyst: A case study of the 1980-1982 medfly controversy in California’. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 8 (2): 251-273. Sartori, G. 1987. The Theory of Democracy Revisited. Chatham: Chatham House. Schaffer, F.C. 1997. ‘Political concepts and the study of democracy: The case of demokaraasi in Senegal’. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20 (1): 40-49. Schaffer, F.C. 2000. Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Schaffer, F.C. 2014. ‘Thin descriptions: The limits of survey research on the meaning of democracy’. Polity 46 (3): 303-330. Schaffer, F.C. 2016. Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interpretivist Guide. New York: Routledge. Schmitter, P.C., and Karl, T.L. 1991. ‘What democracy is … and is not’. Journal of Democracy 2 (3): 75-88. Schumpeter, J.A. 1947. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers. Seeberg, M. 2014. ‘Mapping deviant democracy’. Democratization 21 (4): 634-654. Shi, T., and Lu, J. 2010. ‘The meanings of democracy: The shadow of Confucianism’. Journal of Democracy 21 (4): 123-130. Stone, D.A. 1997. Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making. New York: Norton. Tilly, C. 2007. Democracy. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wagenaar, H. 2014. Meaning in Action: Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis. London: Routledge. Wells, T. 2018. ‘Democratic “freedom” in Myanmar’. Asian Journal of Political Science 26 (1): 1-15. Welsh, B., Huang, K.-P., and Chu, Y.-H. 2016. ‘Burma votes for change: Clashing attitudes toward democracy’. Journal of Democracy 27 (2): 132-140. Whitehead, L. 2002. Democratization: Theory and Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Macmillan. Yanow, D. 1995. ‘Practices of policy interpretation’. Policy Sciences 28 (2): 111-126.

3

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democracy’? The British colonial administration, the Thakin and contests over meanings of democracy in late colonial Burma Abstract To understand the dominant narratives described in this book, they need to be situated within the context of Myanmar’s modern history and the ways different political actors – whether independence leaders, colonial administrators, military leaders or activists – have narrated that history. This is not an attempt to construct a unitary history of Myanmar, but rather to locate and uncover struggles over the meaning of democracy during these different periods and how they shape contemporary political uses of the word ‘democracy’ amongst the networks of activists and democratic leaders that I studied. The third chapter explores the example of contrasting meanings of democracy between British colonial administrators and the Thakin independence leaders in the late colonial period in Burma. Keywords: Burma, British, colonial, Aung San, democracy, independence

In 1937, Chief Secretary to the colonial Government of Burma Frank Burton Leach published his work, The Future of Burma. According to Leach, there was a global current of politics which had ‘for the last century been carrying mankind towards the Ocean of Democracy’ (Leach 1937: 138). Leach considered the West to be the ‘centre of the stream’, while the East ‘has for the most part been left in backwaters along the banks’ (ibid.: 138). He concluded, however, that ‘the East has been gradually sucked into the main stream’ (ibid.). Late colonial Burma, with the support of the British, was moving toward the ‘Ocean of Democracy’. Yet these were tumultuous times. There were waves of strikes and protests throughout Burma in 1938 and significant mobilisation of opposition to British rule. The Thakin movement was instrumental in this social mobilisation and in the years before the Second World War, ‘democratic freedom’ became

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch03

56 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

a prominent goal for these independence activists (Aung San 1993a [1945]: 81). Yet, between colonial officials such as Leach and the Burmese Thakin, ‘democracy’ took deeply contrasting meanings. There was intense contest between British and Burmese elites in the late colonial period, not just over a transition to self-rule but over the meaning of democracy itself, and political rivals used contrasting narratives as tools to outflank their opponents. In this chapter, I begin to trace conceptual contests in Myanmar history, focussing on specific coalitions of actors and the ways in which narratives of democracy were produced and contested. I draw on sources from the colonial period to ask, first, how Leach’s prominent colonial portrayal of progress toward the ‘Ocean of Democracy’ was produced, and, second, how it was challenged by key Burmese independence leaders. I trace the contest of dominant and counter-narratives of democracy amongst colonial and Burmese elites and expose the ways in which meanings attached to the word ‘democracy’ were used to advance political goals in the late colonial period. The first section traces the background of colonial officials, including F. Burton Leach, and the production of the ‘Ocean of Democracy’ narrative. The second section explores how this narrative relied on an assumption of the immaturity of Burmese political culture, portraying the Burmese under colonial rule as requiring the support and education of the British administration in order to build the institutions of democracy. The third section then describes the growth of the independence movement in the late colonial period and the works of key Thakin leaders, particularly Thakins Aung San, Nu and Kodaw Hmaing. I identify the counter-narratives which were prominent amongst Thakin leaders – and during their later roles in the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) – and the ways in which they challenged core features of British colonial interpretations. Where Burmese monarchs were portrayed as despotic, an alternate narrative presented the monarchy as democratic in its foundations. Where proponents of the colonial narrative portrayed the Burmese as politically immature, some in the independence movement emphasised the importance for democracy of a transfer of Buddhist ideas from ‘East’ to ‘West’. Where colonial officials such as Leach focussed attention on secular institutions and capacity building for self-government, within the independence movement, democracy centred on principles of self-rule, freedom from economic exploitation and Buddhist moral progress. There has been considerable scholarly attention on struggles between the British colonial administration and Burmese resistance in the final decades of the colonial period (Butwell 1969; Maung Maung 1969; Thant Myint-U 2004; Taylor 2009; Aung-Thwin 2011; Schober 2011; Turner 2014). Before the Second World War, the British held superiority in governance

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

57

and military power and this influenced the dynamics of contestation over self-rule. The rapid British suppression of the Saya San rebellion in 1921 is a striking example of this differential in military and government resources. The focus of this chapter, however, is not on the struggle for control over state power or resources in colonial Burma but rather on conceptual contests between British and Burmese elites during this period. Scholars of Myanmar history have illuminated conceptual contests both between colonial and Burmese elites, and amongst Burmese political actors. Aung-Thwin (2003; 2011) re-examines the official colonial narrative of the Saya San rebellion, unpacking the context within which it was produced and British colonial ‘production of knowledge’ surrounding it. The colonial narrative served to marginalise opposition and alternate interpretations of the rebellion. Turner (2014) meanwhile describes the ‘misreading’ between British colonial goals of ‘nation’ and ‘modernity’ and Burmese efforts to ‘save Buddhism’ in the early colonial period (ibid.: 3). Burmese subjects were created, and marginalised, by conceptual categories of ‘religion’ and ‘Buddhism’ which were constructed by the British colonial administration. Emphasising the importance of a Buddhist ‘mental culture’ or ‘moral universe’, Houtman (1999) and Walton (2017) describe the unfolding of conceptual frameworks through which Buddhists in Myanmar communicate, debate and think about politics and how these contrast with expectations of liberal democracy. These works are important in foregrounding how, along with overt struggles for state power or resources, concepts have also been sites of contestation in Burmese history. In these Burma studies works, however, there has been less explicit attention given to conceptual contests over the word ‘democracy’ in late colonial Burma and the way that narratives of democracy were increasingly used to privilege, or marginalise, the voices of different political actors. The language of democracy was not prominent in early social mobilisation in Burma in the twentieth century. Yet, in the final two decades of British colonial rule, democracy emerged as a site of contestation between colonial officials, such as Leach, and Burmese independence activists. Making sense of contemporary meanings of democracy in Myanmar – which I describe in the coming chapters – requires sensitivity to the conceptual contests of Myanmar’s past.

British colonial administration and the ‘Ocean of Democracy’ To situate Leach’s imagery of the ‘Ocean of Democracy’ and Burma’s progress toward it, we must trace through colonial constructions of the Burmese

58 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

monarchy and political culture and colonial notions of the obligations of British rule. In examining this narrative and the context in which it was produced, I use sources from a range of colonial officials, including the works of Leach. Leach was born in 1881 and spent 33 years of his working life in Burma. For 29 of those years, he was a member of the Civil Service, ultimately rising to the position of Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma. He then spent a further three years as Political Secretary to the Burma Chamber of Commerce (Leach 1945). I draw on Leach’s 1937 book The Future of Burma and his 1945 lecture at the Royal Society of Arts, ‘The Problem of Burma’. I also draw on the memoirs and published works of several prominent British contemporaries of Leach in the Civil Service in Burma, including H. FieldingHall, Maurice Collis and J.G. Scott (Shway Yoe 1963), who all spent decades working in colonial Burma and were influential in shaping popular colonial interpretations.1 I do not suggest that Leach and other colonial officials had identical views on Burmese culture or colonial policy, governance and democracy.2 Within the British colonial administration there were also overt critics of dominant colonial narratives, with officials and scholars such as J.S. Furnivall actively resisting popular British representations of Burma.3 Yet, while there was no singular British colonial meaning given to democracy, it is possible to identify the context and assumptions within which Leach’s narrative of progress toward an ‘Ocean of Democracy’ was produced. A cruel despot A first key element of British representations of Burma – and a foundation of later narratives of democracy in Burma – was of the cruel and hopelessly inadequate role of the late Burmese monarchy. In the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885, the British expeditionary forces defeated the Burmese army, captured the royal palace in Mandalay and then insisted that King Thibaw leave the city immediately – riding not on his royal elephant, but in a humble box cart (Maung Htin Aung 1967). Thibaw was then taken to India, living 1 Scott was 30 years older than Leach but their time living in Burma overlapped in the early years of the twentieth century. It also should be noted that while the works of Fielding-Hall and Scott do not address democracy directly, their construction of Burmese political culture and history is illuminating for understanding later British colonial representations of Burmese political culture. 2 For an example of disagreement over questions of religion in Burma, see the exchange between Collis and Leach following Collis’s lecture at the Royal Society of Arts in 1944 (Collis 1944: 472-473). 3 See Pham’s re-consideration of Furnivall’s legacy (Pham 2004).

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

59

the rest of his life there in exile. This ended more than seven centuries of rule by Burmese monarchs in the Ayeyawaddy valley and marked the beginning of a 63-year period of British colonial control over upper Burma. A variety of reasons are suggested for the British invasion of Mandalay in 1885 – most notably British concerns about increasingly close relations between the Burmese king and the French government. However, British officials also communicated the need to liberate the people of Upper Burma from the supposedly tyrannical rule of King Thibaw. At the time, British Chief Commissioner Fytche (1878: 256) argued that invasion could free the country from ‘the rank oppressive rule of rapacious and cruel Burmese viceroys’. Charles Crosthwaite (1912: 7), Chief Commissioner of Burma after the fall of Mandalay, even wondered if the British should have annexed Upper Burma earlier, as that would ‘have saved the people from some years of anarchy and great suffering’. This representation of the monarchy was clearly important for colonial strategy. Fielding-Hall (1906) recounted that after the fall of Mandalay, British soldiers – anxious to portray the cruelty of the monarch – used red sealing wax to put up ‘bloody’ handprints inside one of the palace rooms. Thant Myint-U’s (2004: 4) conclusion is apt, that ‘in British eyes […] [Thibaw] was a gin soaked tyrant, together with his wicked wife cruelly oppressing his people, […] oblivious of his people’s need for the sort of progress only a civilised government could provide’. 4 Some within the British army thus assumed that removing the monarch would result in a welcome by wider Burmese society. Instead, however, in the early years after the capture of Mandalay, the British army faced a widespread insurgency across the country. It was to be another five years before, as Crosthwaite (1912: 12) describes, ‘the last of the large gangs was dispersed, the leaders captured, and peace and security established’. For colonial officials a key element of the justification for colonisation – and later narratives of democracy – was the portrayal of Burmese monarchical leadership as ‘rapacious’ and ‘oppressive’. Immature political culture The British administration also portrayed a lack of maturity in Burmese political culture. In his work on the Saya San rebellion, Aung-Thwin (2003: 4 In his History of Burma, British colonial off icial G.E. Harvey sought to present a more romantic image of the Burmese kings (Harvey 1925). However, his description highlights the inability of Burmese kings to rebuild the unity of the Bagan period. See Phillips (2005) for more discussion of the work of Harvey.

60 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

401) identifies how colonial officials ‘managed and manipulated’ trial records in the prosecution of Saya San in order to portray the rebellion, and Burmese culture, in particular ways. Similarly, prominent memoirs and works of colonial officials constructed Burmese political culture as immature and ultimately unfertile soil for the growth of democracy. Reflecting on his meeting with King Thibaw before the fall of Mandalay, colonial official J.G. Scott (Shway Yoe 1963: 476) observed that Thibaw’s ‘easy-going indolence’ was reflective of all Burmese. The ‘tawdriness’ of the King’s Hall of Meeting in Mandalay, Scott went on, demonstrated the Burmese national characteristic of ‘carelessness’ (ibid.: 473). ‘A Burman, they say, never likes to finish anything,’ he concluded (ibid.: 462). Supposedly objective colonial processes also reinforced this portrayal in the early colonial period. A government census report from 1901 described Burmese people as ‘unbusinesslike, irresponsible, perfectly incapable of sustained effort, content with what can be gained by a minimum of toil’ (Census of India 1901, cited in: Sarkisyanz 1965: 139). Slightly more favourably, Fielding-Hall (1906: 28) later saw the Burmese as like ‘children who had not yet been to school […] [and] full of good intentions, full of great weaknesses, full of the faults of childhood’. Ultimately, because of Burma’s supposedly long isolation, many British observers considered Burmese notions of governance to be inferior to their own. Failing to recognize the efforts of Burmese monarchs in the nineteenth century toward governance reform, Fielding-Hall (ibid.: 27) observed, ‘all the foreign influences were conspicuously wanting and as all new ideas come from without, the state of society remained very primitive’.5 According to Fielding-Hall (ibid.), this immaturity then left Burmese society – as opposed to the more ‘mature’ Western society – vulnerable to exploitation by dictators. It was Western ideas which would stimulate political progress, not only in Burma but throughout ‘the East’. Similar to Fielding-Hall, Leach (1945: 410-411) later described the Burmese as ‘easy going’ and with a ‘natural intelligence’ but with ‘serious weaknesses’, including ‘militant nationalism’, ‘graft and corruption’ and an ‘ignorance and lack of interest in foreign affairs’. Therefore, for British proponents of this colonial narrative, the solution for the ‘primitive’ society6 was to train the Burmese in modern self-governance. 5 Fielding-Hall (1906) also explained the immature nature of Burmese political culture as a result of the supposed dominance of feminine tendencies in Burmese society and underdevelopment of the masculinity required for nations to flourish. This reflected popular notions of masculinity and nationhood in the early twentieth century which were inspired through popular works such as the H.G. Wells novel The Time Machine (1895). 6 For the colonial administration, an important perceived obstacle to democratisation in Burma was the role of religion in politics. Schober (2011: 5) argues that the British colonial

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

61

Fielding-Hall (1906) earlier argued that the Burmese needed to become a ‘people at school’, learning the ways of the West.7 A significant part of this training was in the capacity to build and follow systematic policy – as opposed to a more informal, personalised form of politics. Leach (1937: 142) later suggested in The Future of Burma that what is essential […] is that the most able men in the country should devote their time and their energies to the art of government, should put aside the petty intrigues and the personal recriminations which have unfortunately been a marked characteristic of Burmese politics in the past, and should endeavour to evolve a policy and follow out the principles of that policy.

In other words, the immature and personalised politics in Burma8 needed to be replaced by adherence to formal policies and institutions of governance.9 In the coming chapters, I also describe a similar emphasis amongst contemporary donor agencies from Europe, North America and Australia. The focus on the institutional development of Burma’s democracy contrasted significantly with the expectations of key leaders emerging from the Thakin movement, who – as I describe in more detail in the next section – sought change beyond the gradual granting of limited Burmese representation. For Leach and his contemporaries, democracy required that the Burmese learn the ways of ‘the West’, and this education was the responsibility or ‘burden’ that the British must bear. administration – influenced by Western post-Enlightenment political theory – insisted on ‘secularising politics [in Burma] and dislodging it from a Buddhist worldview that had, until then, encompassed it’. Yet, paradoxically, British prohibitions against Burmese political gatherings in the early part of the twentieth century forced political organising into the religious realm. See Schober (2011). 7 It is important to note that capacity building for democratic self-government was something that emerged as a goal only late in British colonial policy in Burma. In his Colonial Policy and Practice, colonial public servant and writer John Furnivall (1948) describes the period after 1923 – and the implementation of the dyarchy system – as the beginning of colonial efforts toward ‘political democracy’. 8 This critique was also reflected by some Burmese scholars of the time. This is most obvious in Ba Khaing’s 1938 work The Political History of Myanma (Zöllner 2006), where he laments the condition of Burmese politics and the role of political parties as a vehicle for individual ambitions rather than systematic ideology. For further discussion, see Walton (2019). 9 This is not to suggest, however, that Leach had a rigid view that Burma should adopt an ‘exact copy’ of British institutions. He suggested in his 1945 lecture, ‘The Problem of Burma’, that he doubted that adoption of an ‘exact copy’ of British institutions ‘would be a good thing for other countries, especially Eastern ones’ (Leach 1945: 417).

62 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

The ‘White Man’s Burden’ The British administration had overarching economic goals in Burma. Through British control of various industries, including oil, mining and timber along with signif icant economic migration from British India, foreign companies and migrants prospered. British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain (1965 [1897]: 141) – and later Prime Minister – made the motivations for colonisation clear when he said that the British ‘Foreign Office and the Colonial Office are chiefly engaged in finding new markets and in defending old ones. […] [I]t is not too much to say that commerce is the greatest of all political interests.’ As I will describe in the next section, independence leaders, Aung San in particular, reacted against the perceived economic exploitation of the Burmese by foreigners, and formed notions of democracy to counteract the impact of capitalism. Yet this was also a period of growing recognition within the British government of imperial responsibility, taking up the ‘White Man’s Burden’ to support social progress in colonies in ‘the East’. Analysing British colonial policy in Burma in 1947, American scholar Cecil Hobbs (1947: 113) observed that a key factor was the progress of ‘liberal thought in England itself’. Along with growing local agitation for self-rule across British India, the desire to foster social progress led the British to introduce new governance institutions in Burma. Beginning in 1923, the British formed a system of ‘dyarchy’. A legislative council was established – where 77 out of 103 members were popularly elected by the Burmese public – and some ministries were allowed to come under the administration of locally elected Burmese members. Meanwhile, other ministries deemed too sensitive to be locally controlled – especially related to defence and foreign affairs – remained under the direct control of the British governor. This process of ‘constitutionalism’ (Maung Maung Gyi 1983) was seen almost exclusively as a transfer of institutional capacity from ‘West’ to ‘East’. Fielding-Hall (1906: 46) could hardly have been more direct when he earlier said, ‘what Rome did for the Western world, we are doing for the East. The people must come into our school, and there learn what England learned long ago.’ The transfer of democratic capacity from ‘West’ to ‘East’ was supported by Leach’s notion of democracy as being an inevitable point toward which all countries were moving – though at different rates. ‘Even the East’, Leach (1937) suggested, could be brought into the ‘Ocean of Democracy’ by learning from Western countries. However, despite the supposedly inevitable flow of the East into the ‘Ocean of Democracy’, some colonial administrators of the period also saw deep shortcomings in colonial strategy. Perhaps most prominent was British

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

63

Civil Service official and then ‘pro-Burmese’ scholar J.S. Furnivall 10 who was overtly supportive of Burmese nationalism and self-government, and later became an advisor to the new independent Government of Burma.11 British colonial official Eric Blair – who would later take the pen name George Orwell – was also particularly strident in his critique of colonialism in Burma. He wrote, ‘I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing. […] Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British’ (Orwell 1936). Yet colonial officials who had more enthusiasm for the Empire also expressed doubts about British ability to ‘school’ the people of Burma. Early in the twentieth century, Fielding-Hall (1906) lamented that [w]e have introduced new ways, new thoughts, new faiths – but the old live. And though we are masters, yet is our power limited. If we move, it can be only in the ancient ways. Charm we never so wisely, the East shuts her ears and goes her own way. (Ibid.: 51)

Then nearing the end of the Second World War, Leach (1945: 418) argued that ‘the Burmese temperament and their inexperience of world affairs […] are not going to make the task of self-government easy’. Despite all the resources of the British colonial administration there was some internal recognition that they were failing to construct the constitutional democracy they had hoped for.12 The ‘Ocean of Democracy’ narrative could be produced by Leach based on a particular set of assumptions about challenges, visions and strategies about Burma’s politics and its potential democratisation. The immature Burmese could become a modern nation and democracy through learning about modern institutions and values – things that England had learned ‘long ago’ (Fielding-Hall 1906). This narrative not only constructed a particular plot about modernisation but also served to position different characters within the story. Leach’s description of an ‘Ocean of Democracy’ where the ‘East’ is in the backwaters and the ‘West’ is in the centre, clearly positions 10 Amidst economic turmoil and the rise of entrepreneurs and money lenders from other parts of British India, Furnivall argued in 1948 that the capitalist forces of British colonialism exacerbated racial divisions in Burmese society, leading to a lack of common social will (Furnivall 1948). 11 Furnivall did not, however, dismiss British ideals of governance as an example for Burma. See Pham (2004) for a detailed examination of Furnivall and his critiques of colonialism. 12 Steinberg (2001) further suggests that the pattern of colonial administrative control of Burma fostered an authoritarian rather than democratic form of Burmese leadership.

64 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

British actors, rather than Burmese ones, as having authority to control the meaning of democracy. Fielding-Hall’s (1906) description of the Burmese as a ‘people at school’ positioned Burmese political rivals as immature and incapable of self-rule. The use of this narrative served to reinforce the need for British colonial power in Burma to be maintained in order to foster self-governing institutions. Yet, while Leach’s interpretations in 1937 were prominent within the British colonial administration in Burma, amongst emerging independence leaders distinct counter-narratives also emerged.

Burmese independence leaders and counter-narratives The early twentieth century saw the beginning of a new Burmese movement seeking independence from British colonial rule. By the late 1930s, there were three key organisations within the Burmese movement for independence – Dr Ba Maw’s Sinyetha (Poor Man’s) Party, Saw’s Myochit (Patriot) Party and the younger Thakin movement with Aung San emerging as its leader. The Thakin ultimately gained ascendancy and formed the AFPFL in 1945 – the party that would dominate the next fifteen years of Burmese politics. This section focusses on the Thakin and AFPFL leaders and identifies alternative narratives of democracy that emerged from within the movement. As the Thakin joined the Freedom Bloc 13 in 1939, Aung San declared that the goal of the Bloc was ‘democratic freedom’ (Aung San 1993a [1945]). Yet narratives of democracy within this movement were defined largely in opposition to British interpretations such as Leach’s ‘Ocean of Democracy’. Where Burmese monarchs had been portrayed as despotic by British colonial officials such as Chief Commissioner Fytche, an alternate narrative presented the monarchy as democratic in its foundations. Where proponents of Fielding-Hall’s notions of a ‘people at school’ saw a transfer of capacity from ‘West’ to ‘East’, some in the independence movement emphasised an everyday democracy within Burmese culture. And finally, as opposed to a focus on secular institutions and capacity building for self-government, proponents of the independence movement narrative emphasised self-rule and Buddhist moral progress as key foundations of a democratic nation. In this section, I explore the reaction of independence movement leaders to the British colonial narratives of democracy and the diverse influences they drew on to construct alternate storylines. In particular, I focus on the 13 The Freedom Bloc was a grouping of organisations and political parties including Dobama Asiayone, the Sinyetha (Poor Man’s) Party and the All-Burma Students Association.

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

65

English- and Burmese-language works of Thakins Aung San, Nu and Kodaw Hmaing and on documents from key independence organisations such as Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association) and the AFPFL. British colonial officials had appropriated the Burmese word thakin (‘master’) and compelled Burmese people to address all British residents using this title. However, in the 1930s, a group of Burmese activist students began to re-appropriate the word, referring to themselves and each other as ‘master’. By shifting the accepted use of the word, they challenged the colonial social hierarchy and gave the message, as Aung San Suu Kyi (1991: 130) reflects in her historical works, that ‘the Burmese, too, were a race of masters, not slaves’. Thus, in considering the process of democratisation and independence, the Thakin movement recognised the power of language in framing relative positions of power. This twisting of the word thakin portrayed Burmese activists and leaders – as opposed to the British – as the true ‘masters’ of their country. It would be misleading, however, to characterise the Thakin movement as one that had always valued ‘democracy’. Key independence movement leaders coming out of the Thakin movement in the 1930s – such as Aung San and Nu – while later considered to be democrats, were not always consistent proponents of democracy. In his 1935 inaugural speech at the Student Union, Nu said that, ‘I dislike democracy, where much time is wasted in persuading the majority and in trying to get the consent of the majority. Democracy is good in name only’ (Butwell 1969: 19). Meanwhile, Aung San had been a founding member of the Burmese Communist Party and also dabbled with fascist thought during his training with Japanese forces. However, the experience of the pre-war strikes and protests and then Japanese occupation of Burma during World War II, eventually led key figures, including Nu and Aung San, toward democratic thought (Butwell 1969; Houtman 1999). The turning tide of the war in Burma and the shift in military allegiance toward the British also incentivised this turn by Nu and Aung San to concepts of democracy. By the time that the AFPFL Party Manifesto was finalised in May 1945, it was agreed by the very broad AFPFL constituency that Burma should have a Westminster-style democratic constitution, including basic freedoms of speech and association (AFPFL 1946). While multiple political narratives circulated within the independence movement at different times, it is possible to trace out a democratic counter-narrative that developed in opposition to the colonial storyline of democratisation and self-rule. It is crucial to also recognise the shifts in communication across different junctures in the struggle for independence. My primary argument in this chapter is of a dialectical relationship between British colonial officials

66 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

and the Thakin – that meanings of democracy were forged in reaction to political opponents. Yet, at certain junctures, independence movement leaders sought to pragmatically reconcile relations with the British and drew on the word ‘democracy’ as a point of agreement. As the Burmese rebelled against the Japanese occupation and sought support from the British, the AFPFL leaders wrote the chapter, ‘Towards better mutual understanding and greater co-operation between the British and the Peoples of Burma’. In this chapter they argue – with almost a replication of Leach’s ‘Ocean of Democracy’ imagery – that ‘Europe is the centre of gravity in this world […] [and] Burma shall not be left out of the world-wide sweep of democracy and progress’ (AFPFL 1946). Where necessary the imagery of democracy could be adapted to be more conciliatory. The following section, however, emphasises the reactions within the Burmese independence movement against portrayal of an ‘Ocean of Democracy’. The Burmese origins of democracy One key reaction by independence leaders – against the colonial portrayal of a ‘despotic’ monarchy and immature Burmese political culture – was to establish the Burmese, rather than European, origins of democracy. This did not mean, however, that conceptual contests between colonial authorities and Burmese independence leaders were between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ meanings of democracy. Burma’s independence leaders in the 1930s and 1940s drew on a range of Burmese and international sources in constructing the problems and visions related to democracy. The Nagani (Red Dragon) Book Club was founded by Burmese activists, including Thakin Nu, a young student activist at the time, who would later become the first Prime Minister of Independent Burma. The book club translated and published over a hundred books and was based on the model of Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club of London (Money 2014) – particularly emphasising left-wing and revolutionary texts from the West. The main objective of the Club ‘was to be free of British rule and in order to do this they would have to revolutionise the minds of the people’ (ibid.: 212). Within the Book Club, the Irish struggle for independence was closely studied (Maung Htin Aung 1967).14 Out of the 100 books published, 21 were about Irish revolutionary Michael Collins (Aung San Suu Kyi 1991: 132) and, at 14 As an intellectual who was also willing to sacrif ice himself for his country, the work of Philippine nationalist writer José Rizal was also prominent in the Nagani Book Club. See Money (2014).

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

67

times, the Burmese independence activists even referred to themselves as the ‘Irish of the East’ (Money 2014: 212).15 There was also significant interest from the Burmese independence movement in the rise of Japan’s influence in Asia. 16 By the late 1930s, Thakin Aung San and other Burmese activists – including Thakin Shu Maung (later known as General Ne Win) – had decided to look to Japan for military support in removing the British colonial rulers (Maung Htin Aung 1967). The growing independence movement in colonial Burma was not simply an insular nationalist movement – where ‘foreign influences’ were ‘lacking’ (Fielding-Hall 1906) – but drew on political thought from Irish revolutionaries, the Fabian Society and imperial Japan.17 The various reactions against British narratives of democracy in the late colonial period were not traditional or primordial ones. Yet, on the other hand, in resisting the dominant narrative of democracy in the colonial period, independence leaders also drew on counter-interpretations of Burmese history. Fielding-Hall and Scott had stressed the ‘primitive’ nature of the Burmese monarchy, yet Burmese independence leaders began to re-interpret Burmese history and to emphasise the Buddhist origins of democracy. Burmese political actors had long been drawing on Buddhist language and ideas as a source of legitimacy (Schober 2011). However, the independence movement and its opposition to colonial rule brought new interpretations and the overt use of the vocabulary of ‘democracy’.18 Amidst reinterpretations of Buddhist teaching within the independence movement, of particular importance were new reflections of kingship. In 1938, near the height of independence movement activism – and a year after Leach published The Future of Burma – the famous Burmese writer Thakin Kodaw Hmaing wrote Thakin Tika (On Thakins). The book was a reinterpretation of the Aggañña Sutta, a foundational Buddhist story of the first king, Mahasammata. Kodaw Hmaing sought to make new links between democracy and the Burmese institution of monarchy (Walton 2017). According to the Aggañña Sutta text, there was a time when ancient society began to realise that they needed to be protected from their own 15 For further analysis of the background of the term ‘Irish of the East’, see Zöllner (2012b). 16 When cinemas had first opened in colonial Rangoon in the early twentieth century some of the early films were of Japanese soldiers defeating the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 (Thant Myint-U 2004). 17 A prominent advocate of Fabianism at the time was J.S. Furnivall. See Pham (2005). 18 This time of reinterpretation of Burmese culture and traditions in the 1930s is also seen in the emergence of the khit san sarpay literature (including famous authors such as Theippan Maung Wa and Zawgyi) which aimed literally to be ‘testing the age’.

68 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

base nature, so a king was popularly chosen by the people (Walshe 1995: 413). Mahasammata, which literally means ‘great honoured one’, was known as ‘The People’s Choice’ (ibid.: 413). In turn, society voluntarily decided to give 10 percent of their yield to support the king (ibid.: 413). Thus, for Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, the monarchical form of government was interpreted as arising through a social contract. The people chose a leader whom they then supported through giving a portion of their yield. The end goal was to create what Thant Myint-U (2004: 56) describes as ‘a peaceful ordered society conducive to religious activity’. As well as being bound by this social contract, the power of the monarch could be kept in check through both a parliament (or hluttaw) consisting of government ministers (or wun gyi) and the institution of the Buddhist order of monks (or sangha), who could appeal to the king in certain circumstances. The period of Burmese monarchy was not ‘cruel’, as the British had portrayed, but rather it was on a trajectory toward a form of democracy. ‘Democracy’, then, was constructed within the independence movement, and works such as Thakin Tika, as ‘a leaf torn from the book of Buddhism’ (Dharma-Vijaya 1953: 5). Furthermore, if ‘genuine’ democracy was in fact of Burmese origins, then it was the ‘duty’ of Burmese people to present Buddhist ideas to the British so that they could see ‘the un-wisdom of enslaving nations to satisfy their ambitions’ (Dharmapâla 1933: 348, cited in: Sarkisyanz 1965: 125). They could ‘modify the cruel nature of British imperialism’ (ibid.). Reversing the colonial perception of a transfer of capacity from West to East, Burmese leader Chan Htoon (1952: 33, cited in: Sarkisyanz 1965: 204) later said, Buddhism is the ‘only ideology which can give peace to the world. […] Western countries are longing for Buddhism now.’ In other words, where Leach saw an ‘Ocean of Democracy’ with Burma in the backwaters, the independence movement saw Buddhist Burma at the centre. Reacting against the British portrayal of the Burmese culture as immature, independence activists saw democratic principles as being inherent within Buddhist teaching. As I described in the previous section, for proponents of the colonial narrative, democratic progress entailed a shift away from ‘traditional’ Burmese concepts and practices. Yet, for some independence leaders, emphasising that democracy was already inherent in Buddhist thought was crucial. This also transgressed the largely secular foundations of the British colonial narrative of democracy. The spheres of Buddhist practice and democratic action were not separate, as was assumed in many colonial works, but merged. As Turner suggests (2014), resisting the colonial narratives of democracy meant challenging the boundaries – constructed by the colonial government – between a putatively secular ‘democracy’ and Buddhism as ‘religion’.

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

69

This is not to suggest that Buddhism was used only instrumentally by anti-colonial activist organisations. Turner (2014: 3) makes the compelling argument that much Burmese activist mobilisation in the early twentieth century was toward ‘saving Buddhism’. There was concern amongst many Burmese that the social and political changes in the country pointed toward a deterioration of the sasana, the teachings and practice of Buddhism. Toward the end of the colonial period, however, with the emergence of the Dobama Asiayone, the Thakin movement and, ultimately, the AFPFL, the language of independence and democracy became more prominent. Goals of independence, democracy and renewal of Theravada Buddhism became closely intertwined for many Burmese activists and political leaders. Democracy and self-rule A crucial element of this counter-narrative was the reaction against the colonial administration’s gradualist institutional approach to democratisation. Democratic freedom and independence were inseparable for many Burmese activists in the late colonial period – with this inseparability both conceptual and linguistic with the Burmese word lutlatye meaning both ‘freedom’ and ‘independence’. Preceded by religious and social associations, such as the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), by the 1920s a set of more overtly political and anti-British organisations became prominent.19 The General Council of Burmese Associations emerged out of the YMBA in 1920, taking a strongly anti-colonial stance, though it quickly fractured over differences in strategy.20 Then, in 1930, the Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association)21 was formed. In particular, the Dobama organisation 19 In some ways there was a paradox within the formation of these new social organisations. Their aim was to ‘revive national cultures and institutions’ (Maung Htin Aung 1967: 101) and resist British colonial influence. Yet the medium for this was the adoption of European forms of social organisation. For example, the Young Men’s Buddhist Association was designed on the model of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), which was popular in England. 20 In this chapter I trace the urban elite activism of the Thakin movement. Yet it is also important to recognise rural resistance movements, including the wunthanu ‘nationalist’ movement during the late colonial period as well. As Aung-Thwin (2012) argues, rural resistance was characterised by the British as being traditional, superstitious and focussed on restoration of the monarchy. This narrative of rural resistance served to minimise the aspirations of rural movements toward political reform in late colonial Burma, and their connection to urban movements. In this chapter I trace the narratives of the young, urban elite Thakin but this was not the only strand of resistance in late colonial Burma. 21 The term Dobama (‘Our Burma’) was first used as a rallying cry in 1930 during riots against Indian dock workers. Later that year, the term was taken up by student activists who sought to

70 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

sought to question the colonial approach of gradual institution building for democracy. ‘Burma is still unfree. And yet our imperialist rulers have the cheek to declare that they are for democracy,’ the organisation argued in the ‘Manifesto of the Dobama Asiayone’ (Dobama Asiayone 1939, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 514). The British had, as I have described, made efforts to develop a new constitution and the institution of ‘dyarchy’ in Burma, which allowed for local autonomy in some areas. Yet the Dobama Asiayone stressed that British constitutionalism was not a step toward self-governing democracy. ‘How can it be so’, the Manifesto asked, ‘when it confers dictatorial powers upon the Governor who comes from a land eight thousand miles away? It is indeed a far cry from democracy’ (ibid.: 514). This conflict of strategy toward democratisation created, in the analysis of Maung Maung Gyi (1983), a ‘race’ during the 1930s and 1940s between the constitutionalism of the British – focussing on the gradual building of formal institutions for democratic self-governance – and the democratic freedom sought by the independence movement. Both sides agreed that Burmese self-rule was the long-term goal, yet the rate and nature of the transition was in dispute. The British administration supported a slow transition based around institutional development, while the nationalist democracy narrative of the independence movement saw immediate self-rule as the crux of ‘democracy’. In 1945, Aung San was scathing of the gradual progress of the system of dyarchy. Even after the broadening of dyarchy in 1937, he said that ‘the bureaucracy remained in control, though more liberal and greatly camouflaged, behind a thin democratic façade’ (Aung San 1993a [1945]: 81). The gradual building of institutions was insufficient – just a ‘thin democratic façade’ (ibid.). The notion of democratic freedom was inseparable from self-rule. Democracy, freedom from economic exploitation and Buddhist moral progress Toward the end of the colonial period – with the formation of the AFPFL – the independence movement leaders began to more clearly articulate a vision of democracy. In 1947, in his address at the AFPFL convention in Rangoon, Aung San explicitly addressed what he described as a ‘true democracy’. He emphasised the importance of the relationship between the state and the people, saying that true democracy was ‘[o]nly when the “state” is there by the people’s consent, only when the “state” identifies itself with the question British power in Burma and the colonial democracy promotion approach of gradual institution building.

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

71

people’s interest in theory as well as practice’ (Aung San 1993b [1947]: 153). In contrast to ‘true’ democracy, Aung San (ibid.: 153) argued that there was a ‘sham’ democracy where [t]he words ‘people’ and ‘democracy’ and so on are used freely, but not sincerely. They are only catchwords to hoodwink the people into placing power in the hands of those who are supposed to use that power in the interest of the people, but who eventually use it in the interests of the ruling classes against the interest of the people.

Self-rule was crucial to meanings of democracy drawn on by Aung San and other independence leaders – not the British monarch as the sovereign but ‘the people as the real sovereign’ (ibid.: 155). Yet Aung San’s insistence on true democracy was also a reaction to the perception of an unfettered capitalist agenda within British notions of democracy. He argued in the same speech that ‘some are imperfect democracies concealing in democratic guise the dictatorship of the capitalist class’ (ibid.: 155). The experience of British colonial economic exploitation, combined with British rhetoric of democracy, led Aung San to align his own notions of democracy against the ‘capitalist class’, with democracy even being a potential precursor to socialism. In the early stages of independence, Aung San envisaged that a true democracy in Burma would not be ‘entirely free of capitalism’, yet it should not be ‘capitalistic’; democracy rather is ‘somewhere betwixt and between’ (ibid.). Nu was similarly sceptical of the liberal democracy of Western governments. In his 1940 ‘Political Dictionary’, written with Hla Pe (Hla Pe & Nu 1940, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 29), the entry for ‘democracy’ states that ‘the government in France, England and United States is not democratic; rather it is capitalist government’. Beyond self-rule and restraints on capitalism, opposition to the British colonial narrative of democracy saw independence leaders emphasise Buddhist notions of moral progress. Burma scholars have long traced connections between Theravada Buddhist concepts and particular patterns in Burmese politics (Sarkisyanz 1965; Maung Maung Gyi 1983; Houtman 1999; Turner 2014). In particular, several authors have highlighted the ethical focus on personal motivations in politics over outcomes or institutions – with Buddhist-inspired values of selflessness and sedana (‘benevolence’) bringing personal moral progress to the foreground (Walton 2017; Wells 2019). This emphasis is also seen in the Thakin leaders as they opposed institution-centric and liberal capitalist meanings of democracy amongst British colonial officials such as Leach.

72 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

It needs to be acknowledged, however, that Aung San and Nu, as central leaders in the independence movement in the 1940s, drew on Buddhist concepts in contrasting ways. Nu was overt and public in his practice of Buddhism and in his use of Buddhist teachings in describing democracy, while Aung San was more understated (Houtman 1999). Beyond such differences, ‘true’ democratisation was considered by many of the Thakin to involve moral progress, as well as simply institutional progress. Edward Law Yone was a journalist and editor of the English-language newspaper The Nation and also a friend of Nu. In 1961, in his introduction to Nu’s play, The Wages of Sin, Law Yone (1961, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 65) reflected back on Nu’s conception of democracy. U Nu came close to quoting the Bible when he gave his concept of democracy: It is not he who says Lord, Lord who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who doeth the word of my Father. It is not everyone who says Democracy, Democracy that will find it, but he that doeth what democracy enjoins. […] [D]emocracy had not failed, but those professing it had failed democracy. In particular those who had preached it constantly had failed to practice it.

For Nu, while many people may talk about democracy, it was those who fulfilled the obligations of democracy who were most genuine. ‘[H]e that doeth what democracy enjoins’ will find democracy. In this sense, Nu’s ‘concept of democracy’ had moral foundations in Buddhist notions of selflessness, that went far beyond the institutional development emphasised by the British. As described in the first section of this chapter, the British colonial administration emphasised a secular constitutional approach to democracy, through institutional initiatives such as the dyarchy. Yet independence leaders reacted against this by foregrounding the personal and moral commitment to democracy. There were thus multiple, at times overlapping, arguments put forward by the Thakin against British notions of democracy and capitalism. On one flank there was the socialist critique that unfettered capitalism is incompatible with ‘true democracy’. On another flank, there was a critique inspired by Buddhist teaching which focussed on the ways that liberal democracy and capitalism undermined moral goals of selflessness and benevolence. For the Thakin leaders of the late colonial period, resisting the British narrative of an ‘Ocean of Democracy’ meant drawing inspiration from political movements around the world, yet also reframing democracy as being uniquely Burmese. Thus, the contest between meanings of democracy

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

73

was not, as Leach portrays, one of ‘traditional’ against ‘modern’. These narratives were developed in Burma through a fusing of internal and external influences. The colonial administration controlled the circles of government policy, yet activists within the independence movement sought to establish a meaning of democracy that could challenge the assumptions of the British. Where the narrative of progress to an ‘Ocean of Democracy’ positioned the Burmese as being incapable of ushering in democracy without the assistance of the British, an alternate narrative positioned the independence movement leaders and Burmese Buddhists themselves as having unique knowledge and insight about how democracy should function.

Conclusion The late colonial period was a period of growing tension between independence movement leaders such as the Thakin, and British colonial officials such as Leach. Amidst the contest over self-rule, there were also conceptual struggles between the Thakin and British government elites. For the Thakin leaders, resistance to the British notions of progress to the ‘Ocean of Democracy’ led to the emergence of alternate narratives of democracy. Narratives were used to promote particular constructions of problems and solutions, but they were also employed to position and outmanoeuvre other actors. British colonial narratives – of a cruel despotic Burmese monarchy, an immature political culture and the White Man’s Burden to school the East about democracy – were a mechanism for positioning Burmese leaders as incapable of mature political leadership and unable to contribute to the country’s transition to democracy. Members of the British colonial administration were the central actors in the story of democracy – drawing ‘the East’ into the ‘Ocean of Democracy’. For their part, independence movement leaders constructed themselves as the only morally legitimate democratic voices in the country. They emphasised the Burmese and Buddhist origins of democracy, democracy as self-rule and ‘true’ (as opposed to ‘sham’) democracy containing capitalism and encouraging moral progress. When Burma finally gained its independence in 1948, and former Thakin took positions of leadership in the country, what happened to these narratives of democracy? The next chapter explores crucial examples of conceptual contests between the AFPFL leaders, key members and supporters of the Tatmadaw (the armed forces of Myanmar) and leaders of the emergent democracy movement during the decades after independence.

74 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

References AFPFL. 1946. From Fascist Bondage to New Democracy: The New Burma in the New World. Rangoon: Nay Win Kyi Press. Aung San. 1993a [1945]. ‘Address delivered at the meeting of the East and West Association held on 29th August 1945, at the City Hall of Rangoon’. In J. Silverstein (ed.), The Political Legacy of Aung San. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications. 77-93. Aung San. 1993b [1947]. ‘Bogyoke Aung San’s address at the convention held at the Jubilee Hall, Rangoon on the 23rd May, 1947’. In J. Silverstein (ed.), The Political Legacy of Aung San. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications. 151-161. Aung San Suu Kyi. 1991. Freedom from Fear. London: Penguin. Aung-Thwin, M. 2003. ‘Genealogy of a rebellion narrative: Law, ethnology and culture in colonial Burma’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34 (3): 393-419. Aung-Thwin, M. 2011. The Return of the Galon King: History, Law and Rebellion in Colonial Burma. Athens: Ohio University Press. Aung-Thwin, M. 2012. ‘Recovering peasant politics in colonial Burma: Orientalism, rebellion and the law’. Journal of Comparative Law 7 (2): 39-59. Blum, F., Trotier, F., and Zöllner, H.-B. 2010. ‘In their own voice: Democracy as perceived in Burma/Myanmar, 1921-2010’. Working Paper 14. University of Passau. Butwell, R. 1969. U Nu of Burma. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chamberlain, J. 1965 [1897]. ‘Foreign and colonial speeches by the Rt. Honourable J. Chamberlain M.P. 1897’. In W.H.B. Court, British Economic History, 1870-1914: Commentary and Documents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 141-144. Chan Htoon. 1952. ‘Causes which led to the enactment of the Bill’. The Light of the Dhamma 1 (1). Collis, M. 1944. ‘The Achievement of Burma’. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 92 (4671): 465-473. Crosthwaite, C. 1912. The Pacification of Burma. London: E. Arnold. Dharma-Vijaya. 1953. (Triumph of Righteousness) or the Revolt in the Temple. Washington, DC: Colombo. Fielding-Hall, H. 1906. A People at School. London: Macmillan. Furnivall, J.S. 1948. Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fytche, A. 1878. Burma Past and Present with Personal Reminiscences of the Country. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. Harvey, G.E. 1925. History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824, the Beginning of the English Conquest. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Hobbs, C. 1947. ‘Nationalism in British colonial Burma’. The Journal of Asian Studies 6 (2): 113-121. Houtman, G. 1999. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Leach, F.B. 1937. The Future of Burma. Rangoon: British Burma Press. Leach, F.B. 1945. ‘The Problem of Burma’. Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 93 (4695): 409-418. Maung Htin Aung. 1967. A History of Burma. New York: Columbia University Press. Maung Maung. 1969. Burma and General Ne Win. London: Asia Publishing House. Maung Maung Gyi. 1983. Burmese Political Values: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarianism. New York: Praeger. Money, J. 2014. ‘Lost in translation: An exploration of political writing during anti-imperial struggles in Burma in the late 1930s, with a particular emphasis on works of translation’. Linguistics and Literature Studies 2 (7): 211-215.

Toward the ‘Ocean of Democr ac y’?

75

Orwell, G. 1936. ‘Shooting an elephant’. London: Penguin UK. Pham, J. 2004. ‘Ghost hunting in colonial Burma: Nostalgia, paternalism and the thoughts of J.S. Furnivall’. South East Asia Research 12 (2): 237-268. Pham, J. 2005. ‘J.S. Furnivall and Fabianism: Reinterpreting the “plural society” in Burma’. Modern Asian Studies 39 (2): 321-348. Phillips, A. 2005. ‘Romance and tragedy in Burmese history: A reading of G.E. Harvey’s The History of Burma’. SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3 (1): 1-26. Sarkisyanz, E. 1965. Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution. The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Schober, J. 1997. ‘Buddhist just rule and Burmese national culture: State patronage of the Chinese tooth relic in Myanmar’. History of Religions 36 (3): 218-243. Schober, J. 2011. Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Shway Yoe. 1963. The Burman: His Life and Notions. New York: W.W. Norton Company. Steinberg, D.I., 2001. Burma: the state of Myanmar. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Taylor, R.H. 2009. The State in Myanmar. Singapore: NUS Press. Thant Myint-U. 2004. The Making of Modern Burma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, A. 2014. Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Walshe, M. (trans.) 1995. ‘Aggañña Sutta: On Knowledge of Beginnings’. In M. Walshe (ed.), The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Dīgha Níkāy. Boston: Wisdom Publications. 407-415. Walton, M.J. 2017. Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walton, M.J., 2019. Containing the self-interested individual: moral scepticism of political parties in Myanmar. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 38(3), pp. 337-357. Wells, T. 2019. ‘Narrative and elucidating the concept of democracy: The case of Myanmar’s activists and democratic leaders’. Democratization 26 (2): 190-207. Zöllner, H.-B. 2012a. The Beast and the Beauty: The History of the Conflict between the Military and Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, 1988-2011, Set in a Global Context. Berlin: Regiospectra. Zöllner, H.-B. 2012b. ‘Material on eight books on Ireland’. Working Paper 10:20. Myanmar Literature Project. University of Passau. https://www.burmalibrary.org/sites/burmalibrary.org/files/ obl/docs22/WP-10-20-Eight_Books_on_Ireland-red.pdf. Last accessed 28 November 2019. Zöllner, H.-B. (ed.) 2006. ‘Material on Ba Khaing: Political History of Myanma’. Myanmar Literature Project Working Paper No. 10:5. University of Passau. https://www.burmalibrary.org/sites/ burmalibrary.org/files/obl/docs11/mlp10.05-op.pdf. Last accessed 12 January 2021.

4

Burma after independence From moral to ‘disciplined’ democracy Abstract By examining other examples of conceptual contest over the meaning of democracy in Myanmar’s history, the fourth chapter follows through the periods of parliamentary and military rule in the twentieth century, and then through the recent transition to democracy. This highlights how key conceptual contests in Myanmar’s history informed the contrasting ways democracy is understood and communicated amongst activists and democratic leaders today. Keywords: Burma, U Nu, independence, Tatmadaw, socialist, disciplined democracy

Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, British colonial resources in Southeast Asia were exhausted and the Burmese movement for independence gained momentum. After negotiations in London, British Prime Minister Attlee finally conceded that the British would grant Burma independence in 1948. The AFPFL convincingly won general elections in 1947 – to determine the composition of the future government of Burma – and Aung San was thrust into national leadership. Ironically though, while resisting British colonial rule, the formal institutions adopted in the new 1947 Constitution were largely structured around the British Westminster ‘prototype’ (Maung Maung Gyi 1983: 87). This chapter examines the period from Burma’s independence until the first political and economic liberalisations under the Thein Sein government from 2011. I first focus on the AFPFL leadership after independence and the ways in which, during the parliamentary period, meanings of democracy took a moral turn, focussing on the value of unity amidst the chaos of multiple civil wars and party division. I then examine the lurch to the military leadership under General Ne Win and the reaction against the perceived

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch04

78 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

immaturity of parliamentary government. Finally, I highlight the emergence of democracy movement leaders, particularly Aung San Suu Kyi, and their reaction against the military assumptions of ‘disciplined democracy’ and a guardian role for the Tatmadaw. Overall, this chapter is not an attempt to construct a unitary history of Myanmar but rather to locate and uncover struggles over the meaning of democracy during these different periods and how they shape contemporary political uses of the word ‘democracy’.

Unity, moral democracy and the leadership of the AFPFL In his speech to the AFPFL Party Convention in 1947, Aung San warned the party leadership against division, saying ‘unity is the foundation. Let this fact be engraved in your memory’ (Aung San 1993b [1947], 161). Yet the unity of the AFPFL leadership was to be severely tested in the lead up to, and following, the gaining of independence in early 1948. The country’s infrastructure had been largely destroyed during the war, its administrative systems were fragile and it remained awash with weapons. To make matters drastically worse, in the lead up to independence, Aung San and a number of other Burmese cabinet ministers were assassinated. After independence, the new AFPFL government found itself immersed in a ‘maelstrom of civil war’ (Tin Maung Maung Than 2007: 52). The Communist Party of Burma (CPB) split from the AFPFL and took up arms against the Burmese military. Several ethnic minority armed groups – notably the Karen – also entered into conflict against the government. Finally, the newly independent Burmese government also dealt with an invasion from Chinese Kuomintang troops on its north-east borders. In practical terms, the instability of the country restricted the functioning of democratic institutions. For example, due to insecurity, only 1.5 out of eight million eligible voters actually cast their ballots in the 1951 elections (Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010) and at times, government control of the capital itself, in Rangoon, was threatened by non-state armed groups. Prime Minister Nu later claimed that, in the three years after independence, ‘over nine tenths of the country had been in the hands of insurgents’ (Comment on Communism 1956). Yet prominent meanings of democracy amongst AFPFL leaders also shifted through this chaotic period. After years of instability following independence, the AFPFL leaders increasingly drew on personalised moral notions of democracy. As during the earlier movement for independence, the AFPFL leadership continued to overtly emphasise the Buddhist origins of democracy. Minister for Education Ba Yin said, ‘Buddha gave to humanity its charter of equality

Burma af ter independence

79

and freedom from fear and laid foundations for the establishment of a real world-wide democracy’ (Ba Yin 1954: 5, cited in: Sarkisyanz 1965: 193). Similarly, in an interview in 1955, Khin Maung Gale (1955, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 43), Burmese Minister of Finance, reflected, ‘[i]n my view, not only democracy and socialism, but Buddhism also [is] interwoven. Unless there is a moral and spiritual content in a political ideology, there would be mere abstract nothingness.’ Through the parliamentary period there was increasing emphasis, especially from Nu, on the moral character of leaders. At the conclusion of his speech to the AFPFL congress in 1958, Nu stressed that ‘to make democracy stand steadfast and lasting, two things above others are needed. The ability to restrain and discipline oneself, and a spirit of subordination of self’ (Nu 1958, cited in: ibid.: 46).1 For Nu, democracy required the structure of Westminster-inspired institutions, yet it was moral character that could make democracy ‘steadfast and lasting’. By the late 1950s, the country was recovering economically, and security had somewhat improved, despite the continuation of several civil wars. Yet this period was characterised by increasing division within the AFPFL. In 1958, the party split into two factions – a ‘Clean’ faction under Nu and a ‘Stable’ faction led by other independence leaders. The AFPFL party, which had been one of the only stable political forces in the country after independence, had been unable to contain its diverse factions. In 1960, as Nu (1960, cited in: ibid.: 56) reflected on Burma’s politics since independence, he said to Burmese parliamentarians that it was the lack of moral character of leadership which was the period’s greatest failing. Even we who formed the vanguard failed to regulate our own conduct in full accordance with the noble ideals that animated that system. […] [T]he arrogance, greed and power-madness that gripped many of our leaders, big and small, brought us to the brink of ruin.

For Nu (ibid.), the ‘arrogance, greed and power-madness’ of political leaders was undermining democracy and needed to be replaced with selflessness. The period after independence from the British was one of intense contest – armed conflict against external communist or ethnic minority rivals, but also 1 In his speech Nu also outlined several ‘cardinal rules’ which needed to be followed by members of the AFPFL: they needed to ‘practice the moral precepts’ of not drinking, gambling or having illicit sexual relations; they should not be ‘conceited’ or gather ‘individual strength’; they should practice the ‘principles of respectfulness and humility’ shown by the Buddha; and they should not depend on ‘force or arms’.

80 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

splits amongst the AFPFL political elite themselves. The extreme instability in the country during the parliamentary period led the AFPFL leaders to emphasise the central place of moral and spiritual progress in democracy. Understanding the reactions of independence leaders is crucial in making sense of meanings of democracy drawn on by contemporary activists and democratic leaders. In the coming chapters I return to explore these moral notions of democracy, and reactions against them, in depth. Ultimately though, the unity that Aung San had hoped for within the political leadership of the country did not eventuate. Various Burmese political factions had worked together to demand independence from the British. Yet, after independence, the crucial coalition between the military and Nu’s AFPFL party frayed, and military leaders began to construct a rival narrative about democracy in the country.

Military socialism This section outlines an evolving narrative about democracy from Burmese military elites. I first focus on the ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ – which defined the era of General Ne Win’s rule (1962-1988) – before turning to the more recent conceptions of ‘disciplined democracy’ that have been prominent since 2003. While evolving significantly through different periods, military elites drew on certain ongoing themes – the weakness of civilian politicians, the importance of national unity and a constitutionally protected ‘guardian’ role for the military. Mary Callahan (2012) rightly argues that there was a struggle for a system that, in the eyes of the military elite, could protect Myanmar’s unity and maintain a central role for the Tatmadaw. Examination of Burmese military elites also reflects the way in which meanings given to the word ‘democracy’ are often born through opposition to the storylines articulated by one’s rivals. Through describing challenges, visions and strategies in Myanmar’s politics, military elites positioned themselves as the only institution capable of holding the country together (ibid.). Most obviously this was through the portrayal of civilian politicians – many of whom were also independence activists – as being self-serving and weak. In different ways, all the contemporary examples of narratives, which I outline in the coming chapters, react against this military narrative. Furthermore, the intense and longstanding opposition to this Burmese military narrative has meant that many other contests amongst contemporary activists and democratic leaders and their international allies have been obscured. Thus, an understanding of the military ‘storyline’ and its origins is required in order to interpret the contemporary struggles for democracy that are the focus of this book.

Burma af ter independence

81

Amidst the political uncertainty created by the split in the AFPFL in 1958, independence hero and military leader General Ne Win assumed control of the country in a caretaker capacity. The stated rationale of Ne Win’s intervention was to bring stability before national elections could again be held (Silverstein 1998). At the time of the caretaker government, the Burmese military released a document entitled ‘The National Ideology and Our Pledge: First Phase of the Ideological Development’. In this report, military elites argued that ‘democracy is not safe. […] [We] therefore must be ever alert and watchful lest it fall victim to complacency. […] [D]emocracy will flourish only if people respect [law and order] and submit to the rule of law’ (Tatmadaw 1958, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 49). This reflected the growing political instability in the country, and the concern amongst military elites of the need to use a firmer hand in the approach to the core issue of national unity. In early 1960, during this period of temporary military leadership, historian D.G.E. Hall (1960: 189) observed that General Ne Win ‘has scrupulously respected constitutional forms. His ministers are all […] persons of distinction in various walks of life and of high character.’ Yet Ne Win’s respect for constitutional forms was, in fact, short lived. After briefly restoring power to Prime Minister Nu – whose ‘Clean’ faction won the 1960 national elections – General Ne Win decided that more decisive action was required. On 2 March 1962, the Burmese military staged a coup. Tatmadaw leaders took over the government in the name of the Revolutionary Council, imprisoned Prime Minister Nu, the Burmese President and other civilian cabinet members, and set aside Burma’s constitution. Documents released by the military after the coup reveal a new narrative about democracy in Myanmar, one formed in reaction to the perceived chaos of the parliamentary period. Dr Maung Maung (1969: 296), who became Chief Justice in the Ne Win regime, said that the Revolutionary Council was ‘deeply disillusioned with parliamentary democracy’. This was prominently articulated in a 1963 manifesto called The Burmese Road to Socialism: Policy Declaration of the Revolutionary Council (Tatmadaw 1963, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 71). Crucially this ‘Burmese Road’ would be resolutely socialist and avoid ‘deviation towards right or left’ (ibid.: 71) – the deviations, whether communist or British capitalist, that were seen to have caused many of the key problems in Burmese history. And the ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ would also avoid the pitfalls of parliamentary democracy. Article 14 of the policy declaration argues that [i]n the Union of Burma […] parliamentary democracy has been tried and tested in furtherance of the aims of socialist development. But Burma’s

82 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

‘parliamentary democracy’ has not only failed to serve our socialist development but also, due to its very defects, weaknesses and loopholes, its abuses and the absence of a mature public opinion, lost sight of and deviated from the socialist aims, until at last indications of its heading imperceptibly towards just the reverse have become apparent. (Tatmadaw 1963, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 71)

Thus ‘parliamentary democracy’ and its perceived failings became the primary counter-position against which the military would articulate its ‘Road to Socialism’.2 Parliamentary democracy had been unable to hold together the fractious ideological and ethnic diversity of the country. Meanwhile, the ‘abuses’ referred to in the policy declaration were the perceived failures of civilian politicians to bring national unity. Civilian politicians were portrayed by military elites as self-serving and corrupt. A senior figure in Ne Win’s administration, Colonel Maung Maung Kha, argued that while most civilian and military leaders had the same activist roots in the independence movement, those who had left the military were inferior. ‘The cream of the resistance movement’, he suggested, ‘stayed with the Burma army, and most of the rest became politicians. It was irksome to find that those who could not hold their own in the army came, in time, to be our political superiors’ (Lissak 1964: 9). This new narrative of the ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ not only portrayed the failure of the system of parliamentary democracy in Burma but also constructed new characters, particularly emphasising the ineptitude of civilian politicians. The policy declaration of the ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ also highlighted the perceived problem of political ‘immaturity’ amongst Burmese citizens, a theme that returns in the contemporary narratives I outline in the coming chapters. For military elites, it was partly the ‘absence of mature public opinion’ (Tatmadaw 1963, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 71) that made parliamentary democracy unworkable in Burma. The independence leaders had argued that Burmese Buddhist society had an inherent democratic nature. In contrast, the new military elite argued that ‘democracy’, at least 2 And as in the prominent independence movement narrative, this ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ twisted together themes from a variety of origins. Western ideas of socialism – which had been adopted and adapted through groups like the Nagani Book Club of the 1930s – clearly formed some of the basis of the ‘Burmese Road’. And the architects of Ne Win’s socialist program were not all – as is sometimes assumed – insular Burmese military men. Dr Maung Maung, who became Chief Justice under Ne Win and was instrumental in the writing of Burma’s 1974 Constitution (and again in the crisis of 1988), had his legal training at Lincoln’s Inn, London, received a doctorate from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and spent two years at Yale University (Maung Zarni 2012: 296).

Burma af ter independence

83

in its parliamentary form, would fail due to the immaturity of Burmese citizens – an argument ironically echoing Leach’s colonial era notion of a ‘people at school’. For military elites, the solution to the problem of ethnic and ideological division in the country was to emphasise unity and the presence of a strong central government (Tatmadaw 1963, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010).3 Civilian leaders such as Nu had stressed that moral transformation was central to maintaining unity. Yet military elites turned to the idea of a strong constitutional framework with a central guardian role for the military – especially in suppressing dissent. Their perceived ‘guardian’ role in suppressing dissent was supported by the scale up of efforts to defeat armed communist and ethnic minority insurgencies. During the 1960s, military campaigns against insurgent groups intensified and the emphasis on bringing national unity through military force brought a self-fulfilling logic to the military narrative. On one hand, as Jones (2014: 785) describes, the military portrayed itself as the ‘only reliable guardian of Burma’s national survival’. Its active presence in government was necessary to prevent the fracturing of the country under the ostensibly feeble rule of civilian politicians. On the other hand, by attempting to build national unity through military campaigns, the Burmese military was also successful in, as Callahan (2004) describes, ‘making enemies’ and perpetuating conflict. Thus, the never-ending civil wars supported the narrative that the military was essential to the country’s unity. As Callahan (2012: 122) suggests, the ongoing strife within the country only ‘reinforced the military’s sense of being the nation’s guardian’. Along with a hands-on armed role in forcing ‘national unity’, military elites also considered that they needed to maintain a core role in governance. This was formalised in the 1974 Constitution, which instituted a nominally civilian system – under the one-party rule of the new Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) – but with an active and ongoing role for the military. However, the scepticism of ‘parliamentary democracy’ from military elites did not mean that participatory institutions were abandoned altogether in General Ne Win’s government. What is not often recognised is that the 1974 Constitution provided for elections at the state, division, township, ward and village tract level – meaning that a quarter of a million people were 3 Walton (2017) importantly argues that while the ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ did not employ the overt religious language of Nu, it was still explicitly placed within a ‘Buddhist moral universe’ – with order and discipline providing the population with the stability for spiritual progress. Article 8 of the ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ suggests that government had the ‘sole aim of giving maximum satisfaction to material, spiritual and cultural needs of the whole nation’ (Tatmadaw 1963, cited in: Blum, Trotier & Zöllner 2010: 71).

84 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

theoretically voted into local government positions (Martin 1975). Of course, given the BSPP was the only authorised political party, these elections were clearly highly restricted and Martin argues that there is ‘no evidence that the elections brought significant change at local government level’ (ibid.: 130). Nakanishi’s work Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution (2013) also highlights the role that military officers and ex-military officers played within the government bureaucracy during this period, meaning that the military pervaded many aspects of party and bureaucratic functions. Meanwhile, at the upper level, Ne Win’s Council of State, which took responsibility for all central decision-making, was made up of original members of the Revolutionary Council and close allies of Ne Win (ibid.). The Tatmadaw maintained its tight grasp on political and bureaucratic power in Burma. Ultimately, despite the initial optimism from military elites that they could guide the country to national unity and prosperity, by the late 1980s it had become clear that the ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ was an economic failure. After being one of the wealthiest countries in Southeast Asia in the early twentieth century (Leach 1937), in 1987, Burma was included in the United Nations list of Least Developed Countries. Ongoing civil war, a collapsing economy and an increasingly unresponsive government sparked an evolution of the Burmese military narrative about democracy.

The road to ‘disciplined democracy’ (1988-2011) under General Than Shwe By 1988, public frustration with the economic and political failings of General Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Programme Party began to be taken to the streets. An incident of heavy-handed police treatment of a student in Rangoon sparked waves of large-scale protests around the country. As public opposition grew through 1988, it forced long-standing senior Tatmadaw officers to shift their stance. In July, General Ne Win abruptly resigned – ending his three decades of dominance in Burmese politics. After further months of protest and instability, on 18 September the military retook power under the new leadership of General Saw Maung. The military suspended the 1974 Constitution and began a brutal crackdown against protesters. In this section, I highlight how the new regime, named the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), 4 reacted to the democracy movement by forming a vision of ‘disciplined democracy’ – multiparty democracy, yet 4

SLORC was later renamed the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

Burma af ter independence

85

with a constitutionally protected guardian role for the military. SLORC was supposedly guided by three ‘national causes’ which were communicated widely through the state-controlled media – ‘non-disintegration of the Union; non-disintegration of national solidarity; and perpetuation of national sovereignty’ (Tin Maung Maung Than 2005: 66). Thus, from the perspective of Tatmadaw elites, the 1988 military intervention was justified by the protests. General Khin Nyunt, the Secretary in SLORC, later reflected on the 1988 crackdown by the military arguing that [t]he country was on the verge of destruction. Anarchy and chaos prevailed everywhere. Frankly, the machinery of government had broken down completely and the economy was in a shambles. Our first task was to restore peace and stability, law and order. (Cohen 1999: 2)

The ‘anarchy and chaos’ precipitated by the failure of the Ne Win government meant that, in the eyes of new Tatmadaw elites, the military ‘unavoidably had to assume responsibilities’ (Government of Myanmar 2003b: 1). Activists and protesters were portrayed by SLORC as responsible for the anarchy and breakdown in order. On the other hand, military elites constructed their own role as a ‘guardian’ that would help to restore ‘peace and stability’. Yet widespread public support for the protesters caused SLORC to abandon the single-party state of the Ne Win era and plan for a cautious return to multiparty democracy – though of a more constrained kind than that of the Westminster-inspired parliamentary period. General Saw Maung stressed that the military would not hold power indefinitely and multiparty general elections were planned for 1990 (ibid.). For the post-Ne Win military elites, however, a new problem had emerged after 1988. Communist and ethnic insurgencies had long threatened the integrity of the country, yet the 1988 protests had galvanised a powerful and organised new opposition movement – supported by Aung San Suu Kyi, the popular daughter of national hero Aung San. A new political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), rapidly gained popularity and became the focal point of opposition to the military. Confirming the concerns of military elites, the NLD won a significant majority of constituencies in the 1990 elections and NLD leaders demanded that they should form a government. SLORC, however, denied any transfer of power. Military leaders withdrew their plans for multiparty elections and rather than forming a government, SLORC announced that candidates elected in the poll would form a constituent assembly to design a new constitution through the process of a

86 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

National Convention. In 1993, after the arrest of many members of the NLD, SLORC began the highly orchestrated National Convention process. Of the 702 delegates selected for the National Convention, ultimately only 99 had been elected in the 1990 vote (Human Rights Watch 2007). The goal of this National Convention, General Khin Nyunt explained, was to support ‘the emergence of a modern, developed and democratic State in accordance with the aspirations of all strata of people’ (Government of Myanmar 2003b). After several stalled years, including an NLD boycott of the National Convention process, in 2003 the regime outlined and then proceeded to implement a new ‘Roadmap to Democracy’. The ‘roadmap’ was described by the military as a ‘step by step implementation of the process for the emergence of a genuine and disciplined democratic system’ (Government of Myanmar 2003a). Even in the 2000s, the period of parliamentary government in the 1940s and 1950s continued to be a cautionary tale for many military elites. A 2008 editorial in the state-controlled New Light of Myanmar argued that, ‘in the period of the parliamentary democracy in which the Tatmadaw [Burmese military] did not participate in the politics, the Union was on the edge of collapse’ (New Light of Myanmar 2008, cited in: Walton 2012). For military elites ‘disciplined democracy’5 would avoid the chaos of Nu’s parliamentary period. Yet it would also move the country beyond Ne Win’s ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’. In practical terms, the ‘Roadmap to Democracy’ involved reconvening the National Convention from 2004 to 2007 to draft a constitution, holding a national referendum in 2008 to ratify the constitution,6 conducting elections in 2010 to form a legislature, and finally forming a new civilian government in 2011. The quasi-civilian Thein Sein government that took power in 2011 proceeded to make a series of sweeping political and economic reforms, including the liberalisation of the economy, the release of many political prisoners and the broadening of media freedoms. Yet, in order to understand contemporary narratives of democracy, it is important to note two consistent themes in military plans for ‘disciplined 5 Importantly, the English phrase ‘disciplined democracy’ gives awkward connotations of heavy-handed authoritarianism, that the word si kan (‘discipline’) in Burmese does not always carry. While the Than Shwe government’s ‘disciplined democracy’ was roundly criticised by participants in this research, this was not so much for a rejection of the word ‘disciplined’. Participants in this study often described the Burmese word si kan (‘discipline’) favourably, in the sense of portraying an ordered and systematic approach which could be applied in activism, or democratic and governance processes. There is further exploration of the meaning of si kan in Chapter Six. 6 Jones (2014) highlights the close similarities between the 1993-1996 National Convention documents and the constitution adopted in 2008 – with the sections on aims and objectives of the state, state structure and role for the military being almost identical.

Burma af ter independence

87

democracy’. First, the National Convention and the ‘Roadmap to Democracy’ processes both emphasised the centrality of the constitution. During the late 2000s, on the back page of the newspaper New Light of Myanmar (2008, cited in: Walton 2012), there was a daily insistence that ‘[d]emocracy can only be achieved through the constitution’. The regime also actively de-emphasised any connection between democracy and what they considered to be personalised politics. Houtman (1999: 135) argues that the regime felt that a focus on individual personalities – whether Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi or General Ne Win – would undermine the military agenda. Thus, the regime took extreme steps at times to minimize the focus on national heroes or leaders. For example, the kyat banknotes were changed to display a stylised lion (or chin the) rather than a portrait of the independence hero Aung San (ibid.). Second, not only did military leaders consistently emphasise formal institutions over personalities, they also stressed the need for an ongoing guardian role for the Tatmadaw in the country’s governance – even if the country had multiparty democracy. General Khin Nyunt (Government of Myanmar 2003b) said: ‘[W]e believe that we must give shape for the emergence of a democratic State that corresponds with our country and our people.’ For military elites, the uniquely fractious nature of the country meant that Myanmar’s democracy would necessarily have to rely on the military’s hand in governance (Callahan 2012). Military elites continued to portray the Tatmadaw as the only institution capable of holding the country together (ibid.). This role was enshrined in the 2008 Constitution, with 25 percent of positions in the parliament reserved for members of the armed forces. As signboards erected in cities around the country in the 2000s declared, ‘Only when the army is strong will the nation be strong’ (Dunlop 2013: 137). The military narrative of ‘disciplined democracy’ – and these themes of formal institutions and the military’s guardian role – played an important role as a counter-position against which the emerging democracy movement constructed alternate narratives. Thus, an understanding of the military ‘storyline’ and its origins is required in order to interpret the contemporary struggles for democracy that are the focus of this book. In the coming chapters, I describe three narratives that all, in contrasting ways, reacted against this military narrative.

The opposition movement As the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council), the new iteration of SLORC, implemented its Roadmap to Democracy during the 2000s, it faced

88 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

tenacious opposition from democracy activists and opposition leaders from the NLD. Importantly, the events of 1988 had not only precipitated new thinking about democracy within the military, but also a new narrative of democracy within the opposition movement. In the next three chapters, I take up in detail my own findings about the ways democracy was given meaning amongst many Burmese activists and democratic leaders before and after the 2015 elections. In this section, I first describe the origins of the democracy movement after 1988 and its struggles against the military government in both domestic and international spheres. I then introduce a narrative about the need to end illegitimate rule and the centrality of moral character in democratic leadership – conceptual threads that feature prominently in the coming chapters. In examining the emergence of the democracy movement in this section, I particularly highlight the works of Aung San Suu Kyi. Due to her overwhelming popularity her views were crucial in informing this new narrative of democracy within the opposition.7 Most obviously, the brutal military crackdown on protesters in 1988 had a significant impact on the new democracy movement. Several hundred protesters, mostly students, had died in the first two days of military action and Fink (2001: 63) notes that the crackdowns had a ‘profound psychological influence’ on the young protesters, in particular through galvanising hatred of the military. As well as catalysing intense local opposition to the military, the brutal response – and the subsequent refusal to transfer power after the 1990 elections – also created an international dimension to the democracy movement. In the early period after the military crackdown, over 10,000 students fled to neighbouring countries and the West. Then over the following years there was a proliferation of new Burmese organisations operating outside the country or in zones outside the control of the military government – such as the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) and the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF). Many of these groups were also supported with funding from Western aid agencies. While diverse in their specific interests, these exile organisations were committed to the general goal of ending the Burmese military regime. After Aung San Suu Kyi called for international sanctions against the military regime in 1995, groups such as the NCUB had a high degree of success in lobbying 7 Of note is that the word ‘democracy’ was still central to the demands of the opposition movement. Parliamentary democracy had ended 26 years earlier in Burma and, thus, most of the protesters had no direct experience of democracy and, given the restrictive Burmese education system of the time, few opportunities to learn about it.

Burma af ter independence

89

Western governments to adopt, and maintain, a hard-line stance against the Burmese government (Taylor 2009). The efficacy of these efforts in fostering political change inside Myanmar was questionable. 8 Yet the prominent international campaign against the Burmese military during the 1990s and 2000s is important in that it contributed to a popular and scholarly focus on the struggle between the military government and opposing groups (comprised of both ethnic minority groups and the democracy movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi). My argument in this book is that the potency of the campaign against the Burmese military during the 1990s and 2000s eclipsed the examination of other struggles for democracy in Myanmar – struggles that are also crucial in understanding the country’s transition. Whilst the international campaign against the Burmese military government grew, opposition leaders within the country also emphasised a new narrative about democracy, focussing on the need for freedom from the illegitimate rule of the military and for moral leadership. In her famous speech at Shwedagon Pagoda in 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi (1991: 193) explicitly likened the struggle for democracy to the movement for independence against the British, saying that ‘[t]his national crisis could in fact be called the second struggle for national independence’. Aung San Suu Kyi (ibid.: 193) went on to quote her father, Aung San, in saying that ‘[d]emocracy is the only ideology that is consistent with freedom’. As for the Burmese independence leaders, there was again a fusing together of notions of democracy and restoration of legitimate government, though in this case referring to the end of military, rather than British colonial, rule. In the early 1990s, Aung San Suu Kyi was also intent on countering any argument that Burmese citizens were too immature for democracy, and that the country required the military to play a guardian role. In Aung San Suu Kyi’s 1991 essay ‘In Quest for Democracy’, she argues that the military government sought to ‘undermine’ the ‘movement for democracy’ by portraying democracy as un-Burmese and human rights as a ‘[W]estern artefact alien to traditional values’ (ibid.: 174). Echoing Thakin Kodaw Hmaing’s work in the colonial period, Aung San Suu Kyi (ibid.: 169) also draws on the Aggañña Sutta to suggest that democracy is in fact consistent with, and indeed embedded in, Buddhist teachings. Amongst other Buddhist-inspired codes of conduct 8 Importantly, while many Western governments held economic sanctions against the military regime, Myanmar’s neighboring countries refused to endorse sanctions, thus undermining Western efforts to coerce the military elites. See Taylor (2009) and Pedersen (2008) for a wider discussion of sanctions policies.

90 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

she also highlights the raza dhamma, or Ten Duties of Kings. Aung San Suu Kyi (1991: 170) argues that these are ‘generally accepted as a yardstick which could be applied just as well to modern government as to the first monarch of the world’. She translates the Ten Duties as ‘liberality, morality, self-sacrifice, integrity, kindness, austerity, non-anger, non-violence, forbearance and non-opposition (to the will of the people)’. In this way Aung San Suu Kyi echoes the narrative of the Thakin and AFPFL leaders in relation to both the Buddhist foundations of democracy and the centrality of moral character in democratic leadership. Ultimately, however, the efforts of the democracy movement – and its exiled supporters – failed to dislodge the military from its hold on state power. Through the 1990s and 2000s there were several attempts, including by the United Nations, to create dialogue between the military leadership and the NLD with the aim of brokering a compromise. However, during this period Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD refused to agree to the military’s plans for ‘disciplined democracy’. Taylor (2009: 414) concludes that ‘while moral certainty prevailed within the NLD, power continued to reside with the army’. Many key leaders of the NLD – including Aung San Suu Kyi – and thousands of other activists spent years as political prisoners under the military regime. It was only after the 2010 elections, and then the liberalising reforms of the Thein Sein administration, that many political prisoners, such as 88 Generation activist Min Ko Naing and younger activists such as Nay Pyone Latt, were finally released.

Conclusion The Burmese democracy movement emerged in the struggles of national protest in 1988. On one hand, the harsh military crackdown on the movement catalysed an internationally recognised campaign against the Burmese military government. This campaign had considerable success in galvanising Western opposition to the regime, though it likely had less impact on the trajectory of military rule inside the country. Meanwhile, opposition leaders and activists within the country suffered considerably through the 1990s and 2000s, as they were monitored, harassed and tortured by Burmese intelligence and held as political prisoners. Some lost their lives. These experiences were crucial in shaping the way that the activists, aid workers and opposition leaders gave meaning to the word ‘democracy’ – through the 1990s and 2000s and into the Thein Sein period. Opposition to the military role in governance and a personalised and moral notion of democracy

Burma af ter independence

91

are central themes in narratives of democracy identified in this book. My argument is that attention to other struggles for democracy can help to make sense of the actions and beliefs of democracy activists around the world, particularly when those beliefs seem to diverge from liberal democratic expectations. Rather than assuming that actors in democracy movements are incompetent when their actions or beliefs diverge from those of Western democracy promoters, attention to conceptual contests over democracy can reveal local actors as sophisticated players of a different kind of game (Schaffer 1997). In the next three chapters, I describe three contrasting narratives of democracy that were prominent amongst networks of Burmese activists and democratic leaders and international aid workers. As I have argued, a central part of what makes a story a story is plot. Plot brings together different events and experiences and provides them with meaning (Wagenaar 2014). In particular, a plot links together key narrative elements – visions, challenges and strategies by which these challenges can be addressed – into a unified whole. In the next three chapters, these elements of narrative (challenges, visions and strategies) provide the basic chapter structure. In these chapters I also seek to ground and locate these narratives in their own terms. I therefore withhold my more critical examination of these narratives and their political use until Chapters Eight, Nine and Ten. My intention in this approach is, as far as possible, to present the internal logic of participant interpretations and the way that they, in different ways, construct forms of common sense. The first narrative I describe, which is the focus of Chapter Five, is a liberal narrative. This was prominent amongst Western aid agency representatives and focussed on the problem of division and personalised politics, a vision of formal procedures of democracy and liberal values, and a strategy of capacity building. In Chapter Six, I then outline a benevolence narrative that was prominent amongst opposition leaders and some activist networks. This narrative highlighted the problem of dictatorial leadership, the vision of benevolent leadership and a strategy of moral education and the building of discipline. Finally, in Chapter Seven, I describe an equality narrative – present within other activist networks – that questioned Buddhist-inspired relational hierarchies in Burmese social and political life, and portrayed equality as critical to the vision of democracy. A strategy of cultural reform in the country was seen by some activists to be necessary for the process of democratisation. These chapters establish that beyond the civil-military and ethnic contests that have received much analytical attention in Myanmar, there are key

92 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

conceptual contests over meanings of democracy. Amongst activists and democratic leaders, and between them and their European and North American allies, there are significant contrasts in the ways in which democracy is understood and communicated. Yet, while offering distinct accounts of the country’s democratisation, these different narratives also share certain similarities. Most importantly, each of these narratives reacts to the military emphasis on ‘disciplined democracy’. Activists, democratic leaders and aid workers alike also agreed that the long periods of military-dominated rule in Myanmar – under both General Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Programme Party and the more recent SLORC and the SPDC – were at best deeply problematic, and at worst violent and oppressive. Further, proponents of all of these narratives agreed that formal institutions such as free and fair elections, a functioning parliament and a reformed constitution were necessary components of democracy in Myanmar. Thus, while these coming chapters emphasise contrasts between these narratives, it is important to acknowledge that there are also areas of agreement, especially over the defining issue of ending the role of the military in governance. These areas of agreement – and especially the compelling common cause against the military – have, however, served to obscure other important differences between the narratives.

References Aung San. 1993a [1945]. ‘Address delivered at the meeting of the East and West Association held on 29th August 1945, at the City Hall of Rangoon’. In J. Silverstein (ed.), The Political Legacy of Aung San. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications. 77-93. Aung San. 1993b [1947]. ‘Bogyoke Aung San’s address at the convention held at the Jubilee Hall, Rangoon on the 23rd May, 1947’. In J. Silverstein (ed.), The Political Legacy of Aung San. Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications. 151-161. Aung San Suu Kyi. 1988. ‘Speech to a mass rally at the Shwedagon Pagoda’. http://www.ibiblio. org/obl/docs3/Shwedagon-ocr.htm. Last accessed 2 December 2019. Aung San Suu Kyi. 1991. Freedom from Fear. London: Penguin. Ba Yin. 1954. ‘Buddha’s way to democracy’. The Burman. 26 April. Blum, F., Trotier, F., and Zöllner, H.-B. 2010. ‘In their own voice: Democracy as perceived in Burma/Myanmar, 1921-2010’. Working Paper 14. University of Passau. Callahan, M. 2004. Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma. Singapore: NUS Press. Callahan, M. 2012 ‘The opening in Burma: The generals loosen their grip’. Journal of Democracy 23 (4): 120-131. Cohen, Y. 1999. ‘We restored order’. Asia Week. 17 December. https://www.burmalibrary.org/reg. burma/archives/199912/msg00581.html. Last accessed 12 January 2021. Comment on Communism. 1956. See It Now. CBS. youtube.com/watch?v=wfxcmjuTGJU. Last accessed 29 November 2019. Dunlop, N. 2013. Brave New Burma. Stockport: Dewi Lewis.

Burma af ter independence

93

Fink, C. 2001. Living Silence: Burma under Military Rule. London: Zed Books. Government of Myanmar. 2003a. ‘7 Step Roadmap’. https://www.burmalibrary.org/en/category/7step-roadmap-steps-leading-up-to-including-and-following-the-2010-general-elections-0. Last accessed 13 Nov 2020. Government of Myanmar. 2003b. ‘Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt clarifies future policies and programmes of state’. New Light of Myanmar. 31 August. https://www.burmalibrary.org/ sites/burmalibrary.org/files/obl/docs/Roadmap-KN.htm. Last accessed 29 November 2019. Hall, D.G.E. 1960. Burma. London: Hutchinson University Library. Houtman, G. 1999. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Human Rights Watch. 2007. ‘Myanmar: Chronology of the national convention’. reliefweb.int/ report/myanmar/myanmar-chronology-national-convention. Last accessed 29 November 2019. Jones, L. 2014. ‘Explaining Myanmar’s regime transition: The periphery is central’. Democratization 21 (5): 780-802. Leach, F.B. 1937. The Future of Burma. Rangoon: British Burma Press. Lissak, M. 1964. ‘Social change, mobilization, and exchange of services between the military establishment and the civil society: The Burmese case’. Economic Development & Cultural Change 13 (1): 1-19. Martin, E.W. 1975. ‘The socialist republic of the union of Burma: How much change?’ Asian Survey 15 (2): 129-135. Maung Maung. 1969. Burma and General Ne Win. London: Asia Publishing House. Maung Maung Gyi. 1983. Burmese Political Values: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarianism. New York: Praeger. Maung Zarni. 2012. ‘Orientalisation and manufacturing of civil society in contemporary Burma’. In Z. Ibrahim (ed.), Social Science and Knowledge in a Globalising World. Petaling Jaya: Persatuan Sains Sosial Malaysia and Strategic Information and Research Development Centre. 287-310. Nakanishi, Y. 2013. Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution: The State and Military in Burma, 1962‒1988. Singapore: NUS Press. Pedersen, M.B. 2008. Promoting Human Rights in Burma: A Critique of Western Sanctions Policy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Sarkisyanz, E. 1965. Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution. The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Schaffer, F.C. 1997. ‘Political concepts and the study of democracy: The case of demokaraasi in Senegal’. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20 (1): 40-49. Silverstein, J. 1998. ‘The evolution and salience of Burma’s national political culture’. In R.I. Rotberg (ed.), Burma: Prospects for a Democratic Future. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. 11-32. Taylor, R.H. 2009. The State in Myanmar. Singapore: NUS Press. Tin Maung Maung Than. 2005. ‘Dreams and nightmares: State building and ethnic conflict in Myanmar (Burma)’. In K. Snitwongse and W.S. Thompson (eds.), Ethnic Conflicts in Southeast Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. 77-120. Tin Maung Maung Than. 2007. State Dominance in Myanmar: The Political Economy of Industrialization. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Wagenaar, H. 2014. Meaning in Action: Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis. London: Routledge. Walton, M.J. 2012. ‘Politics in the moral universe: Burmese Buddhist political thought’. PhD thesis. University of Washington. Walton, M.J. 2017. Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5

A liberal narrative Abstract This chapter unpacks a liberal narrative of democracy. It grounds and locates the ways that many aid workers in Myanmar understood and communicated about democracy. The chapter outlines three elements of this narrative. First, most international aid workers involved in the research pointed toward the challenge of ethnic and religious divisions in the country. These aid workers described how divisions in Myanmar were perpetuated by a personalised political culture where formal institutions of democracy were insufficiently embedded. Second, aid agency representatives often expressed a vision of a formal procedure-based democracy supported by liberal values of human rights, pluralism and the protection of minorities. This vision also had a future orientation, where proponents of this narrative saw Myanmar’s democratisation as being set within the context of other transitional countries around the world – moving away from traditional systems toward a democratic future. Third, many aid workers emphasised a strategy of government and civil society capacity building led by international aid agencies. Keywords: donor agencies, liberal, democracy, aid, rights

In President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address he declared that ‘a new beginning in Burma has lit a new hope’ (Obama 2012). This ‘new beginning’ was embodied in reforms by the Thein Sein government, such as the establishment of a new parliament, a gradual freeing of press censorship and the release of many long-term political prisoners – most notably Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Four months after Obama’s State of the Union address, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton (2012) glowingly said that, ‘[a]fter decades of internal repression, we see dramatic and hopeful changes taking place in Burma. Here is a democratic transition unfolding in a peaceful, collaborative fashion – acclaimed by the domestic electorate and the international community.’ Western embassies

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch05

96 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

in Myanmar likewise had buoyant expectations about Myanmar’s progress. Over the following year, many OECD governments responded by easing longstanding sanctions against the Myanmar government and scaling up the budgets and presence of donor agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID).1 Along with this increased high-level focus on Myanmar came a new set of commitments to supporting democratisation. USAID stated their aim of helping to build ‘a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic Burma that respects the human rights of all its people’ (USAID 2013: 2) while the Australian government intended that their increased support would help ‘create a more democratic and inclusive society’ (AusAID 2013: 10). This hope about the country’s democratisation reached its crescendo after the 2015 national elections and the landslide victory of the National League for Democracy party. Yet, since then, as I described in the first chapter, the hopes – of many Western governments, aid organisations and human rights groups – have now fallen as the country fractures ethnically and religiously and fails to implement the anticipated liberal democratic reforms. My argument in this chapter is that the hopes, and subsequent disappointments, of international aid workers and donor representatives are based in a particular liberal narrative about Myanmar’s expected democratisation. And, importantly, I argue that the signs of coming disappointment were already present before the 2015 elections. In this chapter I unpack this liberal narrative of democracy. In Schaffer’s terms, I ground and locate the ways that many aid workers in Myanmar understood and communicated about democracy. I outline three elements of this narrative. First, most international aid workers I interviewed and interacted with pointed toward the challenge of ethnic and religious divisions in the country. These aid workers described how divisions in Myanmar were perpetuated by a personalised political culture where formal institutions of democracy were insufficiently embedded. Second, aid agency representatives often expressed a vision of a formal procedure-based democracy supported by liberal values of human rights, pluralism and protection of minorities. This vision also had a future orientation, where proponents of this narrative saw Myanmar’s democratisation as being set within the context of other transitional countries around the world – moving away from traditional 1 During the Thein Sein period of government, donor agencies varied in their use of the country’s name. For example, the Australian aid program used the term ‘Burma’ in 2011 but had shifted to use ‘Myanmar’ by 2016.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

97

systems toward a democratic future. Third, aid workers that I interacted with emphasised a strategy of government and civil society capacity building led by international aid agencies. At face value, the challenges, visions and strategies contained in this narrative may appear to overlap with the assumptions and practices of Western donor agencies in other contexts. Yet this narrative was also set within the particular political circumstances of Myanmar’s transition, the re-engagement of Western countries and a cascade of political and economic reforms in the country. Further, while the key features of this narrative may seem decidedly uncontroversial in a democracy-promoting sphere – that, in Kurki’s (2013: 217) description, is underpinned by an ‘implicit liberalism’ – the coming chapters reveal how these liberal components of the narrative of democracy all became sites of contestation as international aid workers interacted with Burmese activists and NLD leaders. This chapter draws on donor documentation, observation of donor partner meetings, informal interactions with donor representatives, and material from formal interviews between 2013 and 2018, most of which were with aid workers from OECD countries. While I argue that this narrative was prominent within democracy-promoting donor agencies and NGOs, I also caution against essentialising a ‘Western’ perspective. This narrative is best understood as a cluster of interpretations rather than a single homogenous story. As described in Chapter Two, I acknowledge the ‘decentred’ nature of narratives (Bevir & Rhodes 2003) and describe some variety between proponents of this narrative in the way the liberal storyline was narrated. This resonates with Kurki’s (2013) study of democracy-promoting agencies and the individual conceptual characteristics of different agencies – with subtle differences, for example, between USAID, DFID and the European Union within a clear liberal framework. Further, it was not only participants from OECD donor countries who were proponents of this liberal narrative, with some Burmese activists strongly articulating the key elements of the liberal narrative in interviews. This was particularly the case with activists who had worked closely on OECD donor-funded governance programs. Therefore, whilst the material in this chapter is largely drawn from interviews with international aid workers from democracy-promoting countries and from review of donor documentation, I am not suggesting that there is a rigid or uniform connection between this liberal narrative and the ‘West’. I support Kurki’s (2013: 217) analysis that OECD donor agency democracy-promotion and governance programs are underpinned by an ‘implicit liberalism’ – and I return to examine this in later chapters – yet this may manifest in diverse ways.

98 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

The challenge of division and personalised politics A crucial element of understanding narratives is the different challenges or counter-positions against which they react. Narratives contain what Bruner (1991) describes as a ‘breach’ from the expected situation or vision. Democratisation may be considered to be an important process, but what is it a movement away from? In the years of the Thein Sein administration (2011-2016), there were several different assessments of the core challenges to Myanmar’s democratisation. For proponents of the liberal narrative, the central challenges to democracy in Myanmar were civil-military, ethnic and religious divisions. Religious divisions in particular drew out the clearest articulations of the perceived obstacles to democratisation. Yet what makes this narrative ‘liberal’ is that, underlying these various divisions, aid workers often pointed toward the challenge of an immature, personalised form of politics. This personalised politics was considered to be fundamentally undemocratic, as it did not rely on formal democratic procedures. For proponents of this narrative, therefore, democratisation was described as movement away from societal divisions, whether civil-military, ethnic or religious, and movement away from an informal, personalised form of politics. In this first section I describe each of these dimensions of the perceived problem: divisions and personalised politics. Divisions The longstanding civil-military divisions in Myanmar society were portrayed within this narrative as an overarching challenge – with thorough rejection of the Tatmadaw emphasis on the ‘guardian’ role of the military. Similar to all other narratives about democracy described in this study, aid workers often pointed to the removal of the military from Myanmar’s governance as a necessary step toward democracy. Yet, while the civil-military division was seen to be an obstacle, it was ethnic and particularly religious divisions that were emphasised in interviews and seen to be the country’s most intractable. In its border areas, Myanmar has been host to some of the world’s longestrunning civil wars – some of which began only months after Burma gained independence in 1948. In the previous chapter, I described this instability after independence and armed conflict between the Burmese government and communist and ethnic minority insurgents, especially in the country’s border areas. According to DFID (2012: 2), ‘underlying ethnic tensions’ in the country have created a deeply fractured society and the only way to

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

99

control the country has been through force. In an article in The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, former US Ambassador Derek Mitchell (2013: 14) explains ‘Burma’s challenge’ to find political rather than military means to solve ethnic issues. [T]he challenge is how the country’s diverse people can overcome a history of fractiousness in order to live together and hold the country together through political means rather than force – something that arguably has never happened in Burma’s history.

Whilst this longstanding ethnic tension was of concern for many participants, they also pointed toward division between Muslim and Buddhist communities. The escalation of Myanmar state-sanctioned violence against Muslim, and particularly Rohingya, minorities in Rakhine State in late 2017, and the subsequent movement of hundreds of thousands of Muslim refugees into Bangladesh, brought significant international media attention. Yet less recognised is the communal violence, particularly against Muslims, in other parts of the country in the preceding years. The first large-scale communal violence after the beginning of the political transition was in 2012 and 2013. Initially there were clashes between Buddhist communities and Muslim minorities in Rakhine State, but this then spread to involve other Muslim communities around the country. In March 2013, in the central Myanmar town of Meiktila, the alleged murder of a Buddhist monk sparked attacks on local Muslim communities, leaving over 40 people dead and hundreds of homes destroyed (AFP 2013). For many proponents of the liberal narrative, this religious violence – and wider anti-Muslim attitudes within the Burmese democracy movement – presented one of the starkest challenges to democracy in the country. Even in these early stages of the violence in 2012 and 2013, international aid workers focussed on the challenge of anti-Muslim attitudes and the perceived failure of the state to protect minorities. In the meeting room of her agency office, I interviewed Claire, a European aid program manager who had spent several years in the country.2 She reflected on the escalating violence in 2012 and 2013, saying, [w]hen it was just the Rohingya […] you felt here is this one group that people are just mental about. But then when Meiktila happened […] [i]t 2 All interviews quoted in this chapter were in the English language. All names of study participants given in these chapters are pseudonyms.

100 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

was brutal and totally shocking. For me, you live in a society with such respect for elders and nobody [responds] to a woman being stabbed to death in her bed.3

What was particularly troubling for many participants in this research was that anti-Muslim attitudes were seen to not only be held within the military, or by Buddhist nationalist groups such as the Association for Protection of Race and Religion (or ma ba tha in its popular Burmese acronym), but also more widely in society. During my field research, I met Michael, a European donor representative, in the embassy compound where his agency was based. Michael had arrived at his posting in Myanmar only a few months earlier and his wife and small children were soon to arrive. He was particularly concerned about the growing communal violence in the country at the time, and raised this immediately in the interview, saying, [p]eople here are racist, I mean we are all racist in our societies […] but here, if you don’t think the three-year-old has the right to eat or go to hospital, then that is really depressing. […] I don’t know enough here, but people are telling me that they [the Burmese] are brought up to think that Muslims are basically shit. 4

Similarly, Claire concluded that it was ‘shocking to see the degree of apathy that exists [in response to the violence]. […] [T]hey are not particularly worried enough to care and say anything.’5 Like Michael and Claire, many Western aid workers participating in this study found the incidents of violence against Muslims – and the perceived lack of concern amongst Buddhist Burmese – to be deeply concerning. For aid agency representatives, the seemingly intractable nature of this religious division was a key challenge for the country’s democratisation. Within this concern over religious divisions, Aung San Suu Kyi, as the most prominent leader in the democracy movement at the time, was considered by many aid workers to have lost credibility by not speaking out more strongly. Well before the widespread international criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi during the Rakhine State crisis in 2017, her response to these earlier episodes of violence were heavily critiqued by aid workers. International media attention was drawn to her in an October 2013 interview on the BBC 3 4 5

Interview 17, conducted November 2013. Interview 37, conducted February 2014. Interview 17, conducted November 2013.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

101

News where Aung San Suu Kyi was seen to defend Buddhist aggressors by saying, [y]es, Muslims have been targeted, but also Buddhists have been subjected to violence. But there’s fear on both sides and this is what is leading to all these troubles and we would like the world to understand: that the reaction of the Buddhists is also based on fear. (BBC News 2013)

This interview sparked a series of opinion pieces in the international media portraying Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to defend human rights as a ‘fall from grace’ (4News 2013). In interviews, this event was frequently recounted. ‘Did you see the BBC thing with Aung San Suu Kyi when she was really questioned?’ asked Michael. ‘For me, it was extremely disappointing – that she can’t even say anything.’6 Further, international aid workers were concerned that it was not only Burmese leaders such as Aung San Suu Kyi who had a seeming disregard for human rights, but also staff within local partner organisations. Thomas, the director of an international NGO, reflected, I have no idea how many times my head office is saying, ‘Something is happening in Rakhine [regarding religious violence]. What are our local partners doing about this?’ I try to say, ‘Well you know many of our partners are part of the problem.’7

In this way, for proponents of the liberal democracy narrative, the escalation of religious tensions within Burmese society since 2012 has been a sobering experience. Sophia, a conflict advisor within a European donor agency, said ‘I don’t know how democracy can progress in a society where people have these kinds of views’.8 And reflecting on long-term advocacy and support to the Burmese democracy movement from European advocacy organisations, Thomas concluded, ‘Look at what [human rights organisations] are saying publicly [about Myanmar’s democracy movement]. “This country is going to hell. The forces that we have believed in, I don’t see how we can work with them any more.”’9 As will become clear in the coming chapters, the issue of religious tension has been a prominent flashpoint within narratives and has been used to build contrasting arguments about democracy. 6 7 8 9

Interview 37, conducted February 2014. Interview 27, conducted February 2014. Interview 19, conducted November 2013. Interview 27, conducted February 2014.

102 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Overall, drawing the civil-military, ethnic and, particularly, religious lines of division together in this narrative was the sense amongst international aid workers that Burmese leaders are unable to solve political problems in a mature way. They have ‘an inability to compromise’,10 said one Western donor manager in an interview. They are ‘not good at trade-offs’, said another.11 This immaturity of political processes was considered by Claire to be inherent within Burmese culture because of its longstanding isolation. Echoing the reasoning of Fielding-Hall (1906) during the colonial period she explained: With such isolation for so long […] they are less familiar with the idea of a pluralistic society. They have sort of been frozen in time and are less familiar with the kind of discourse and the idea of it being normal for many people to have many opposing views.12

Being insulated from external influences during the long period of military rule was considered by several aid workers to have delayed Myanmar’s progress toward becoming a modern and pluralistic society – Myanmar political culture was ‘frozen in time’. Personalised politics Civil-military, ethnic and especially religious divisions in Myanmar were portrayed by proponents of this narrative as a core challenge to democracy. Yet aid workers often also pointed to the underlying challenge of the country’s personalised political culture. Rather than relying on the strength of formal democratic institutions to bridge divisions and instigate further reform, aid workers often portrayed Myanmar political actors as relying on a personalised or individualised form of politics. This perceived challenge played an important role as a counter-position against which this narrative’s liberal institutional vision of democracy was set. Many reforms were made after the 2010 elections and the establishment of the new quasi-civilian Thein Sein government. Yet proponents of this narrative saw those changes as still based in the personal leadership of President Thein Sein (or other key f igures) rather than on a growing reliance on formal democratic institutions. Returning to Myanmar after 10 Interview 4, conducted October 2013. 11 Interview 39, conducted February 2014. 12 Interview 17, conducted November 2013.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

103

more than 20 years in exile in the United States, academic Min Zin (2013)13 reflected, I was struck by how many people I spoke with still seem to expect the solutions to our political problems to come from great heroes (whether it’s current president Thein Sein or an opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi) rather than institutions. Our leaders tend to prefer one-man (or one-woman) shows instead of people who develop the necessary political institutions.

For aid workers and some observers like Min Zin (2013), this focus on personalities rather than procedures often applied not only to President Thein Sein, but also to the National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Jonathan, an aid program manager, said that rather than focussing on institution building or policy, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), was building a ‘national-level personality party’.14 This concern is reflected in former US Ambassador Mitchell’s (2013: 14) conclusion that ‘change [in Myanmar] remains rooted in individuals, not institutions’. This overreliance on personality-based politics was portrayed by proponents of this narrative as bringing an unhelpful hierarchical model of leadership in the democracy movement. A long-term international aid worker suggested that the National League for Democracy in particular is ‘profoundly hierarchical’ with ‘too little empowerment and delegation’.15 Meanwhile, Jonathan considered that this lack of delegation was not only related to the powerful position of Aung San Suu Kyi, but also that of the NLD’s Central Committee. ‘Talk to local-level people in the NLD about policy and they say, “We implement what the Central Committee decides. You need to talk to the Central Committee.” It is very hierarchical’, he concluded.16 Despite being the most prominent opposition organisation in Myanmar, its personality-led style and hierarchy made many Western aid workers express doubts as they saw it as undemocratic. As will become clear in coming chapters, attitudes toward the NLD – and Aung San Suu Kyi herself – were deeply polarised. Proponents of this liberal narrative often portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi as a barrier to, rather than an 13 Min Zin was not a direct participant in this study, though his perspectives were commonly raised in interviews by both Myanmar and international participants. 14 Interview 43, conducted August 2014. 15 Interview 32, conducted February 2014. 16 Interview 43, conducted August 2014.

104 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

agent of, democratisation. ‘For the democracy movement, at the end of the day, she [Aung San Suu Kyi] is the symbol. Yet she has created more problems than anything else,’ concluded Thomas.17 Another donor representative recounted a meeting at a Western embassy, ‘I remember a conversation with someone from one of the embassies. They said, “What would Aung San Suu Kyi think about that?” [Another said,] “Who cares what she thinks about anything? None of us care. Nobody really cares.”’18 Even before the 2015 election victory of the NLD, proponents of this liberal narrative viewed the role of Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD as largely problematic for democratisation. Criticism of the NLD, since it came to power in 2016, by OECD donor agency representatives has escalated based on the seemingly ongoing failure of the party to promote liberal democratic values, both in its internal structure and in its policy decision-making. Overall, many international aid workers felt that the pervasiveness of this personalised form of politics meant that future democratisation would be extremely challenging for Myanmar. The focus on ‘great heroes rather than institutions’ undermined the shift toward a more modern and liberally grounded democracy. Importantly, the problem of political immaturity and personalised politics was set against a wider backdrop of other transitional countries in the region. Aid workers often reflected that other countries in Asia were also struggling to move toward a more institution-based political system – Myanmar was not alone in these challenges. Sophia stressed that Myanmar’s democratisation must be considered in the context of ‘the neighbourhood’.19 She suggested that many countries in Asia are struggling to consolidate democratic institutions, and therefore expectations within Myanmar of a rapid transition ought to be tempered. As another donor manager concluded, ‘Myanmar is similar to other countries in moving from a personality-driven, unregulated system to one with more institutions and regulation.’20 Drawing on the interpretive and narrative theory I described earlier in this book, I have argued that in order to understand meanings given to the word ‘democracy’ it is crucial to trace back the various ‘counter-positions’ against which the vision is set. Narrative analysis can reveal the ways that visions of democracy drawn on by political actors are not abstract but are rather reactions to particular perceived challenges. Democratisation may 17 18 19 20

Interview 27, conducted February 2014. Interview 28, conducted February 2014. Interview 19, conducted November 2013. Interview 4, conducted October 2013.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

105

be considered to be an important process, but what is it moving away from? For proponents of this liberal narrative, democratisation was often described as movement away from societal divisions, whether civil-military, ethnic or religious, and movement away from an informal, personalised form of politics.

The vision of democratic procedures and liberal values Proponents of the liberal narrative saw the only viable solution to Myanmar’s fractious society as lying in the consolidation of democratic procedures, and societal support for those procedures through liberal values. Reacting against the perceived system of personalised politics, real democratisation was seen by these proponents to entail a shift from the informal to the formal, and from the personalised to the liberal.21 Yet, while there was a focus amongst many international aid workers on the importance of formal institutions, there was also some caution about rigid models. It was assumed – by proponents of this narrative – that countries such as Myanmar should be able to design their own liberal frameworks, and these procedures may, or may not, exactly reflect European or North American models. However, when core liberal values were challenged, there were also limits to this flexibility. Council of the European Union (2013) documents emphasise that Myanmar needs to develop a ‘modern’ constitution, a functioning parliament, an independent judiciary, ‘credible, transparent and inclusive’ elections (ibid.: 3) and must ratify international human rights conventions. The development of formal democratic institutions is portrayed in these documents as the only way to deal with the myriad of divisions within Myanmar society – something that an informal political culture based on personality politics cannot achieve. For DFID, it is the development of these institutions – especially ‘strengthening the work of Parliament’ (DFID 2012) – which will create ‘a better governed, more peaceful and prosperous Burma that uses its increased wealth to reduce poverty’ (ibid.: 1). In this sense, the liberal narrative echoed the British colonial administration’s emphasis on modernising and formalising political processes, for example, through establishing the institution of dyarchy in the 1920s. 21 This finding resonates with Bunce and Wolchik’s (2012) study of donor democracy-promotion programs in post-communist countries, which suggests that donor representatives heavily emphasised the liberal dimension of their programs over, for example, the ‘freedom’, or ‘social/ economic’ benefits of democracy.

106 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

For proponents of the liberal narrative, support to ‘civil society’ was also an important dimension. The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) aims to strengthen Myanmar civil society, especially in its role in ‘strengthening the capacity of people to hold [the Myanmar government] to account’ (AusAID 2013: 14). The ‘European Strategy for a Strengthened Partnership with Civil Society in Myanmar’ emphasises support to civil society to fulfil a liberal role in democratisation, connection between state and communities, and protection for minorities (European Union 2018). Yet while OECD donor statements often emphasised formal institutions in democratisation, in interviews, proponents of this narrative were also cautious about being too prescriptive. Western aid agency manager Claire said, ‘I don’t necessarily think there is one perfect model of democracy that you can apply to every environment. […] [I]t has to work for that society.’22 Similarly, European donor representative Michael reflected that ‘there needs to be a Burmese democracy that works. […] We are too quick and eager to do things our way.’23 Developing a vision for Myanmar democracy was seen by proponents of this narrative to require a degree of humility in moving outside of established Western models. NGO director Thomas reflected, [s]o much here is about governance and state building. So much is about supporting the institutions which will mirror our similar institutions in our country. Maybe there is another way? I am not sure we have the humility to acknowledge that many things can actually work. It doesn’t have to be a replica of an American or Norwegian or Australian model.24

These reflections suggest that while there was some coherence within the liberal narrative about the centrality of liberal democratic procedures, its proponents also expressed a desire to be sensitive to the Myanmar context. In Kurki’s (2013: 217) analysis of democracy-promoting agencies, she observes that practitioners’ logics are often pluralist and yet at the same time unquestioningly liberal in orientation. There is a dynamic of ‘diversity accommodating consensus’ (ibid.: 217) where context sensitivity and adaptation is valued, but only within the parameters of an assumed liberalism. Liberal values, in this sense, are not part of a conscious framework that is adopted by donor agencies; rather, Kurki contends that liberal values are more often unreflectively assumed to be ‘common sense’ (ibid.: 217). In 22 Interview 17, conducted November 2013. 23 Interview 37, conducted February 2014. 24 Interview 27, conducted February 2014.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

107

the case of democracy promoters in Myanmar, while there was some caution about rigid formulas for democracy, there were limits to this flexibility when the implicit liberal values of democracy were challenged. These limits were often expressed by aid workers around a cluster of values – universal human rights, pluralism and protection of minorities. Once again, it was reflection on violence against Muslims that drew out the clearest articulations of these limits. Inviolable liberal values For proponents of the liberal narrative – most of whom were donor representatives and aid workers – the consolidation of democratic procedures was only seen to be possible when based on a set of inviolable liberal values. As described in the previous section, there was some flexibility amongst these participants about the form of formal democratic institutions, such as a constitution, free and fair elections and a functioning parliament. However, many aid workers saw it to be critical that these procedures were underpinned by support for liberal values. This emphasis was borne out through reflections on divisions in Myanmar society, particularly reactions to incidents of communal violence and the treatment of Muslim minorities by the Myanmar state. As with all the narratives described in this study, the vision of democracy became most clear when contrasted with a particular counter-position. Especially concerning for several international aid agency representatives was the perceived lack of recognition within the wider Burmese community of human rights as a universal concept. This was highlighted by Michael, who, despite being relatively new in his position, spoke at length about the issue of communal violence in Myanmar. In particular, he expressed concern that without human rights as a foundation, democracy would not be possible: ‘How can you see these starving children and not think that they have any rights? […] Of course, I don’t understand anything about this country but I do understand that people have their rights – notwithstanding their race, culture, whatever.’25 In this way, while acknowledging that he had only a limited appreciation of the local dynamics of religious tensions, he stressed that the value of human rights must be universally accepted. Further, he suggested that if local actors could not accept the premise of universal human rights in democracy then he could not talk about these issues any further. He concluded, 25 Interview 37, conducted February 2014.

108 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

I am quite good at talking to young people about human rights but here I have failed miserably. […] Even trying to say things like, ‘My daughter is three and a half and she is sick and I take her to the hospital. If a Rohingya [Muslim minority group] girl gets sick and desperately needs help, don’t you think she should get it?’ ‘No’ [they say]. […] And I tried all these things in my tool box. Nothing works. […] I have to admit I really can’t discuss this anymore. I have to give up. I am really disappointed.26

The lack of acknowledgement of the universality of human rights amongst Michael’s Burmese interlocutors meant that he had to ‘give up’. Similarly, Claire expressed her surprise at the anti-Muslim perspectives of some Burmese democracy activists and their ability to separate the meaning of democracy from the core value of universal human rights. People who we would regard as […] defenders of democracy saying, ‘Oh yeah, I am for human rights for everyone, but just not for them [Muslims].’ And they literally say something along those lines. And I am like, ‘What, do you hear yourself?’27

Within this liberal narrative vision there was no possibility that Burmese activists could be ‘defenders of democracy’ and at the same time question the rights of certain minority groups. Flexibility was important with regard to the form of democratic procedures, yet in relation to the universality of human rights, there was significantly less tolerance of alternate perspectives. Along with human rights, the vision of democracy was seen by aid workers involved in this study to also embrace pluralism and acceptance of multiple – especially minority – voices. ‘In [my country] we say that the measure of a true democracy is not majority rule but how minority voices are heard and incorporated,’ reflected Sophia.28 Yet the Burmese democracy movement was seen to not yet understand the value of minority voices. Thomas compared this to the situation in Turkey, as another country grappling with the inclusion of minority voices. [President of Turkey] Erdoğan always says, ‘I have the majority so you shut up. I won more than 50% of the votes. So what are you talking about? This is democracy. You have to respect democracy.’ But the argument of 26 Ibid. 27 Interview 17, conducted November 2013. 28 Interview 19, conducted November 2013.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

109

the other side – which is more Western oriented – is: ‘Democracy is not just about your majority. You can’t take away our rights as minorities.’29

Proponents of this liberal narrative saw movement toward clearer government protection of Muslim minorities – and also ethnic minority groups such as the Kachin and Karen – to be essential for any ‘genuine’ vision of democracy. In this way, human rights, pluralism and protection of minorities formed a cluster of values that were incorporated by Western aid workers into meanings of democracy. Although the structure or procedures of formal democratic institutions may vary, within the liberal narrative vision it was essential that these institutions have their grounding in liberal values. However, as will become clear in the next chapter, other narratives portray contrasting hierarchies of values. A modern orientation Two subtle, yet important, dimensions of this liberal vision of democracy were also apparent in the way in which its proponents sought to orient the story of democracy. First, in interviews with international aid workers, anecdotes were most commonly drawn from other countries – comparing and contrasting Myanmar’s progress against both Western, and other ‘developing’ countries. Whether related to leadership in Turkey, or institutions in Norway, the reference points from which aid workers understood and communicated about democracy were often international. In this way, Myanmar’s own democratisation was framed within this narrative as being part of a wider global story. There may be diversity in the details of democratisation, yet the trajectory of Myanmar’s democratisation could be readily compared with that of other countries. While not as stark as Leach’s colonial portrayal of Burma’s movement toward an ‘Ocean of Democracy’, the liberal narrative nonetheless had a clear destination. Second, proponents of this narrative also commonly described events and issues within a comparatively narrow ‘temporal range’ (Polkinghorne 1995) – referring in only a very limited way to events in Myanmar history. As will become clear in Chapter Six, for many Burmese activists and opposition leaders, Myanmar’s past was seen to have a crucial place in informing both the challenges and vision of the country’s democratisation. Yet, for proponents of the liberal narrative, there was little reference to Myanmar’s past beyond the recent period of military government. Importantly, where 29 Interview 27, conducted February 2014.

110 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

there was reference to history it was almost always in order to illustrate a challenge, rather than as a potential resource that could inform the meaning of democracy. Thus, while there was no overt, or conspiratorial, devaluing of Myanmar’s past, proponents of the liberal narrative gave little attention to how Myanmar history could be of value in informing a new democracy. Most aid workers involved in this study considered the past to be relevant to better grasp problems to solve, rather than as a potential inspiration for solutions. The combination of these dimensions meant that the vision in the liberal narrative was a linear one – communicated as part of a global story that was focussed toward the future, rather than a locally embedded one that drew on the past. This orientation then flowed into the way in which strategies to support democracy were framed.

The strategy of capacity building Along with descriptions of challenges and vision, narratives also included an element of strategy – the key ways that the ‘breach’ (Bruner 1991) from the vision can be addressed. For proponents of the liberal narrative, a crucial element in the advance of democracy was the role of Western donors in capacity development. Yet this strategy was seen, in some cases, to be hampered by the lack of interest from key political actors such as the National League for Democracy. Underlying the core challenges of division and personalised politics, many Western aid workers saw a lack of capacity – which is described by US Ambassador Derek Mitchell (2013: 14) as ‘thin’, both in government and in Myanmar civil society. As one European donor representative said, a critical problem in Myanmar is the government’s ‘lack of understanding of institutions’ – for local governance, for protection of minorities and for providing a check and balance for government.30 Meanwhile, donor agency statements describe a lack of professionalism and advocacy skills amongst Myanmar civil society organisations that has ‘impeded their ability to effect change’ (USAID 2014). Therefore, echoing the colonial era notion of ‘a people at school’, capacity building takes a central place within the liberal narrative. Having been isolated from the modern world for decades, proponents of this narrative described how Myanmar political actors – including those in the democracy 30 Interview 39, conducted February 2014.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

111

movement – had a limited understanding of the necessary formal structures of democracy. A key aim was to transfer technical knowledge about democratic institutions from donor countries to Myanmar civil society and government. Strengthening of formal democratic procedures and fostering liberal values were the overarching solution to Myanmar’s divisions. Yet building such institutions would require new skills and knowledge. For the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) aid program in Myanmar, capacity building is required ‘to strengthen democratic institutions and electoral processes, strengthen the voice of civil society and promote human rights’ (AusAID 2013: 14). Several aid workers I interacted with suggested that capacity could be increased with greater exposure to other contexts. A number of Western donors – including the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the UK’s Department for International Development – had facilitated exposure visits for members of parliament and ‘civil society’ leaders to European democracies.31 Sophia, a peace and conflict advisor, had coordinated such an exposure visit, and talked about her organisation’s role in building the capacity of government ministers: One of the things that has struck me most is that […] a lot of these reforming ministers hadn’t been abroad, hadn’t travelled. So, in a way, strengthening them and helping them see more, helping key people see that there is a world out there and you don’t need to be afraid. You can actually engage with this.32

If they could be exposed to the global progression of democracy, Myanmar’s government and ‘civil society’ leaders could take a wider role in democracy. Meanwhile, for local organisations, there were also considered to be technical needs – both organisationally, and in their capacity to hold the state to account. Local NGOs were also seen by many Western aid workers to lack institutions and formal structures. As USAID (2014: 1) suggests, [i]f CSOs [civil society organisations] are going to promote accountability and transparency in the reform process, they must meet minimum standards of organizational governance including written bylaws, financial policies, strategic plans, bank accounts, and human resources management. 31 Interview 19, conducted November 2013. 32 Ibid.

112 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Further, USAID (2014: 1) suggests that ‘in order to effectively advocate [to government] CSOs need the capacity to conduct evidence-based research as well as specialized democratic governance-themed knowledge’. In this way, the emphasis on procedure building at the government level was mirrored in the emphasis on formal institution building within local organisations themselves. As Myanmar liberalised through the Thein Sein period, the expectations of ‘civil society’ organisations fulfilling a liberal role became higher. ‘[During the period of military rule] I think it was great to only capacitate and empower’, suggested Michael. ‘That was fine because it was such a bad environment and you had to do everything underground. But now it is time to raise that.’33 Michael insisted that Western support should now be assisting Myanmar civil society toward ‘changing things through parliament or influence by their local elected leader in parliament’.34 He argued that as the country had liberalised, ‘civil society’ needed to take up more of its democratic functions in holding the state to account. Yet proponents of this narrative also expressed frustration. Aid agency efforts to build the capacity of local actors were not working as they had hoped – especially in engagement with Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). On one hand, most aid workers involved in this study considered the NLD to have a profound need for capacity building for democratic governance. In the lead up to their victory in the 2015 elections, Thomas argued that ‘the NLD party structure is rubbish. They don’t have technical capacity and general understanding of the technical aspects of governance is very limited’.35 On the other hand, the NLD was also seen by international aid workers to have little interest in this capacity building. Aid program manager Jonathon had been attempting to support the NLD in the lead up to the 2015 elections in developing an approach to democratic governance reforms at the local level. He said the process had been deeply frustrating and that ‘individuals may show interest but it is almost impossible to get the engagement of the [NLD] party’.36 In contrast to the NLD, aid workers often reflected more favourably on the period of military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) governance under President Thein Sein. The USDP was often considered to 33 Interview 37, conducted February 2014. 34 Ibid. 35 Interview 27, conducted February 2014. 36 Interview 42, conducted August 2014.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

113

be open to capacity-building support from international donors. Thomas, in particular, was impressed by the attitude of openness in the USDP government ministries in the lead up to the 2015 elections: I think there is a humbleness in Myanmar right now. When we meet with government bodies to speak about capacity building for staff, I am struck by the humility on behalf of the Myanmar [government], saying, ‘We know we have a lack of capacity and we want to learn.’ When did that ever happen? Did [the] government ministry [in my country] ever say, ‘We have a lack of capacity and we want to learn?’ No way, we would try to hide all the mistakes.37

For proponents of this institution-centric narrative, the lack of interest from the National League for Democracy – and the contrasting attitude of the USDP – was deeply concerning. Some participants suggested that despite their agency’s previous support for Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s democratisation may be better served if the NLD did not win a majority in the 2015 elections. A coalition government (involving the NLD and other parties) – or a role in opposition under the ongoing rule of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party – were seen by some proponents of this narrative to be preferable options for Myanmar’s governance. In this sense, the future democratisation of Myanmar was considered to be more dependent on technical governance capacity than the popularity of leaders. Relating this situation to his previous experiences, Michael reflected: I see similarities with South Africa. The ANC [African National Congress] was a liberation party not at all ready to govern. And the strongest opposition here [the NLD] is the same. So I would think the best outcome for the election is for the USDP [Union Solidarity and Development Party] to win, and then become better and better. Now they have some good people who [are] start[ing] to get it.38

Importantly, the process by which people ‘get it’ was often expressed by aid workers as one where they gain technical knowledge and skills in governance. The perceived lack of capacity in the National League for Democracy

37 Interview 27, conducted February 2014. 38 Interview 37, conducted February 2014.

114 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

led Thomas to conclude that a future coalition government – between the USDP, NLD and other parties – would be most productive. Personally, I think that probably the best for the country is a unity government after 2015. The NLD alone? I mean, that idea would keep me awake at night. But some sort of legitimacy of NLD and representativeness of the Lady [Aung San Suu Kyi] combined with the best elements of bureaucratic knowledge.39

The NLD clearly had popular legitimacy, yet most aid workers perceived that the lack of capacity in the party and unwillingness to accept international support meant that its ability to drive future democratisation was limited. In this sense, the place of the NLD within European and North American donor strategy was being reconsidered even before the 2015 elections. In many cases the fears amongst democracy-promoting agencies – of lack of governance capacity in the NLD – have been realised in the years since the 2015 election victory. The growing concern about Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership and the role of the NLD before and after the 2015 elections brought a sense of uncertainty about the future. In 2018, a former donor aid advisor reflected on the profound shift in interpretations of Myanmar’s democratisation in the tumultuous years since the NLD victory: Everyone wants a good story. What blew the whole lid off that completely, obviously, was the entire situation surrounding the Rohingya. It’s just completely flipping everything that everybody knows about Buddhists, about Aung San Suu Kyi, about Freedom Fighters, about the military, everything on its head. 40

Many democracy-promoting governments had held a view of Myanmar as a binary contest between an autocratic military and a democratic opposition. But for proponents of the liberal narrative, these lines have become blurred. During the Thein Sein administration, the reforming Union Solidarity and Development Party was demonstrating some liberal competence. In contrast, the National League for Democracy and its iconic leader were not as interested in policy and capacity support as was expected. Claire reflected that democracy promotion during the military-dominated period was at 39 Interview 27, conducted February 2014. 40 Extra Interview, conducted November 2018.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

115

least somewhat clearer. It was ‘easy before, when you knew who the baddy was’, she concluded.41 In the years since the 2015 election victory of the NLD, this uncertainty within donor agencies has only become more apparent.

Conclusions Proponents of the liberal narrative considered democratisation in Myanmar to be extremely challenging. Many aid workers expected that it was only the formal institutions of democracy – embedded in core values of universal human rights, pluralism and protection for minorities – which could solve the country’s seemingly intractable divisions. It was clear to many that a personalised political culture, reliant on the popularity of individual leaders, would not be able to bring sustainable democratic change. Therefore, aid workers who narrated the liberal story often saw the most important interventions to be those that could ‘build capacity’ in government, political parties, civil society organisations and wider society. Increased knowledge and skills for supporting formal institutions – including a solid constitution, a functioning parliament, free and fair elections, human rights mechanisms, and an independent judiciary – would allow Myanmar to deepen its transition to a modern state. This narrative was on one hand characterised by its rejection of key elements of the military supported ‘disciplined democracy’ storyline. All international aid workers involved in this study strongly resisted the role of the Tatmadaw in governance and the illiberal values which had supported military rule. Yet, on the other hand, proponents of the liberal narrative also shared with military, and ex-military, elites some underlying assumptions about the problem of personality-driven politics. Both the liberal and ‘disciplined democracy’ narratives de-emphasised the role of individual personalities in the process of democratisation – especially the role of Aung San Suu Kyi. As I have described, many proponents of the liberal narrative expressed concerns about the National League for Democracy, the focus on Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD’s perceived disinterest in the technical aspects of governance. At the same time, these participants also showed some sympathy for the previous military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, which they felt had built a degree of competence in democratic governance. Thus, while rejecting many elements of the

41 Interview 17, conducted November 2013.

116 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

military storyline, aid workers in this study also echoed the concerns of military elites about the personalised politics of the opposition. In contrast to the liberal narrative, the next chapter outlines a narrative that dominated discourse within some networks of activists and NLD members. The focus in this narrative was not on formal institutions and liberal values, but on the role of sedana (‘benevolence’) in democracy. 42 I argue that some activists and NLD leaders made the value of benevolence uniquely central to their vision of democracy. Democracy was primarily conceived in personalised rather than procedural terms.

References 4News. 2013. ‘Aung San Suu Kyi: Falling from grace’. Channel 4 News. 25 October. www.channel4. com/news/aung-san-suu-kyi-falling-grace. Last accessed 30 November 2019. AFP. 2013. ‘Anti-Muslim riots haunt shattered Myanmar city’. Fox News. 8 July. www.foxnews.com/ world/anti-muslim-riots-haunt-shattered-myanmar-city. Last accessed 30 November 2019. Ashton, C. 2012. ‘Speech on Myanmar to European Parliament’. European Commission. 17 April. europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-12-273_en.html. Last accessed 30 November 2019. AusAID. 2013. ‘Australia-Myanmar aid program strategy (2012-14)’. Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID). January. https://www.dfat.gov.au/sites/default/files/ myanmar-country-strategy-2012-14.pdf. Last accessed 12 January 2021. BBC News. 2013. ‘Suu Kyi blames Burma violence on “climate of fear”’. BBC News Asia. 24 October. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-24651359. Last accessed 30 November 2019. Bevir, M., and Rhodes, R.A.W. 2003. Interpreting British Governance. London: Routledge. Bruner, J. 1991. ‘The narrative construction of reality’. Critical Inquiry 18 (1): 1-21. Bunce, V.J. and Wolchik, S.L. 2012. Concepts of democracy among donors and recipients of democracy promotion. The conceptual politics of democracy promotion, pp. 151-170. Council of the European Union. 2013. ‘Council conclusions on the Comprehensive Framework for the European Union’s policy and support to Myanmar/Burma’. Foreign Affairs Council meeting, Brussels, 22 July. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/ EN/foraff/138272.pdf. Last accessed 12 January 2021. DFID. 2012. ‘Operational plan 2011-2015: DFID Burma’. UK Department for International Development (DFID). August. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/67323/burma-2011.pdf. Last accessed 12 January 2021. European Union. 2018. ‘European strategy for a strengthened partnership with civil society in Myanmar’. EU-CSO Partnership Strategy. August. https://eeas.europa.eu/sites/eeas/files/ eu-cso_partnership_strategy_2018-2020.pdf. Last accessed 30 November 2019.

42 During the period of direct military rule in the 1990s and 2000s, both military elites and opposition leaders made appeals to the concept of sedana (‘benevolence’) to support their legitimacy (see Houtman 1999). I argue in the next chapter, however, that during the Thein Sein administration the activists and opposition leaders (many of whom had been released from prison) could make persuasive claims to commitment and selflessness – qualities that were considered to be crucial to demonstrating sedana.

A LIBERAL NARRATIVE

117

Fielding-Hall, H. 1906. A People at School. London: Macmillan. Houtman, G. 1999. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Kurki, M. 2010. ‘Democracy and conceptual contestability: Reconsidering conceptions of democracy in democracy promotion’. International Studies Review 12 (3): 362-386. Kurki, M. 2013. Democratic Futures: Revisioning Democracy Promotion. London: Routledge. Min Zin. 2013. ‘Worrying about Burma’. Min Zin Blog. 1 February. http://minzin.blogspot. com/2013/02/worrying-about-burma.html. Last accessed 30 November 2019. Mitchell, D. 2013. ‘Burma’s challenge’. The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 37 (3): 13-20. Obama, B. 2012. ‘Remarks by the President in State of the Union address’. The White House. 24 January. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/01/24/remarkspresident-state-union-address. Last accessed 30 November 2019. Polkinghorne, D.E. 1995. ‘Narrative configuration in qualitative analysis’. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 8 (1): 5-23. USAID. 2013. ‘Higher education partnerships to support the US-Burma commitment to democracy, peace and prosperity: Call for concept papers’. USAID-Burma-SOL-486-13-000012. USAID Burma. USAID. 2014. ‘Accountable to all (A2A): Strengthening civil society and media in Burma program’. Washington, DC: USAID. USAID. 2016. ‘FY 2017 development and humanitarian assistance budget’. US Agency for International Development. https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/fact-sheets/fy2017-development-and-humanitarian-assistance-budget. Last accessed 6 December 2019.

6

A benevolence narrative Abstract This chapter describes an alternate narrative of democracy that centres around the value of sedana or benevolence. This narrative has three parts: the challenge of dictatorial leadership in Myanmar and the moral failure of citizens; the vision of a morally transformed society based on benevolent leadership and the values of unity and obligation; and a strategy of moral education to renew these values within society and promote discipline. This narrative highlights a moral rather than liberal vision – one in which the ability of individual political actors to transcend self-interest is of the highest importance. Proponents of this narrative emphasise that a focus on the narrow interests of particular individuals or groups will spark division and thereby undermine democracy – with the most immoral approach to politics being that of the ar nar shin (‘power-obsessed dictator’). Keywords: National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, benevolence, moral, unity, discipline

In September 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi gave a speech for International Democracy Day in the nation’s capital, Naypyidaw. In the previous year she had been stripped of multiple international awards for supporting human rights and democracy – as criticism of her and the NLD reached a crescendo following the crisis in Rakhine State. In the speech, Aung San Suu Kyi (2019) defines democracy as ‘people power’. Yet she stresses that this people power can be used both positively and negatively – it can be used for parahita (‘public interest’) or atta hita (‘self-interest’). ‘Some people think that democracy is just for self-gain’, Aung San Suu Kyi (ibid.) said, ‘basically, human beings are selfish. We can’t ignore this fact, if we want a successful system. I would say democracy is a culture, rather than a system as it involves not only politics, but also social, economic and philosophical values.’ The key to these values of democracy, as opposed to a ‘system’, was ‘goodwill’. Aung San Suu Kyi (ibid.) concluded by saying that Myanmar must

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch06

120 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

‘realize democratic culture through true goodwill towards the country and mankind for the flourishing of democracy’. In Burmese, Aung San Suu Kyi used the word sedana to express the value of ‘goodwill’ or ‘benevolence’ required for genuine democratic culture.1 In this chapter, I seek to, in Schaffer’s terms, ground and locate a narrative of democracy that departs from the liberal meaning of democracy described in the previous chapter. I argue that this alternate narrative centres around the value of sedana or benevolence. This narrative has three parts: the challenge of dictatorial leadership in Myanmar and the moral failure of citizens; the vision of a morally transformed society based on benevolent leadership and the values of unity and obligation; and a strategy of moral education to renew these values within society and promote discipline. I argue that this narrative highlights a moral rather than liberal vision – one in which the ability of individual political actors to transcend self-interest is of the highest importance. Proponents of this narrative emphasise that a focus on the narrow interests of particular individuals or groups will spark division and thereby undermine democracy – with the most immoral approach to politics being that of the ar nar shin (‘power-obsessed dictator’). Crucially, this prominent moral meaning of democracy has not simply emerged since the NLD’s 2015 election victory, but rather has been present in democratic discourse in Myanmar through the previous transitional and authoritarian periods of government. The emphasis on a moral vision echoes several studies on moral notions of democracy in Asia (Frechette 2007; Baaz & Lilja 2014; Rodan & Hughes 2014). These works describe the prominence of moral, rather than liberal procedural, meanings of democracy and their connection to religious, especially Buddhist, teachings. In particular, these studies highlight how the evaluation of public off ice can occur through a personalised lens. The legitimacy of leaders can be established through perceptions of the moral conduct of the individual and significantly less attention is given to ‘appropriate political institutions’ (Rodan & Hughes 2014: 13). Where this moral notion of democracy or accountability is seen to fail, Rodan and Hughes (ibid.: 13) suggest that political actors can attribute this to individual moral failings rather than a problem with the framework itself. Taking a narrative approach in this study – and identifying construction of, and contestation over, plot and characters – serves to illuminate the way in which some Burmese political actors also employ moral understandings of democracy. While sharing some similarities with notions of moral 1

Burmese translation from Myanmar State Counsellor website Aung San Suu Kyi (2019).

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

121

democracy in other parts of Asia, the benevolence narrative I describe here also has unique characteristics that have emerged in the specific political context of Myanmar. This chapter describes some profound contrasts between the liberal narrative, with its vision of formal political institutions based on liberal values, and the benevolence narrative, with its emphasis on a moral form of democracy centred on the value of goodwill or sedana. Yet this is not at all to suggest that there is simply a Western-local divide between meanings of democracy. As the coming chapters highlight, a narrative approach can also tease out the contests within local political movements. Before addressing the features of the benevolence narrative, it is important to also consider the intersections between politics and religion in the way democracy is given meaning. While at one level I support the above arguments about moral, and Buddhist-inspired, notions of democracy or accountability in other parts of Asia, I also caution against any uniform understanding of the relationships between Buddhist concepts and Myanmar’s politics. Religion and politics in Myanmar are not static or separate topics of investigation but are related in a dynamic and contested way.2 On one hand, there are many examples where Buddhist ideas and symbols have been drawn on instrumentally in building political legitimacy of political leaders in Myanmar. Activities such as donations for pagoda building or sponsorship of a Chinese tooth relic have been used by Burmese military leaders to attempt to reinforce their power in the country (Schober 1997; S. McCarthy 2008). In the 1990s and 2000s, leaders of the National League for Democracy attempted to resist military rule through also employing Buddhist language and concepts, for example, through Aung San Suu Kyi’s (1991) reflections of the raza dhamma, or Ten Duties of Kings, that I described in Chapter Four. Religious concepts can clearly be invoked for competing political purposes. However, religious concepts are not relevant only for their instrumental use in politics. Religious teaching in Myanmar also influences the way in which politics and democracy are understood and communicated. The valuable scholarship of Sarkisyanz (1965), Houtman (1999), Walton (2017) and Turner (2014) all connect Theravada Buddhist concepts to particular patterns in Burmese politics – for example, the influence of a Buddhist 2 Several proponents of the benevolence narrative explicitly drew on Theravada Buddhist concepts to articulate challenges, visions and strategies. I agree with Schober (2011) and Walton (2017) that it is important to move beyond portrayals of Buddhism as an ‘other-worldly’ religion, removed from politics.

122 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

ethical focus on motivations over outcomes. There is a dynamic interplay between Buddhism and politics in Myanmar – with religious concepts and symbols appropriated for political ends, and political practice also guided by the logics of religious concepts.3 Finally, as I have highlighted earlier, my intention with these chapters is to present the liberal, benevolence and equality narratives on their own terms, unpacking different stories as forms of common sense. Each of these narratives requires critical examination for the ways that they are used as political tools to outflank rivals. Yet I withhold these critiques until Chapter Eight, to allow space in these chapters for these contrasting logics to unfold. I now turn to describe the construction of plot and characters within the benevolence narrative, drawing on observation of political party and activist organisation meetings, informal interactions with over 50 activists, and extended interviews with Burmese activists and members of the National League for Democracy.

The challenge of moral failure When asked about the key challenges to democracy in Myanmar, proponents of the benevolence narrative pointed to the moral failures of Burmese leaders – the inability of leaders to put aside their own narrow vested interests. Tracing through Myanmar history – even to the period of the Burmese monarchy – some activists and NLD members identified key turning points where progress toward democracy was thwarted by the leadership of an ar nar shin (‘power-obsessed dictator’). The historical examples that were drawn on varied, yet proponents of this narrative often constructed a binary between sedana (‘benevolent’) leadership on one hand and the ar nar shin (‘power-obsessed dictator’) on the other. 3 Where relevant in this chapter, I describe the background context of certain Burmese words, particularly sedana (‘goodwill, right intentions, benevolence’). Yet there is also the challenging question of how meaning is attached to these words in contemporary usage, and the degree to which participants in this study were, or were not, making conceptual links to specific Buddhist doctrinal positions. In some cases, participants made explicit connections between particular Buddhist teachings and their understanding of democracy and in this chapter, I provide background information to contextualise these links. However, my purpose in this book is to describe contemporary narratives about democracy in Myanmar. In this chapter, I therefore focus my analysis toward that purpose and do not speculate more widely on etymological or doctrinal debates related to particular Burmese Buddhist concepts. For more detailed explorations of Buddhist doctrinal issues and democracy, see Walton (2012).

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

123

I met with U Wunna in the office of the NGO where he worked in Yangon.4 U Wunna is an activist and writer who, at the time of the interview, had recently returned from postgraduate study abroad. He was particularly interested in describing the historical origins of democracy in Burma. In the late monarchical period, U Wunna suggested, Burmese King Mindon had taken several steps toward a Burmese style of democratic governance.5 ‘In the King Mindon era there were reforms made and the democracy idea was tested – with a hluttaw (‘parliament’), bye daik (‘privy council’) and law courts’, U Wunna explained.6 Yet, while progress was made, after King Mindon’s death in 1878 the reforms ceased and it ‘went back to an ar nar shin [“dictator”] style’ under Burma’s last monarch, King Thibaw.7 U Wunna then described the role of Aung San (the father of Aung San Suu Kyi), who had led the movement for independence and united several of the country’s ethnic minority groups around his Hpasapala (Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League) party. Aung San was seen by U Wunna to have been a moral leader who could have led the country toward democracy. Yet, as described in Chapter Four, in the final months before independence, he and several key members of his party were assassinated.8 In a similar way, U Aung Naing, who was a member of the National League for Democracy and had spent several years as a political prisoner, looked to Myanmar history to emphasise the negative influence of ar nar shin. I met with U Aung Naing in a coffee shop in Yangon. He had expected that the interview would be conducted in English and, concerned about his own English-language skills, said that he was nervous and had invited his wife to interpret for him. Yet, when I began the interview in Burmese, U Aung Naing began to speak passionately (in Burmese) about the country’s history. He stressed that, on one hand, the parliamentary terms of Nu – and his AFPFL party – (1948-1958, 1960-1962) were a ‘taste of democracy’,9 yet one also compromised by a failure of moral leadership. Echoing the assessments of Nu himself about the moral failure of politicians, he said that during the AFPFL era, ‘the influence of ar nar shin [“dictators”] was still large’.10 4 All names of participants are pseudonyms. The date and language of the interview is indicated in the footnotes and Burmese titles, U (for males) and Daw (for females), are used. 5 Interview 1, October 2013, Burmese. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 10 Ibid.

124 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

For proponents of the benevolence narrative, such as U Wunna and U Aung Naing, the negative influence of ar nar shin was most clearly illustrated in the role of the Burmese military, which overthrew the Nu parliamentary government in 1962. As described earlier in this book, military leader and independence hero General Ne Win established a Burmese one-party socialist state which lasted until 1988, only to be followed by a more direct form of military rule under SLORC and the SPDC until early 2011. U Shwe Aung, a local NGO and network leader, said that ‘once the military got into the seat, they didn’t want to get out’.11 Proponents of this narrative saw ar nar shin (‘dictators’) to be leaders who were disconnected from the people. U Wunna gave several insights into the perception of ar nar shin leadership. When asked what defines an ar nar shin, he replied: ‘I think most of the politicians know the key [to connecting with people] but they use it for their own purposes and later they forget and walk away. When people see this they think of ar nar shin.’12 He went on to give the example of the early period of the rule of General Ne Win in the 1960s and his frequent participation in du dait swe nwe pwe (literally ‘knocking knees discussions’) – sitting together on the floor with villagers and discussing issues. ‘People really liked this,’ U Wunna said. But when General Ne Win stopped having these kinds of connections to ‘the people’ he began to be seen as an ar nar shin.13 In this way, U Wunna suggested that ar nar shin are not ‘dictators’ in the formal political sense of a state ruler with absolute power. Rather, he described ar nar shin as a style of leadership and – as will become clear in the next chapter – it is used by activists in a range of contexts, not only in referring to national-level leaders.14 Meanwhile, U Aung Naing gave several insights into the long period of ‘dictatorship’ in Burma/Myanmar. There has been a lot of damage to the country. The time of the military government was more than 20 years [1988-2010]. And a one-party ar nar shin sa nit [‘dictatorship’] of more than 20 years [1962-1988]. All together, more than 40 years of being tossed around.15

11 Interview 46, October 2014, Burmese. 12 Interview 23, November 2013, English/Burmese. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese.

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

125

In particular, he stressed that it had adversely affected the political culture in the country, instilling a sense of fear. He likened this kind of leadership to negative relationships within families, saying it is like how a father treats his son. Under the hand of an ar nar shin [‘dictator’] style, for young people there is a lot of fear. You don’t tell the truth; you just say what the person in charge says. In society there has been a lot of this culture. In the Ma Sa La [BSPP period under General Ne Win] as well, if you did something wrong, you didn’t say. And with the military government having weapons, governance got worse.16

A number of activist participants had similar reflections on the impact of the military government and there was a common concern that despite some political liberalisation since 2011 – and the establishment of new formal institutions of democracy – the military ar nar shin have maintained their power. U Aung Naing concluded that this was also happening in his own local electorate. For my own township it is just military people wearing civilian clothes. For example, one of the old colonels is the township authorities chairman, an old officer is the district chair. These people have continued to have power – they want to continue with the dictatorial system [ar nar shin sanit]. They have allowed only some surface-level democratic changes but underneath they don’t really do them.17

Seen by several participants to be compounding this challenge of ongoing ar nar shin influence was the role of Western countries in supporting the ‘transition’. Speaking in the year before the 2015 elections, one young activist said, ‘the Western community says that they will support transition but there is no real transition yet. I don’t see a transition.’18 Crucially, through reducing economic sanctions and using more direct engagement in capacity-building activities, he argued that Western countries gave too much credibility to the USDP government. In this sense, he suggested that ar nar shin within the military had been successful in both maintaining their power and garnering greater Western support.19 16 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 17 Ibid. 18 Interview 45, February 2014, Burmese/English. 19 Ibid.

126 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Thus, the benevolence narrative pointed toward a dictatorial style of leadership as being the central challenge to democracy in Myanmar. In contrast to the liberal narrative though, the benevolence narrative was not presented by its proponents as a critique of a personalised form of politics, but rather of the failure of individuals within that system. The vision for democracy lay not in the building of formal democratic procedures – and movement away from informal, personalised forms of decision-making – but rather in building the personal qualities of political leaders. Activists often described democracy in personal and relational terms, rather than in formal and liberal ones. The failure of citizens Proponents of this narrative considered the challenge to Myanmar’s democratisation to not only come from ar nar shin dictatorial leadership, but also from the failings of citizens. Burmese society was, on one hand, seen by some activists to have inherently democratic qualities. Yet, on the other hand, citizens were considered to lack the moral maturity necessary for genuine democracy – especially an understanding of the obligation of democracy to put aside one’s own vested interests. Burmese society was considered to have a dual nature, being both inherently democratic and yet morally flawed. U Zaw Aung is an elderly NLD member and writer who I met in the downstairs open plan office of the National League for Democracy in Yangon.20 The interview was interrupted several times as he fielded questions from NLD volunteers sitting at other desks in the office. When asked about the challenges to democracy in Myanmar, U Zaw Aung sought to establish that Burmese society has important traits that are inherently democratic. In particular, he contrasted Burmese history with that of European countries in order to highlight what he perceived to be the unique socioeconomic and gender equality of Burmese society. For all of Myanmar’s history, there was no feudal era like in Europe. […] And there was no large relational divisions between men and women – an appropriate role was given for women, and men did not have a ruling relationship over women.21 20 Interview 12, November 2013, Burmese. 21 Ibid. This view of an inherent gender equality in Myanmar is disputed by studies from the Gender Equality Network. For example, the ‘Behind the Silence’ report highlights the extent of

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

127

He portrayed these qualities within Burmese society as being inspired primarily by Buddhist thought. These democratic qualities are present, ‘mostly because of […] the positive impact of Buddhism. Because Myanmar people believe in Buddhism there is compassion in relationships,’ he concluded.22 While throughout its history Burmese society may not have been a ‘full democracy’, U Zaw Aung suggested that, unlike India, it enjoyed many of its features. He stressed that, in the country’s history, ‘there have been practices similar to democracy. In India there is caste division. There is a separation in relationships between people […] [but in Myanmar] while it was not the full practice of democracy, it was close.’23 Although Burmese history and culture was seen by activists such as U Zaw Aung to demonstrate democratic traits, there was also considerable scepticism about the moral maturity of citizens. Proponents of the benevolence narrative argued that the self-interested nature of citizens in Myanmar had allowed the rise of authoritarianism. After being released from prison in 2012, 88 Generation activist Min Ko Naing (2012) said that all of society is responsible for Myanmar’s political failings since independence. ‘We understood that the government needed to go’, he said, ‘but we did not understand that society also needed to change’ (ibid.: 135). As Aung San Suu Kyi later said in her 2019 International Democracy Day speech, human beings are inherently selfish, and democracy requires a shift in values more than institutions. For some activists and NLD members, one of the key failings of citizens was in allowing division, for example, in disputes between different nongovernmental organisations or splits within activist networks. Division was described as a form of immaturity. Though unlike the liberal narrative, which focussed on ethnic and religious tensions, for many activists the primary concerns were divisions within the democracy movement. When asked about the level of importance of ethnic or religious division, U Wunna stressed that these were second-order problems – which could be addressed once the intra-bamar divisions were resolved.24 With moral leadership and responsible citizenship restored, other divisions would become tractable. Thus, the key failings were seen by many activists to lie in the democracy movement itself. ‘At the moment it is like two men and three organisations. You have one, I have one and together we have another one. It is divided domestic violence against women in the country (Gender Equality Network 2015). Similarly, U Zaw Aung’s portrayal of a non-hierarchical pre-modern Burma is highly questionable. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Interview 1, October 2013, Burmese.

128 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

like that,’ reflected a young activist repeating a commonly used joke within activist circles.25 Proponents of this narrative often criticised other activist organisations or individuals as being trapped within their own narrow vested interests rather than looking to the interests of the movement, and their country. ‘Some are still weak,’ U Aung Naing concluded. ‘There is still an obsession with groups, people and factions. Our work can only continue if this can be removed.’26 In considering the liberalising reforms in Myanmar since the 2010 elections, several NGO and activist leaders also felt that Myanmar citizens were often not mature enough to understand what democracy meant. In particular, several activists suggested that people naturally emphasise individual freedoms over responsibilities. U Nay Lin, a member of the National League for Democracy, said that democracy was often perceived by Myanmar citizens simply as ‘permission to do what you like’.27 In this sense, there was concern amongst proponents of the benevolence narrative that democracy could lead to moral failings of citizens – and even lead to increased crime in Myanmar communities. ‘During these days, there are lot of crimes. The reason behind such crime is that we are getting democracy’, concluded one activist.28 Proponents of this narrative suggested that democracy may bring more openness, yet the people were not ready for it – there was scepticism about the ability of the wider population to constructively participate in true democratic change.29 As I have argued in previous chapters, narratives are often shaped as reactions to particular counter-positions – visions are formed in response to particular perceived challenges. For proponents of this benevolence narrative, there was an explicit reaction against the military vision of ‘disciplined democracy’ – identifying dictatorial ar nar shin leadership, and specif ically that of military leaders, as the core problem. Yet, the 25 Interview 36, February 2014, Burmese. The origins of this commonly repeated joke are unclear. Though Kyaw Yin Hlaing (2007: 38) links the emphasis on unity to a quote from scholar Kanbawza Win: ‘If we put two Myanmar in a cell, they will form three political parties.’ He also draws parallels with the US-funded Cuban exile movement in Miami in the 1960s, where a common saying was ‘If you put two Cubans in a room with a political problem to solve, they would come up with three organisations.’ 26 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 27 Interview 8, October 2013, Burmese. 28 Interview 19, November 2013, English. 29 This scepticism is echoed in Aung San Suu Kyi’s own reflections – from her 1991 book Freedom from Fear – about the underlying reason for long-standing military rule through Myanmar history. Democracy had failed after Burma gained independence because ‘citizens failed to carry out the duties of citizenship’ (Aung San Suu Kyi 1991: 171).

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

129

benevolence narrative also echoed certain elements of the military narrative, particularly the scepticism about whether Burmese citizens had the maturity to practice democracy. I will return later to other ways in which – despite the political contest between the NLD and military leaders – the benevolence narrative overlapped with elements of the military’s story of ‘disciplined democracy’.

The vision of sedana30 As described in the previous chapter, when viewed through the lens of the Western donor-centric liberal narrative, Burmese society is mired in division. In this view, the conflicts inherent within the political realm can only be contained through formal political institutions, supported by liberal values. Instead, because of a personalised form of politics, Myanmar has been unable to build the formal liberal structures of democracy that could contain its various divisions. In a reversal of this perspective, the benevolence narrative emphasises that it is not so much a failure of the moral- and personality-centred system, but a failure of individuals within that system. Previous governments had failed to bring democracy due to the failed individual and collective moral character of political actors. The formal political institutions of democracy – a constitution, free and fair elections and a functioning parliament – were often considered by Burmese activists to be useful and necessary components of democracy. Yet, for proponents of the benevolence narrative, the fundamental challenges to Myanmar’s democracy were moral ones, not institutional ones. The divisions and conflicts of the political realm could best be addressed through benevolent character, which can transcend those contests. The necessary changes required for democratisation were therefore seen by many Burmese activists to occur through a combination of benevolent leadership and the fostering of values of unity, obligation and protection of the majority. Importantly, the contrasting ‘temporal range’ and use of anecdotes in this narrative pointed toward a vision that was oriented domestically and historically, as opposed to the international and future orientation of the liberal narrative. 30 Sedana is a Romanisation of the Burmese spelling of the word. In the Romanisation of the original Pali, this word is cetana. In quoting from Burmese-language interviews in this book, I follow the Burmese-language Romanisation.

130 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Sedana leadership For proponents of this benevolence narrative, the first element in the vision of societal transformation was the role of benevolent moral leadership. U Wunna stressed that the primary need was for leaders who are a tageh seit shi de lu or ‘people with true motivations’.31 Meanwhile, U Aung Naing, like Aung San Suu Kyi in her International Democracy Day speech, pointed to the importance of leadership based on sedana (‘benevolence’ or ‘goodwill’).32 In this sense, many activists participating in this study saw moral character as the primary concern in leadership, with knowledge or technical skills in governance as a secondary consideration. ‘It is more than just reading a book and understanding – it is understanding in their heart. They need to have real democratic values. [We need] those kinds of people,’ concluded another activist.33 In his study of the Burmese democracy movement in the 1990s, Gustaaf Houtman (1999) highlights the strategic importance of the value of benevolence for the movement. He explains the distinction between the military government and the democracy movement by highlighting different Burmese conceptions of power – ar nar (‘authority’) and awza (‘influence’). Where the military employed ar nar (‘authority’) in order to control the country, the democracy movement sought to establish awza (‘influence’) with citizens, based on moral legitimacy rather than coercive control (ibid.). In the late 1990s, there was little opportunity for the opposition movement to gain control over government authority, to increase their ar nar. Therefore, Houtman (ibid.) argues, Burmese activists or opposition leaders often sought to establish influence, or awza, especially through demonstrating their benevolence.34 Houtman’s (ibid.) work tends to construct a binary contest between the military and the democracy movement – a construct that this book is intending to unsettle. Yet his underlying insights into Burmese conceptions of power are still highly relevant. In the previous chapter, I described how the National League for Democracy was often derided by proponents of the liberal narrative for having little governance capacity. Yet, through the lens of the benevolence narrative, a higher premium was placed on the moral legitimacy of political leaders and 31 Interview 1, October 2013, Burmese. 32 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 33 Interview 11, October 2013, English. 34 Military leaders in Burma had also sought to establish awza (‘influence’) and not only their coercive control. For example, see Maung Maung’s (1969) biography of Ne Win.

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

131

representatives. U Aung Naing reflected on Myanmar’s democratic future, saying, ‘the number one thing is that it is important to have sedana for the country. Within NGOs, parliament and government organisations, people need to have true seit sedana [“benevolent motivations”].’35 What, then, are the distinguishing features of a leader with sedana?36 In order to contextualise this orientation toward sedana (‘benevolence’), it is necessary to highlight the relative place of intent and results within the ethical framework of the ‘Buddhist moral universe’ (Walton 2017). Within this framework, it is the motives of an individual that are important as much as the result of their actions. While activists may, to a degree, evaluate political leaders on the tangible impact of their actions, the perception of the leader’s internal motivation, and whether or not they were seen to have sedana (‘benevolence’), was also critical. In other words, proponents of this narrative evaluated leaders on both their ability to deliver tangible changes, and on perceptions of whether their motivations were ‘true’. Most obviously – for proponents of the benevolence narrative – the ideal leader with sedana was the opposite of the self-interested ar nar shin (‘dictator’). U Wunna suggested that within the democracy movement it was the value of selflessness that was seen to be crucial in recognising sedana.37 Amongst Burmese democratic leaders and activists there were many who had made profound sacrifices for the cause of democracy. Most of the key leaders in the National League for Democracy, the 88 Generation activist organisation and other local NGOs and activist groups had spent years – some up to 20 years – as political prisoners during the period of the SLORC and SPDC government. Many activists regarded this kind of selflessness as crucial to demonstrating one’s sedana, and therefore one’s leadership credibility. This focus was illustrated in a book that was produced internally by the National League for Democracy in 2013 to profile the hundreds of candidates for election to the Central Committee of the party. The profiles of the individuals included – along with usual details of educational background or work experience – a section where they could outline their own commitment 35 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 36 It is important to note that the use of the word sedana has been common not only in the democracy movement but also by the military elite. Houtman (1999: 162) highlights how military leaders frequently referred to their own leadership as sedana, or goodwill-based leadership, and that democracy movement leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi were taking advantage of the goodwill of the military in causing instability. There were appeals for adversaries to the army to show sedana, and when ethnic armies agreed to ceasefires this was seen to demonstrate sedana. 37 Interview 1, October 2013, Burmese.

132 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

in terms of numbers of arrests or years served as a political prisoner.38 This emphasis on selflessness was also reflected during my field research in a trip to a regional meeting of the National League for Democracy. Several key regional NLD leaders travelled to the meeting by public transport, which added several hours to the journey. Then, on the night before the public meeting, an NLD Member of Parliament slept in a corner of the office rather than pay for a nearby hotel room. The quality of selflessness was respected within activist and NLD circles, yet it was drawn into public discussion only with a specif ic tone. This tone was seen by U Ye Thu, an activist who had close connections to the NLD, to be set by Aung San Suu Kyi herself. He described how she clearly respects party members who have faced adversity – and appointed leaders who had demonstrated their commitment – yet was also opposed to open demonstrations of sympathy. He commented on this culture within the movement, saying, Daw Suu doesn’t like the word ‘sacrifice’. She always says, ‘I am not sacrificing; I am just doing my job.’ That is your own choice. For example, [if] you have decided to do politics, that is your own choice. You must not expect [to] benefit. […] If you ask [for respect or sympathy], she doesn’t like, it will not work.39

In this sense, while selflessness was clearly a central part of gaining leadership credibility, appeals to particular actions or periods of suffering could not be made in an overt way. Selflessness was also considered by many activists to be demonstrated through foregoing potential personal gain from leadership. For example, a member of the 88 Generation organisation spoke about the commitment of the organisation’s leaders, including prominent activist Min Ko Naing, and their refusal of any personal benefits. People think they [88 Generation leaders] have international help. But they don’t receive any support. Ko Min Ko Naing got support on one trip to America […] to get awards. But some 88 didn’t get passports and couldn’t go. So Min Ko Naing didn’t go either. From his prize […] Min Ko Naing put all money into the 88 organisation. Because of this people love him.40 38 Interview 24, February 2014, English. 39 Interview 34, February 2014, English. 40 Interview 36, February 2014, Burmese.

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

133

He then explained how the demonstration of sedana by Min Ko Naing led to greater public support for the 88 Generation leaders. Now ‘wherever they go […] because of their sedana there are people who donate,’ he concluded.41 This also extended down to other prominent members of the movement who received little financial gain for their work. An activist organisation leader with links to the 88 Generation described activism as one of the most poorly paid jobs in the country, saying, ‘The people who work here only get paid the same as a teashop waiter.’42 Thus, the perception of selflessness was crucial in discerning leaders or activists with sedana. Within the benevolence narrative it was often Aung San Suu Kyi who was seen to exemplify sedana (‘benevolent’) leadership. 43 Aung San Suu Kyi has received intense criticism by many international aid workers and in the international media for seemingly failing to defend democratic values and human rights. Yet for proponents of the benevolence narrative she was often portrayed as an individual with sedana who can bring democracy to Myanmar. ‘I believe that with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s seit sedana, ability and actions we can [bring] changes,’ reflected U Aung Naing when asked about the prospects of the country’s future democratisation. 44 Where there had been failures of leadership throughout Myanmar history – from King Thibaw through to recent military leaders – Aung San Suu Kyi was often seen by proponents of this narrative as the moral leader the country has needed. A Western donor representative recalled a diplomatic meeting in 2013 between senior figures in his own government and the National League for Democracy. During the meeting, Aung San Suu Kyi was asked why the general public overwhelmingly voted for her and the National League for Democracy in the 2012 by-elections. Aung San Suu Kyi had replied that internal party research had revealed three main motivations for voters supporting the NLD. 45 The most important was the public regard for her father, Aung San, who – before his assassination in 1947 – had been the country’s most famous independence leader. More than 60 years later, his sacrifice for the country – as one of the ar zar ni (‘independence martyrs’) – gave legitimacy to Aung San Suu Kyi’s own campaign. The legacy of Aung 41 Interview 36, February 2014, Burmese. 42 Interview 40, February 2014, Burmese. 43 Not all proponents of this narrative were equally supportive of the role of Aung San Suu Kyi. U Wunna, while articulating the key elements of the benevolence narrative, was skeptical of the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi claiming that she was, in fact, not driven by true motives (Interview 1, October 2013, Burmese). 44 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 45 Interview 39, February 2014, English.

134 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

San was also clearly claimed by the National League for Democracy in their campaigning. At one regional meeting of the NLD that I attended, the links to Aung San and Aung San Suu Kyi could not have been made clearer. Clustered around the stage in the large meeting room were five photographs of Aung San Suu Kyi. And in the centre, above the lectern, was a large photograph of Aung San in military uniform. The second stated reason for the success of the National League for Democracy was the selflessness of Aung San Suu Kyi herself in spending time as a political prisoner. Spending much of the last 25 years under house arrest and losing her privileged life in Oxford, Aung San Suu Kyi was considered to have the traits of sedana. An activist writer summed up her status, saying, Aung San Suu Kyi is very popular with ordinary people because she risked herself and her life for the country. They know about this and they trust her. She will never disappoint the country. She has no personal interest, personal money or opportunities. She never got that. So they trust her. 46

Finally, Aung San Suu Kyi’s campaign was found to receive popular support because of the perception of selflessness of other NLD party leaders – many of whom had also spent long terms as political prisoners. The progress of genuine democracy in Myanmar was seen by proponents of this narrative to be closely connected to sedana – which was demonstrated through selflessness. Democracy depended on the moral capacity of political actors to put aside their own vested interests for the good of the country.

The values of democracy: Obligation, unity and majority protection As described in the previous chapter, the liberal narrative was underpinned by a set of core values that were seen to be inviolable – especially universal human rights, pluralism and minority protection. While formal democratic structures may vary between countries, for proponents of the liberal narrative, any democracy must necessarily adhere to these values. In contrast, many activists in the democracy movement appealed to a different set of values – emphasising the obligations of citizens, unity and majority protection. This is not to suggest that Burmese leaders or activists who draw on this narrative were opposed to the concepts of rights, pluralism or 46 Interview 14, October 2013, Burmese.

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

135

minority protection, rather these values were balanced in a wider hierarchy of political values. A key dimension of debate in the movement was the perceived balance between rights and obligations in democracy. U Nay Lin – an elderly member of the National League for Democracy – explained that, in a democracy, rights cannot overshadow obligations. He suggested that if democracy is about rights alone then it will lead to instability in society – as everyone will be guided by their own self-interest. 47 Rather, as Aung San Suu Kyi (1991: 183) also argues in Freedom from Fear, ‘free men’ are the ones who ‘make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society’. In this way, there was a reversal of the primary trajectory of democratic ‘freedom’. As U Nay Lin suggested, ‘democracy is not about freedom to do whatever you like’, but rather a freedom from moral failings. 48 Not freedom to pursue one’s own self-interests, but a freedom from those self-interests. During our discussion, U Nay Lin and I walked around the central pagoda of a regional town in southern Myanmar. At this time, he explicitly linked his vision of democratic obligations to Buddhist teaching on relational responsibilities. 49 He stressed the importance of the Buddhist wuttaya nga pa (‘five obligations’) as examples of mutual obligations defined for different relationships within society – parents and children, teachers and students, husbands and wives, monks and lay people.50 For instance, it is a parent’s obligation to instruct and encourage their children and a child’s obligation to obey their parents. These obligations and their implicit hierarchy are then closely reflected in Burmese language and social practices – for example, in use of superior-inferior pronouns. The pronouns sayar or sayama (‘teacher’), u, daw (‘uncle/aunt’), ko, ma (‘brother/sister’) and tha or thami (‘son/daughter’) are used according to the nature of the relationship between two people and the degree to which they are superior or inferior in social status.51 U Nay Lin also pointed to a related set of obligations for leaders, the nayaka wuttaya52 – which are translated as ‘vigilance, diligence, sympathy, patience, wisdom and helpful admonition’ (Maung Maung Gyi 1983: 164). For U Nay Lin, citizens were expected to set aside their ‘own desires’ and fulfil 47 Interview 8, October 2013, Burmese. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid.

136 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

their obligations to the country or leader. On the other hand, leaders were also expected to fulfil their obligations to citizens. There was an emphasis, for some activists and democratic leaders, on democratic obligations rather than rights. In his work Hierarchy in Traffic, Keeler (2017) emphasises the importance of hierarchy within social relations in Myanmar. Drawing on diverse examples of traffic, dhamma talks and teashops, Keeler (2017: 2) argues that in everyday interactions in Myanmar, hierarchies (rather than ‘rights’) ‘condition everything’. Burmese society ‘is characterized by the principle of relative standing, not rights’ (ibid.: 2). In my own research, proponents of the benevolence narrative, such as U Nay Lin, supported this view of the centrality of hierarchy in conditioning obligations, and privileges within political and social relationships. These hierarchies were to be respected and valued rather than reformed. In this sense, I support Keeler’s analysis. However, where Keeler (2017) often describes the hierarchical relationships as characteristic of the ‘people of Burma’, in the coming chapters I argue that there is a crucial conceptual struggle within networks of Burmese activists over the relative place of hierarchy and equality in democracy. This is not simply a struggle between hierarchical values of ‘the Burmese’ and egalitarian values of the ‘West’. Related to the emphasis on obligation was the importance of unity – citizens working together for the good of the community or country. U Aung Naing explained that the most important thing for the country’s democratic future is ‘the role of the community and all parties in setting aside desires and standing together’.53 This emphasis on unity relates closely to Houtman’s observations on sedana leadership. He suggests that, as well as being translated as ‘goodwill’ or ‘benevolence’, in Burmese, sedana also has the connotation of ‘a union of mind with an object or purpose’ (Houtman 1999: 162). The presumption is that ‘for a government to work, all people must share the same deep intentions’, a unity of vision (ibid.: 162). This was reflected in the responses of a local NGO leader, U Shwe Aung, to questions about democracy in Myanmar. He contrasted Buddhist-inspired ideas of communal unity with the more individualistic tendencies of Western liberal democracy. Buddhism brings an ideal of community and equality. [When we go to the pagoda] we say we are spreading the good to everyone. Karma gained is

53 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese.

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

137

not for the individual but for the whole community. Liberal democracy and capitalism is more about benefits for the individual.54

According to U Shwe Aung, democracy could not just be about individual benefit. Like Buddhist practice, it must be for the ‘whole community’. In this way, he linked the value of unity to a Buddhist moral framework. Unity orients citizens toward a community orientation. Conversely, moral failure led citizens to look only to their own interests. Amongst activists, this emphasis on unity was often directed toward both the bamar democracy movement itself, and also to the responsibility of ethnic minority groups – such as the Kachin or Karen – to look to the goodwill of the nation (not only toward their own group). U Aung Naing argued that if they are not ‘careful’, ethnic minority groups could cause an unhelpful division in the country. He stressed that it ‘is better if the ethnic groups work together for changing our country. In the ethnic groups there are people who want their own group to become stronger. They need to be careful and come closer.’55 The focus on obligation and unity therefore gave the benevolence narrative a majoritarian slant. While there was acknowledgement of particular needs of minority groups – such as ethnic or religious minorities – on the whole, these were subsumed under the obligation for Myanmar society to be united behind the bamar majority. The logic of sedana as ‘a union of mind with an object or purpose’ (Houtman 1999: 162) led to an assumption amongst many bamar activists that democratisation should centre on drawing minority groups into unity with the bamar majority, rather than making greater concessions for minorities. Cheesman (2015: 108) uses the concept of ‘sovereign sedana’56 to argue that this kind of benevolence of leaders is ‘not aimed at protecting rights generally, but only certain rights for certain people who deserve them because they conform with the sovereign’s vision for the community’. Minorities who did not hold to a unified vision for the country did not come under the umbrella of sedana. The majoritarian slant in the benevolence narrative was presented most starkly in debate about religious division and violence, and the need for protection of the Buddhist majority in Myanmar.57 In the liberal narrative outlined in the previous chapter, protection of Muslim minority groups was 54 Interview 46, August 2014, Burmese. 55 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 56 Cheesman (2015) uses the Pali rendering of the term cetana. 57 It is important here to note the perceived association between bamar ethnicity and Buddhism. As Bechert (1984: 99) notes, the common saying is ‘To be a Burmese is to be a Buddhist.’

138 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

seen to be crucial. In contrast, for proponents of this benevolence narrative, the fundamental need was for protection of the Buddhist majority, who were seen to be under threat.58 In 2014, well before the Rakhine State crisis of 2017, U Shwe Aung described the need to defend the Buddhist majority. Buddhism is not confrontational. […] But Muslims in Myanmar are systematically threatening the country, infiltrating into the country. […] Buddhism needs a defence system, otherwise we will have to be backed into the ocean. We do not want to attack but just defend.59

The majoritarian slant of this narrative recalled lessons from the parliamentary period and the precarious state of the Burmese majority in defending themselves. As I described earlier in this book, after gaining independence in 1948, the new Burmese leaders were faced with both communist and ethnic insurgencies which, at times, even threatened the capital in Yangon. Meanings of democracy, and especially the emphasis on unity, were formed within the context of extreme instability and the perception of threat to the country. Proponents of the liberal and benevolence narratives reached starkly contrasting conclusions about the issue of communal violence in the country. Yet underlying these perspectives were differing constructions of the country’s challenges and the vision of democracy. On one hand, the liberal narrative was grounded in what is seen to be an inviolable cluster of procedurally protected ‘democratic’ values – especially universal human rights, pluralism and minority protection. While not rejected in the benevolence narrative, activists held these liberal values in tension with contrasting values of obligation, unity and majority protection. In moments when these values were threatened, such as through the issue of Buddhist-Muslim conflict, the contrasts between the liberal narrative and the benevolence narrative became most glaringly apparent. Proponents of the liberal narrative stressed the inviolability and universality of values of human rights, pluralism and minority protection and were often incredulous at any attempt to discuss Muslim marginalisation in Myanmar with reference to values of obligation, unity and protection of the Buddhist majority. Then, as tensions in Rakhine State reached a crescendo in 2017, proponents of the liberal and benevolence narratives found each other’s perspectives almost mutually incomprehensible. 58 See Schissler (2016) for more examples of the perceived threat to the Buddhist majority. 59 Interview 46, August 2014, Burmese.

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

139

Orientation of the benevolence narrative Finally, in contrast to the modernist orientation of the liberal narrative, the vision of democracy was often portrayed by proponents of the benevolence narrative through a wide ‘temporal range’. As I described earlier in this chapter, participants such as U Wunna and U Aung Naing provided detailed historical anecdotes drawn from as far back as the monarchical period of the nineteenth century. In her book, Freedom from Fear, Aung San Suu Kyi (1991: 193) explicitly embeds her perspectives on democracy in Myanmar history, describing the democracy movement as being involved in ‘a second struggle for national independence’. Though activists made occasional references to democracy in other countries, the benevolence narrative was primarily set against a Myanmar (or even a bamar ethnic) backdrop. This local and historical orientation is illuminated through Candier’s (2011) observations on the Burmese word for ‘reform’ (pyu pyin ye). While primarily used in the context of restoration – for example, repairing a road would be an act of pyu pyin ye – from the mid-nineteenth century onwards the word also came to be associated with reform of government. Yet this reform was not only a future-oriented act. In line with a cyclical rather than linear perspective of historical change, ‘reform’ was part of a cycle of decline and restoration. In this sense, it was oriented toward the future yet also toward a restoration of the past (ibid.). This orientation of the benevolence narrative contrasted significantly with the modern and international orientation of the liberal narrative. Rather than the vision of democratisation being focussed on the future – an expectation of linear movement toward the modern world – for many activists, democratisation was considered to be a restoration of past democratic life, the restoration of democratic practices that were inherent within Burmese culture. There was no consensus around a vision of democracy for Myanmar. The liberal and benevolence narratives contained starkly different assessments not only of the vision of liberal or moral democracy, but also the temporal orientation of that vision.

The strategy of moral education and the building of discipline Where the strategy in the liberal narrative centred on developing the Burmese capacity for building formal political institutions, proponents of this benevolence narrative were far more interested in the transformation of motivations, attitudes and beliefs. Support for sedana leadership and the

140 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

values of obligation, unity and majority protection required a strategy of moral education and the building of discipline. It is important to note at this point, however, that my account of this narrative is based largely on research in the lead up to the 2015 elections. The military-supported USDP was still in power and in its election campaigning, the NLD relied less on a platform of policy and more on the long-established moral legitimacy of Aung San Suu Kyi and other key NLD leaders. It is not surprising therefore that the strategy for building democracy articulated by activists and NLD members during this time often focussed on moral education and discipline, and they could remain, to some degree, aloof from the intricacies of everyday policymaking. The years of NLD leadership after the 2015 elections have not afforded the luxury of that aloofness. I acknowledge that my portrayal here of a benevolence narrative strategy is to some extent connected to the unique period before the 2015 elections. It is also important to note that proponents of this narrative were not purely focussed on moral dimensions of democratic change during this time – formal institutions still mattered. For many democratic leaders and activists, the general elections in 2015 were a key strategic focus since reforms began in 2011. Activists and NLD leaders also focussed on the campaign to amend Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution – in particular to reduce or remove the Tatmadaw presence in Parliament, allow Aung San Suu Kyi to be eligible for the presidency and to change the provisions for constitutional amendment. Between all participants in my research there were certain points of overlap in assumptions about promoting a more democratic Myanmar. While I highlight some crucial distinctions between the strategies highlighted in different narratives, I do not want to cast them as mutually exclusive. Moral education As I have described earlier in this chapter, the benevolence narrative includes an assumption of tension within Burmese society. Burmese society was seen by many activists to have inherently democratic traits, unlike other countries in the region. Yet citizens were also often considered to lack the maturity required for the practice of genuine democracy. Proponents of this narrative, such as U Nay Lin, criticised Myanmar citizens for understanding democracy as the right to do ‘whatever you like’, and they emphasised the responsibilities or obligations of democracy. Therefore, a key concern for many activists was to foster a more mature understanding of democracy – which could be achieved through a strategy of moral education. How then could this moral education be achieved?

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

141

A common suggestion by proponents of this narrative was that activists, government officials and citizens could be reached through trainings, public talks or workshops. The more citizens could understand the genuine meaning of democracy, activists or NLD leaders assumed, the more they would be able to practice democracy – particularly in putting aside their own self-interest for the benefit of the country. For example, after describing the importance of the quality of sedana, U Aung Naing suggested that ‘there needs to be trainings given to leaders […] in order for them to understand. [And] there should be trainings for activists.’60 He went on to say that local NGOs in particular could play a role in the wider education of society about democracy and ultimately this would contribute to the vision of ‘public, community and all parties […] setting aside obsessions and standing together’.61 U Aung Naing considered that any democratic progress would rely on educating political actors, and the public, in a way that would foster the core values of democracy.62 Fostering of discipline The fostering of si kan (‘discipline’) was another distinctive aspect of strategy. The word si kan – which was also employed in the Burmese phrase for ‘disciplined democracy’ – was used by many activists and NLD leaders that I interacted with to describe an ordered and systematic approach. Si kan related to general conduct, usually in the context of criticism of a lack of discipline, for example, in drivers or in arrangement of street side stalls. Yet si kan was also often applied to political conduct, for example, in activists or political party members remaining ‘disciplined’ and not pursuing their own individual goals, or disrupting the unity of their party or network. Since the origins of the contemporary democracy movement in 1988, the theme of discipline has been prominent. In Aung San Suu Kyi’s (1988) famous speech to hundreds of thousands of protestors at the base of Shwedagon Pagoda, she stressed, ‘If the people are disunited, no ideology or form of government can bring much benefit to the country. If there is no discipline, no system can succeed.’ In the NLD head office in Yangon, the words si kan (‘discipline’) and nyi nyut gyin (‘unity’) were written in large red Burmese 60 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 61 Ibid. 62 Such a program of moral education would require the development of key institutions. The point of difference that I seek to highlight here, however, is between the liberal narrative emphasis on formal procedures and liberal political institutions and the benevolence narrative emphasis on institutions that could bring moral transformation.

142 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

letters over the office entrance. And when activist Min Ko Naing, leader of the 88 Generation Students Group, was released from prison in 2012, he stressed that the maturity required for democracy was closely linked to the development of discipline. One of his first public comments after being released was that ‘it is very important to have discipline and unity, we have to show that we deserve democracy’ (Voice 2012).63 Thus, while reacting against the implementation of ‘disciplined democracy’ by military elites, proponents of the benevolence narrative also had a similar emphasis on order. In other words, the discipline in the military’s ‘disciplined democracy’ was not a problem as such. Rather, it was the fact that ‘disciplined democracy’ was being led by people who were power obsessed. For many activists and democratic leaders in the lead up to the 2015 elections, discipline was seen as a strategic foundation for challenging the control of government by military, or ex-military, elites. It was in the military regime’s interests to factionalise the democracy movement, and therefore if activists or NLD leaders were to challenge existing power structures it could only be through presenting a disciplined and united front. One activist highlighted that without a disciplined strategy within the democracy movement, the military’s agenda would continue. The government works to make [division] happen. […] If three organisations want reform [and] then if [we] work together, it will be better. […] We need unity. We need to work together. If there is no unity, then we have to accept the government ‘play’. […] Our groups are not the same, but our objectives are the same. For me, whoever it is, I will be ready to greet them.64

Allowing conflicts to surface within the democracy movement was seen by proponents of this narrative to allow manipulation from powerful political actors such as the military. Therefore, a strategy of building discipline was essential to the democratisation of the country. Overall, most proponents of the benevolence narrative were not opposed to international aid agency strategies of capacity building, and, at times, acknowledged the usefulness of support in these areas.65 Yet, despite this 63 G. McCarthy’s (2019) ethnographic research in central Myanmar supports this perspective of politicians and citizens, emphasising the importance of democratic worthiness – that people will ‘deserve’ democracy. 64 Interview 36, February 2014, Burmese. 65 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese.

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

143

recognition of a place for aid agency technical support, for many democracy activists the focus on moral education and the building of discipline was considered to be central to democratisation.

Conclusion Many Burmese activists and NLD leaders participating in this study saw democratisation not as a process of liberal modernisation but rather as a moral transformation, where citizens and leaders increasingly put aside their own narrow interests for the benefit of the majority. It was not a personalised form of politics that presented a barrier to democratisation. Rather, long-term moral failure of both leaders and citizens was perceived to be the core problem – with the persistent negative influence of ar nar shin (‘dictators’) embodied most obviously in military and ex-military political elites. Finally, for proponents of this benevolence narrative, the strategy of fostering democracy was not a technical one of capacity building, but rather one of moral education and the building of discipline. In this sense, depending on the narrative that is drawn on, democracy can be described in contrasting ways. An emphasis on moral character in leadership (from the benevolence narrative) was portrayed as immature, personalised politics in the liberal narrative. Meanwhile, the focus amongst activists on protection of the majority was portrayed within the liberal narrative as neglect or oppression of minorities. Beyond the specific content of these narratives there were also contrasts in their orientations. Proponents of the liberal narrative frequently used anecdotes from their recent experiences in other countries (for example, South Africa, Turkey, Ireland, Norway) to compare and contrast Myanmar’s democratisation. In this way the story was oriented toward Myanmar’s position relative to other countries. In contrast, the benevolence narrative had a far wider temporal range and was often supported by activists using anecdotes from Myanmar history, even precolonial history. In this way the benevolence narrative portrayed democracy within a local and historically embedded story, as opposed to an international and future-oriented one. The liberal and benevolence narratives were both reactions against the military narrative of ‘disciplined democracy’ in Myanmar – yet, as I have argued, reactions to this narrative were shaped in different ways. While proponents of the benevolence narrative were opposed to certain elements of the military narrative – notably the idea of military ‘guardianship’ – they also reproduced other elements of that story. In their caution about the citizens’ ability to understand democracy, and their focus on obligation,

144 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

unity and discipline, proponents of the benevolence narrative echoed certain elements of the military-inspired ‘disciplined democracy’. Thus, even in reacting against a particular counter-position, social movements can also replicate certain dimensions of the narratives of their rivals. Further complicating this picture of contrasting narratives of democracy was the fact that there were not only differences between activists and NLD leaders and their Western donor supporters, but also – as Chapter Seven highlights – profound differences within the democracy movement. There was no simple binary opposition between ‘Western’ and ‘local’ meanings of democracy, but rather multidimensional contrasts between different narratives. Chapter Seven outlines another narrative arising from within the Burmese democracy movement – one which questions the deep focus on the value of benevolence.

References Aung San Suu Kyi. 1988. ‘Speech to a mass rally at the Shwedagon Pagoda’. http://www.ibiblio. org/obl/docs3/Shwedagon-ocr.htm. Last accessed 2 December 2019. Aung San Suu Kyi. 1991. Freedom from Fear. London: Penguin. Aung San Suu Kyi. 2019. ‘State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi speech delivered at the International Democracy Day’. The Republic of the Union of Myanmar State Counsellor Off ice. September. https://www.statecounsellor.gov.mm/en/node/2545. Last accessed 13 December 2019. Baaz, M., and Lilja, M. 2014. ‘Understanding hybrid democracy in Cambodia: The nexus between liberal democracy, the state, civil society, and a “politics of presence”’. Asian Politics and Policy 6 (1): 5-24. Bechert, H., 1984. ‘To Be a Burmese is to be a Buddhist’: Buddhism in Burma. The World of Buddhism: Buddhist monks and nuns in society and culture, 99-107. Candier, A. 2011. ‘Conjuncture and reform in the late Konbaung period: How prophecies, omens and rumors motivated political action from 1866 to 1869’. Journal of Burma Studies 15 (2): 231-262. Cheesman, N. 2015. Opposing the Rule of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frechette, A. 2007. ‘Democracy and democratization among Tibetans in exile’. The Journal of Asian Studies 66 (1): 97-127. Gender Equality Network, 2015. ‘Behind the Silence’. https://www.genmyanmar.org/research_ and_publications?year=2014 Last accessed 31 January 2021 Houtman, G. 1999. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Keeler, W., 2017. The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Kyaw Yin Hlaing. 2007. ‘The state of the pro-democracy movement in authoritarian Burma’. Working Paper No. 11. December. East-West Center. https://www.eastwestcenter.org/system/ tdf/private/EWCWwp011.pdf?file=1&type=node&id=32254. Last accessed 12 January 2021.

A BENEVOLENCE NARRATIVE

145

Maung Maung. 1969. Burma and General Ne Win. Hong Kong: Asia Publishing House. Maung Maung Gyi. 1983. Burmese Political Values: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarianism. New York: Praeger. McCarthy, G. 2019. ‘Democratic deservingness and self-reliance in contemporary Myanmar’. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 34 (2): 327-365. McCarthy, S. 2008. ‘Overturning the alms bowl: The price of survival and the consequences for political legitimacy in Burma’. Australian Journal of International Affairs 62 (3): 298-314. Min Ko Naing. 2012. ‘Strengthening civil society’. Journal of Democracy 23 (4): 135-137. Rodan, G., and Hughes, C. 2014. The Politics of Accountability in Southeast Asia: The Dominance of Moral Ideologies. New York: Oxford University Press. Sarkisyanz, E. 1965. Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution. The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Schissler, M. 2016. New technologies, established practices: Developing narratives of Muslim threat in Myanmar. Islam and the state in Myanmar: Muslim-Buddhist relations and the politics of belonging, 211-233. New York: Oxford University Press. Schober, J. 1997. ‘Buddhist just rule and Burmese national culture: State patronage of the Chinese tooth relic in Myanmar’. History of Religions 36 (3): 218-243. Turner, A. 2014. Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Voice. 2012. ‘“If we want democracy, everyone will have to join hands”, says 88 Generation leader Min Ko Naing’. Voice. 21 January. Walton, M.J. 2012. ‘Politics in the moral universe: Burmese Buddhist political thought’. PhD thesis. University of Washington. Walton, M.J. 2015. ‘The disciplining discourse of unity in Burmese politics’. Journal of Burma Studies 19 (1): 1-26. Walton, M.J. 2017. Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7

An equality narrative Abstract This chapter examines an equality narrative of democracy that was drawn on within some networks of activists, and which was largely a reaction against the benevolence narrative described in the previous chapter. This narrative has three components – the core challenge of hierarchy within Burmese society, a vision of personal or relational equality and a strategy of cultural reform. Proponents of this narrative saw the emphasis on values of unity and obligation within the benevolence narrative, and the implicit hierarchies that these values create, as deeply problematic for the country’s democratisation. Keywords: activism, Myanmar, equality, Aung San Suu Kyi, democracy

In the lead up to the 2015 elections, I sat in the upstairs office of a Burmeselanguage journal publisher, speaking with prominent writer and activist Daw Thandar Win. Thandar Win had written a number of articles about the rapid political transitions in Myanmar. Yet, along with her critique of the role of the military in politics, she was also deeply critical of Burmese political culture, even within the democracy movement itself. She described ‘Burmese thinking’ as ‘locked up’,1 insisting that new leaders, even those within the NLD, would not be able to solve the inherent problem in Myanmar of relational inequality. If political leaders emphasise the values of unity and obligation, she argued, this simply reinforces an undemocratic culture. Crucially, she suggested that new formal democratic institutions would also fail to treat the core problem, which was seen to be cultural rather than procedural. The primary problem was not the personalised nature of politics, but rather the hierarchical values fostered within that personalised system. These hierarchical values were seen by Daw Thandar Win to be an unresolved obstacle to Burmese democracy. 1

Interview 48, August 2014, English.

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch07

148 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

To this point, my unpacking of meanings of democracy amongst Burmese democratic leaders, activists and international aid workers has emphasised two contrasting ways in which democracy was narrated. In this chapter, I outline an equality narrative of democracy that was drawn on within some networks of activists, and which was largely a reaction against the benevolence narrative described in the previous chapter. In the task of grounding and locating this equality narrative, I describe three components – the core challenge of hierarchy within Burmese society, a vision of personal or relational equality and a strategy of cultural reform. Proponents of this narrative, such as Daw Thandar Win, saw the emphasis on values of unity and obligation within the benevolence narrative, and the implicit hierarchies that these values create, as deeply problematic for the country’s democratisation. Meanwhile, the equality narrative aligned in some ways with the liberal narrative that was prominent amongst Western donor agencies. There was sensitivity amongst some activists to ethnic and religious division, and also recognition of the importance of liberal values of human rights and pluralism. However, this equality narrative also strongly emphasised the relational and personal realm over the formal and procedural. Formal democratic institutions like free and fair elections (for one example), a representative parliament and revision of the 2008 Constitution were considered by proponents of this narrative to be a necessary part of a democratic political system. Yet it was reform of bamar culture itself – and its inherent hierarchies – that was seen by some activists to be of greater relevance to democracy. Change in formal institutions without corresponding cultural reform would result in the perpetuation of authoritarian cultural traits in a different form. It was amongst particular informal networks of activists that the equality narrative was most prominent. These activists were often highly educated and yet working for low-profile local NGOs or political institutes. They had limited connections to elite opposition leaders in the National League for Democracy or to prominent activist groups, such as the 88 Generation.

The challenge of hierarchy The perceived challenges to democracy portrayed in this equality narrative differed in important ways from both the Western-centric liberal narrative and the benevolence narrative. The liberal democracy narrative portrayed a personalised form of politics as a core challenge for Myanmar’s democratisation. This ‘old mindset’ (Mitchell 2013: 14) could only be overcome by a shift

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

149

toward modern procedures of democracy – where changes could be rooted in firm liberal ground rather than the shakiness of individual leadership. In contrast, activist proponents of the benevolence narrative did not question the focus on personalised politics. Rather, they portrayed the failures of individuals within that system – in the role of dictatorial ar nar shin – as the core challenge. As described in the previous chapter, many democratic leaders and activists saw a rejuvenation of sedana leadership and citizenship as critical in the country’s democratisation. In this chapter, I highlight a third perception of the main challenge to Myanmar’s democratisation, which concentrated on the need to radically reform the country’s political culture. Proponents of the equality narrative perceived the primary problem not to be the personalised nature of politics, but rather the hierarchical values fostered within that personalised system of politics. These hierarchical values were seen by some activists to be an unresolved obstacle to Burmese democracy. In order to contextualise this concern about hierarchy, the next section explores the perceived reasons for ‘un-democratic’ hierarchies within Burmese culture and then their manifestations in social and political life. ‘Un-democratic’ hierarchy in Burmese culture I arranged to meet U Maung Maung at the office of the local organisation where he was director.2 We sat at the staff lunch table and, moving between Burmese and English, he described his concerns about Burmese culture. When asked about the main challenge to Myanmar’s democratisation he said, It’s the culture […] the hierarchy and religious teaching. The social teaching and religious teaching listened with no criticism. You will [be] put in that frame not to argue, not to disagree – about [the] status of religious leaders, social leaders, teachers, parents. […] These are key challenges for the practice of the democracy.3

In this way he stressed that the common connection between Buddhist teaching and Myanmar political culture was deeply problematic. In the 2 In this chapter I use pseudonyms and I do not link individual participants to particular organisations. Given the smaller scale of these local organisations when compared to the National League for Democracy, revealing the name of the organisation would compromise their anonymity. 3 Interview 9, October 2013, English/Burmese.

150 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

previous chapter, I highlighted the role of Buddhist social obligations in informing the benevolence narrative. In the social arena, relational obligations such as the wuttaya nga pa (‘five obligations’) influence patterns of relations, between parents and children or teachers and students, for example. Meanwhile, in the political realm, I highlighted that there was an emphasis amongst many activists and opposition leaders on obligations in the relationship between citizens and leaders. For proponents of the benevolence narrative, fulfilment and strengthening of these relational obligations was linked to the practice of democracy. Yet U Maung Maung criticised these assumptions as a misinterpretation of Buddhist teaching. He suggested that they contribute to an undemocratic hierarchy, not only in political life but more generally in social relationships. Through the reinforcing of these obligations, those who are ‘inferior’ in the hierarchy are ‘put in that frame not to argue, not to disagree’. 4 Importantly, he also identified religious leaders themselves as often promoting these hierarchical social values to protect their own interests. He continued, ‘religious teachers want to [have] their role, so their teaching is how to keep their security and position. […] They interpret teaching as what they want.’5 Relational obligations were seen by U Maung Maung to have their own selfreinforcing logic – with those in the ‘superior’ position, including religious leaders, able to dictate the interpretation of the obligations themselves. A number of activists supported this view of U Maung Maung and several identified Burmese political scholar Maung Maung Gyi’s (1983) book, Burmese Political Values: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarianism, and Lucian Pye’s (1962) work, Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma’s Search for Identity, as influential in shaping their perspectives on democracy in Myanmar. In particular, these works were seen to be important in developing their critique of relational hierarchy. One activist who worked for a local political education institute considered these works so important that he translated parts of them from English into Burmese and distributed the translations to his friends. In Burmese Political Values, Maung Maung Gyi (1983) reflects on the influence of the relational obligations such as the wuttaya. He explains that the wuttaya are ‘excellent indeed […] [but] the interpretation of the rules often happens to rest with the parties older in age or superior in status such as parents, the teacher, the husband, and the master’ (ibid.: 36). Those in a superior position in a relationship – whether parents, teachers or national 4 Interview 9, October 2013, English/Burmese. 5 Ibid.

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

151

leaders – can use well-intentioned principles to reinforce hierarchy. The set of positive obligations for leaders – such as the nayaka wuttaya emphasis on patience, wisdom and sympathy – ‘degenerates into domination on the part of the party in power […] while the rules […] help to standardize the hierarchical pattern of the relationship’ (Gyi 1983: 36). Further undermining attempts to question the hierarchical nature of relationships is the overlay of a Buddhist religious framework. This means that attempting to undermine this system is not only breaking the obligations but is ‘blasphemy’ (ibid.). Lucian Pye’s (1962) work, Politics, Personality, and Nation Building, builds on this analysis and its relation to power. Pye (ibid.) portrays Burmese culture as being obsessed with power and hierarchy, but with a Buddhist overlay that masks the extent of this obsession. Pye (ibid.: 146) argues, there are few cultures that attached greater importance to power as a value than the Burmese. Considerations of power and status so permeate even social relationships that life tends to become highly politicized. The fact that Buddhism is a central feature of Burmese life makes the quest for power more subtle and more indirect.

In my own reading, both Maung Maung Gyi (1983) and Pye (1962) essentialise Burmese culture and create a simplistic binary between problematic traditional values and modern democratic values. Yet, for many proponents of this equality narrative, these works were influential. The reinforcement of hierarchical norms throughout society – from families to schools and workplaces – was seen by some activists to have impacted Burmese political life. As U Maung Maung described above, these norms were seen to have created a mechanism that allowed social, religious and political leaders to face little criticism or questioning. Relational norms promoted through the benevolence narrative as being ‘democratic’, were criticised as a barrier to democracy. Unquestioning adherence to obligations and the value of unity was seen by some activists to be a central problem for the country. A final reason given by some activists for the perceived perpetuation of hierarchical norms was the orientation of the benevolence narrative toward Myanmar’s past. As outlined in the previous chapter, proponents of the benevolence narrative commonly described Burmese society as an inherently democratic one, yet one where both leaders and citizens have, at times, failed to meet their moral obligations. Some opposition leaders and members of the NLD saw democracy as having ancient origins in Theravada Buddhist teaching. In this context, ‘reform’ could be interpreted as a return to the past, the restoration of an inherently democratic culture (Candier 2011).

152 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Yet this orientation toward Burmese history was strongly critiqued by many proponents of the equality narrative. They emphasised the authoritarian rather than democratic traits in Burmese political culture and were cautious about only looking to Myanmar’s past for solutions. Recalling General Ne Win’s failed ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’, U Maung Maung suggested that some democratic leaders are intent on an insular ‘Burmese Road to Democracy’ – one that is oriented only to the past and one that is equally likely to fail.6 Meanwhile, in a speech in 2014 historian and author Thant Myint-U (2014) lamented this exclusive orientation to the past and particularly the assumption that Myanmar needs to be ‘restored’ to a position it previously held. There is a dominant narrative or way of thinking about things [in Myanmar] – and it is often about degeneration and the possibility of restoration. There is a sense by a lot of people – it is impossible to generalize – that the country has seen better days. […] [I]n general almost everyone thinks that things were better before in some way and the country needs to be restored to its rightful place as a relatively rich country in the region, [that] democracy needs to be restored. That in some way, things need to go back to something that it was before. (Ibid.)

In this way, the orientation of the benevolence narrative was criticised by proponents of the equality narrative. There was concern about the assumption that Burmese society was inherently democratic. On the contrary, for some activists, Burmese society was seen to be inherently autocratic. Hierarchy in political and social life These hierarchies throughout society were considered by some activists to have had significant repercussions in political and social life. Most obviously, proponents of the equality narrative were highly critical of the military’s longstanding role in national politics. The norms of mutual obligation were seen to have allowed unaccountable control of governance by ar nar shin leaders over the last half-century. Thus, in its opposition to a ‘guardian’ role for the military, this narrative resonated with the perspectives of both the liberal and benevolence narratives. However, proponents of the equality narrative presented a sharper and more radical critique of bamar culture. In this sense, I diverge from Keeler’s (2017) observations on the place of 6 Ibid.

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

153

hierarchy in Myanmar social and political relations (which I introduced in the previous chapter). I present the conceptual contest over hierarchy and equality as one very much playing out within networks of Burmese political actors. In particular, while proponents of the benevolence democracy narrative looked to leaders to play a transformative role, activists drawing on this equality narrative were much more sceptical – questioning the seeming obsession with sedana (‘benevolence’) over results. Daw Thandar Win argued that, [a]s long as [leaders] have a good benevolence and good intention[s], [they] can dictate to people. That is the way people think. […] They think that ‘since we have good intentions [for the people], whatever we do for you, it should be good.’ […] That kind of mentality is quite infectious.7

For proponents of the equality narrative, sedana or right intentions in leaders was insufficient to bring about the necessary change to society. An activist who now works for an international advocacy organisation, U Phyo Maung, reflected that while he had once had confidence in individual leaders to change Myanmar and bring democracy, he was now more sceptical. I was in prison for four years. At first I thought the leader could make a difference but […] replacing one person with another can be dangerous. Sometimes society wants a dictator. […] Like [in George Orwell’s] Animal Farm, I want to get rid of the farmer, but I am worried about Napoleon.8

For some within the democracy movement, the dictatorial ‘Napoleon’ they were concerned about was the NLD itself. Within some activist networks, this scepticism about leadership was often particularly aimed at Aung San Suu Kyi. While criticised in the liberal narrative for her party’s lack of capacity for democratic governance, within some activist networks Aung San Suu Kyi was often more harshly described as yet another ‘dictator’ or ar nar shin.9 According to these critics, her supposed disconnection from citizens – and her authoritarian style of decision-making within the National League for Democracy – demonstrated that she was largely perpetuating, as opposed to challenging, the authoritarian norms in Burmese political culture. Daw Win 7 8 9

Interview 48, August 2014, English. Interview 47, August 2014, English. Interview 7, October 2013, English.

154 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Win was the manager at a local advocacy organisation and in an interview, she concluded, I am not a fan of Daw Suu, frankly speaking. I admire her perseverance. […] She is the idol of [the] Myanmar people, people look up to her. […] But I don’t believe that she is the one who can change the country. […] I think I am afraid they [the NLD] are becoming like the dictatorship or [a] ‘one lady show’. It is very threatening and dangerous. Alarming, I think.10

The problem of hierarchy and dominant leaders in Burmese history was seen by some activists, such as Daw Win Win, to be reproduced through the actions of Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. The ‘one lady show’ was even ‘threatening’ or ‘dangerous’. Prior to her release from house arrest in late 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi had few critics from within the democracy movement.11 Yet, for many proponents of this narrative, it was her involvement in mediating a dispute over a controversial Chinese-supported copper mine – in Letpadaung in central Myanmar in 2013 – that sparked wider questioning of her role.12 Early in 2013, anti-mine protesters, including monks, had been injured in clashes with police. In her new role as a Member of Parliament, Aung San Suu Kyi was invited to be part of a government commission of inquiry (Ei Ei Toe Lwin 2013). However, the conclusion of the report – which was publicly supported by Aung San Suu Kyi – was that the mining project could continue, albeit with some modifications. Burmese activist and writer U Kyaw Kyaw said that was the moment he concluded that Aung San Suu Kyi had the ‘intelligence’ required for leadership yet lacked the ‘compassion’.13 In short, she was just another ar nar shin. Meanwhile, U Ye Thu – an activist who had been involved with training for the National League for Democracy – even likened the NLD organisational style to that of the old military regimes, saying, [s]ometimes I make a joke, [the NLD leader] look like BSPP [Burma Socialist Programme Party of General Ne Win] members. When [they] came to our office they [stopped] downstairs and waited before they came. They are very formal, not like us. [Like we] want to pay homage to 10 Interview 7, October 2013, English. 11 Interview 11, November 2013, English. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

155

[their leaders]. They wear the same uniform. Not like a modern political party.14

Yet, for some proponents of this narrative, the criticism of hierarchy in the party was also mixed with sympathy for NLD leaders and members. In 2003, the NLD had organised a series of political rallies for Aung San Suu Kyi around the country. However, in the northern Myanmar town of Depayin, the NLD touring party had been attacked by over a thousand government-sponsored protesters. Over 70 NLD party members were killed and many injured while Aung San Suu Kyi only narrowly escaped.15 U Ye Thu went on to say, [NLD members] are very loyal to their leaders, very committed. Sometimes I feel sorry for them. Some of them sacrificed their lives […] in the 2003 Depayin massacre. […] [They] think that our community hierarchy […] is important. [They think they] have a role to play.16

There was commonly sympathy for the commitment of Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD, yet the hierarchical social values they fostered were seen, within some activist networks, to present a barrier to genuine democratisation. Paradoxically, this characterisation of Aung San Suu Kyi within the equality narrative was the opposite of how she was portrayed by observers at the beginning of the democracy movement in 1988. In her book, Freedom from Fear (Aung San Suu Kyi 1991), she argues that there is a need to not only change the system of government but also the ‘Burmese mentality’. She stresses that there are norms of relational obligation that, in some ways, perpetuate control by the military. As Taylor (2009: 412) reflects, in her early speeches and behaviour Aung San Suu Kyi appeared to challenge not only the military regime but also the commonly accepted patterns of deference and respect allegedly characterising much of Myanmar social exchange. […] The hortatory activities of the NLD were part […] of an effort to change Myanmar’s putatively undemocratic political culture.

In other words, at the beginning of its opposition to the military government in 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy were 14 Interview 34, August 2014, English. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid.

156 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

seen by observers like Taylor (2009: 412) to be seeking to comprehensively reform the way Buddhist social norms are interpreted – a central theme in this equality narrative. In this way, it is not only political events that can be interpreted differently through the lens of contrasting narratives, but political actors are also constructed as characters in narratives. While Chapter Eight exposes the political use of concepts in more detail, at this stage it is important to note how Aung San Suu Kyi has been constructed as both a reformer of cultural hierarchies and as a core obstacle to such reform. For proponents of the equality narrative, democratisation was often described in personal terms – a process that occurs more in the relational realm than in formal procedures. Reflections on the obstacles to democracy extended beyond criticism of military authoritarianism to recognition that dictatorial norms were embedded throughout society, within the National League for Democracy and even within activist networks or organisations themselves. The building of formal democratic institutions was seen by proponents of this narrative to be an element of the country’s democratisation. Yet the reform of political and social culture and the questioning of Buddhist-inspired norms of mutual obligation was considered to be of greater importance.

The vision of equality In response to the problem of hierarchy in the social and political realm, some activists presented a vision of democracy emphasising equality – where there would be no tiered system of relational obligations. Recalling Burmese independence leaders and their organisations – groups such as the Nagani Book Club and writers such as Thakin Kodaw Hmaing – proponents of this vision emphasised a reinterpretation of Buddhist teaching. Yet this was also combined with the incorporation of liberal political values such as human rights and pluralism. In order to counter the emphasis on obligations and unity supported by many democratic leaders, proponents of this equality narrative challenged the patterns of control by social, political and religious leaders in Burmese society. Such a shift was seen by some activists to require the formation of new norms of decision-making and debate and respect for different perspectives. U Maung Maung stressed that this equality would mean that ‘each individual has the right to say and express, and at the same time respect

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

157

others’.17 Or, as Daw Win Win suggested, a more democratic approach to decision-making would mean that [i]f my decision is not the same as yours, I need to respect your decision. […] You and I are different, but it doesn’t mean you are below or beneath myself. You have different kind of opinion, decision, because of your background, because of your thinking.18

For Daw Win Win, genuine democracy meant that in everyday relationships there could be no assumption that one person was ‘below’ or ‘beneath’ another. The equality narrative therefore overlapped to a degree with the liberal narrative in its emphasis on greater pluralism and respect for difference. Yet the vision in this narrative was of a more comprehensive reform of culture. Equality in status needed to be fostered not only in the formal sphere of governance – as, for example, equality under the law – but also in schools and monasteries, and even within democracy-promotion programs themselves.19 A Burmese-language editorial by activist group Myanmar Knowledge Society (2016: 3) in the Journal of Human Rights and Democracy describes the issue of hierarchical sayamwe-tapyemwe (‘teacher-follower’)20 systems which operate not only ‘in the realm of politics or the realm of government staff’, but also in local civil society organisations. ‘Teacherfollower’ or patron-client relations were unconsciously generated within local organisations. The editorial stresses that it is only through change in culture and practices within civil society organisations that the broader influence of these relationships in the country can be reduced (ibid.). Daw Win Win raised the issue of democracy within her own local advocacy organisation. ‘Even though we are promoting democracy,’ she said, ‘[our organisation] is kind of a dictatorship.’21 She reflected that decision-making was centralised and staff had limited ability to question the leadership. In this way, there was an acute sensitivity amongst proponents of this narrative for modelling of ‘democratic’ or equal relationships within the movement, and also between activists and Western aid workers. This sensitivity over relational equality also recalls the Thakin movement of the colonial period. Amidst wider political goals of democracy and independence, young activists 17 Interview 9, October 2013, English/Burmese. 18 Interview 7, October 2013, English. 19 Ibid. 20 The Journal translates sayamwe-tapyemwe as ‘patron-client’ system. The more direct translation would be ‘teacher-follower’. 21 Interview 7, October 2013, English.

158 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

sought to overturn the social hierarchies in colonial society by appropriating the word thakin (‘master’) and using it for themselves. Importantly, though, for proponents of this narrative, there was also some uncertainty about the basis of this vision of equality in social and political life. On one hand, some activists advocated for reform or reinterpretation of a Burmese Buddhist teaching, while others drew more explicitly on liberal political values such as pluralism and rights in describing the vision of democracy. As highlighted earlier, proponents of this equality narrative such as U Maung Maung were sharply critical of the political and social role of Buddhism. Yet this did not mean that Buddhist teaching was always rejected. U Maung Maung suggested that it is a problem of interpretation rather than a fundamental flaw in Buddhist teaching itself.22 He differentiated the dominant – and supposedly hierarchical – expression of Buddhism from what he described as the ‘real teaching’. The real sangha [order of monks] is the beggars – they are the ones who stay lowest. They have only one or two clothes. […] There is no house or monastery, teaching is to stay under the tree. That is the real teaching.23

He argued that it was possible for Buddhist teaching to have a non-hierarchical influence if it was interpreted and practiced in a more ‘real’ way. In particular, rather than emphasising the status of those with seniority in a relationship, U Maung Maung stressed that people should be judged on the quality of their conduct. Buddhism is very much on the quality of people. There are some teachings on quality of being a senior person. But this is not true teaching. It is quality based on the thila [‘moral conduct’]. Young people with thila [are] more respectable than […] [older people]. Buddhism is not a blind faith.24

‘True’ expressions of Buddhism were seen to encourage critical thinking rather than ‘blind faith’ in religious leaders. Activist U Pyoe Maung described this reinterpretation of Buddhism, saying that, in promoting democracy, ‘we need to go back to the essence of Buddhism, which is free thinking’.25 22 Interview 9, October 2013, English/Burmese. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Interview 47, August 2014, English.

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

159

In this sense, many proponents of this equality narrative did not reject Burmese Buddhist teaching, but sought to reinterpret it in a more egalitarian way. However, whilst reinterpretation of Buddhist teaching was seen by some activists to provide a foundation for a reformed culture and more equal practice of democracy, it was also seen to have limitations – particularly in the question of how non-Buddhist Myanmar people could be incorporated into the vision. The majority of Myanmar citizens identify as Buddhist, yet there are significant Christian, Muslim and Hindu minorities in the country. U Myo Myint concluded that ‘Buddhism can be a moral framework to some extent but [Myanmar’s vision] should be clearly more than Buddhism’.26 He went on to suggest that a solely Buddhist basis for democracy would be too bamar-centric and contribute to a patronising approach to non-Buddhist ethnic minorities. He continued, [w]hen I talk to some people in CSOs they try to promote [democratic] ideals but in their discourse they [are] just thinking about the dominant group. A kind of ‘white man’s burden’. I am bamar Buddhist, [so] I have to take care of these ethnic people.27

Even reinterpretation of Buddhist teaching would be insufficient in providing a basis for democracy in Myanmar, as it could perpetuate inequality of status between Buddhist and non-Buddhist. U Myo Myint even reproduced the colonial language of Kipling’s ‘White Man’s Burden’ to describe the problem of bamar elites assuming that they had superior status. Therefore, some proponents of the equality narrative also drew on liberal values – especially human rights and pluralism – in describing a vision of democracy that went beyond a basis only in Buddhist teachings. Writer and activist U Moe Kyaw was concerned, however, that human rights were not well understood in the democracy movement and this constrained the vision of democracy for many activists. He described how ‘some activists understand the things in the Human Rights Declaration. But the way they understand is through memorizing or learning by rote. They don’t understand the essence.’28 In particular, U Moe Kyaw stressed that the ‘essence’ of human rights – an attitude of sympathy toward the vulnerable – was often lost when Burmese activists considered issues such as ethnic conflict or communal violence. 26 Interview 31, February 2014, English. 27 Ibid. 28 Interview 29, February 2014, Burmese.

160 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

In the human rights declarations there is the attitude of sympathizing with vulnerable people and marginalized people. [But] they don’t understand. So when there is ethnic conflict even people who say ‘human rights’ will see national identity as more fundamental. They don’t understand the basic concepts of human rights. It is only the information that they understand.29

U Moe Kyaw saw even senior figures – such as prominent Buddhist monks like Thitagu Sayadaw – as lacking comprehension of ‘democratic’ values such as human rights. He continued, Thitagu Sayadaw – who is a monk respected over the whole country – doesn’t understand politics. Sometimes he speaks to the military government from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s side, from the opposition party side. [But] even he doesn’t understand human rights. For other people, it is even worse.30

Therefore, along with a reinterpretation of Buddhist teaching, the vision of equality in this narrative was also seen by activists such as U Moe Kyaw to rely on a wider understanding of liberal values of pluralism and acknowledgment of the universality of human rights. Yet some activists still expressed uncertainty about an underlying ‘ideology’ to inform democracy in Myanmar. Reacting against both the ‘disciplined democracy’ of the military and the discipline and unity of the benevolence narrative, some activists were uncertain about what a future Myanmar democracy should be based on. U Myo Myint reflected, You know since the independence movement we have nationalism, communism, we have Buddhism. That is our ideologies. [But] if you take out these three what are we going to believe? We have no replacement. […] How can we now define our country and nationhood?31

In this sense, the equality narrative has other parallels with the Burmese independence movement in the 1930s and ‘their search for a philosophy’ (Aung San Suu Kyi 1991: 129) to guide their action. For the Burmese independence movement, there was no longer an interest in returning to the 29 Interview 29, February 2014, Burmese. 30 Ibid. 31 Interview 31, February 2014, English.

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

161

traditional form of the monarchy, yet they were also deeply unsatisfied with the ‘modern’ politics displayed through British colonial rule. Proponents of the equality narrative similarly had no interest in the continuation of military influence and the hierarchical norms that had been fostered in society. However, they were also sceptical of a Western strategy of capacity building for liberal democracy. Some activists were seeking to end ar nar shin dictatorial rule and reform culture on their own terms. The next section outlines how proponents of this equality narrative describe the strategies to foster democracy in Myanmar.

The strategy of cultural reform For activists communicating this equality narrative, there was a pressing need for cultural reform to reduce what were perceived to be undemocratic hierarchies throughout society. Changes in norms of social relationships – and assumptions of superior-inferior status – were seen by some activists to be required not only in national political life but also within schools, NGOs and even in families. This perspective meant that they were sharply critical of both the ‘capacity building’ emphasised in the liberal narrative and the moral education and discipline highlighted in the benevolence narrative. As I have argued, strategies for promoting democracy were deeply embedded within assumptions about the meaning of democracy and the problems it is intended to solve. Activist organisation leader U Maung Maung stressed that Myanmar’s democratisation would require a deep reform of bamar culture – beginning at the household level. He said that in order to foster more democratic relationships ‘you need to start from the household level and the role of parents’.32 Rather than instilling a sense of hierarchy as implied in the wuttaya sets of mutual obligations, parents should foster a more democratic culture of equality. Activist U Phyo Maung expressed some optimism at the prospects of democratisation through cultural reform in the household. I think a big change can happen, and is happening, in education at home, relationships at home between parents and children. Obviously all parents say, ‘It is not what we used to do.’ But I am hearing from a lot of people that the way they are educating their children is fundamentally different and that they really are encouraging their children to think for themselves 32 Interview 9, October 2013, English/Burmese.

162 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

and to become more autonomous than they would have been allowed to [previously].33

U Maung Maung similarly expressed some optimism that Buddhist practice amongst younger people was changing toward fostering more democratic ideals. He argued that [y]oung people more and more understand that the current practice of Buddhist monk[s] is not real teaching, […] not the real practice. […] It is changing, it’s a natural trend. The younger generation [has] less respect [for] religious teaching[s]. […] They see religious teaching[s] as not practical and not helping the day to day. So they are more critical […] and find a more practical way. […] Buddhism is not a blind faith.34

Democratisation was, for proponents of the equality narrative, a society-wide process. The only way to treat the problem of hierarchy in Burmese society was through an ongoing democratic reform of everyday relationships to have more equality of status. For some activists, such reform was seen to require new opportunities for citizens to learn about democracy. Therefore, one key strategy employed by activist organisations was to widen the theoretical resources available for the democracy movement and citizens more broadly. U Soe Aung, a well-known Burmese writer, said, ‘We need to circulate and publish books on democracy. We need to do seminars and speaking events.’35 He had already published a collection of his own newspaper articles on democracy in Myanmar – many of which were based on translations of Western political texts. Meanwhile, before becoming more active in a local organisation since 2012, U Moe Kyaw had invested time in translating several Western political texts into Burmese, including the transcript of the 1971 televised debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky. U Moe Kyaw felt that a widespread lack of understanding of political theory amongst political actors in Myanmar was a limitation to democratisation. As Myanmar’s politics have liberalised since 2012, several new activist organisations have emerged supporting this process of cultural reform and translation of Western political thought. For example, the Yangon School of Political Sciences (YSPS) began as a vehicle for training young Myanmar people in political theory, which could help them to question assumptions 33 Interview 47, August 2014, English. 34 Interview 9, October 2013, English/Burmese. 35 Interview 16, November 2013, Burmese.

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

163

within Burmese culture about the practice of democracy. One of the founders of YSPS said that it was important that ideas like those of Burmese author Maung Maung Gyi are more widely disseminated in the country to provide people with tools to think more critically about cultural values. Meanwhile, the Myanmar Knowledge Society (MKS) focussed on publishing the monthly Journal of Human Rights and Democracy. The journal contained opinion pieces on Myanmar current affairs and also provided translations of political articles published in Western forums. For example, one of the early issues of the journal included an article translating the works of writer and former Czech Republic President Václav Havel. Activists drawing on the equality narrative sought to reform culture by making new intellectual resources available, especially those providing critical perspectives on Burmese culture. In some ways, then, this narrative has parallels with the liberal narrative and its emphasis on the strategy of capacity building. Proponents of both narratives intended to make external resources more available to Myanmar citizens and local organisations. Yet there were also important differences in strategy. Whereas proponents of the liberal narrative hoped for a transfer of democratic knowledge from ‘West to East’, for proponents of the equality narrative there was a desire to engage with Euro-American political literature directly, and not through, for example, workshops mediated by international NGOs. Within these activist networks there was significant interest in Western political thought, yet, at the same time, little interest in the capacity-building activities of international agencies. Many proponents of the equality narrative were ambivalent about engagement of Western democracy-promotion agencies in the country. This was partly due to an assumption that Western agencies hoping to foster democracy in Myanmar did not sufficiently understand the context. Daw Win Win concluded, [international agencies] might have pure and genuine intention. But the context, the background and the experiences from their country and ours, might be different. And it might not be relevant if they drive with their own agenda.36

For this reason, Daw Win Win concluded that Western aid agencies should ‘not be the driver. They should be in the back seat and supporting the drivers.’37 Not only did Western agencies not sufficiently understand 36 Interview 7, October 2013, English. 37 Ibid.

164 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

the context, their prominence was seen to increase the resistance of the military, or others with powerful positions. U Maung Maung argued that the ‘international [agencies] should be staying at the back, with very low visibility. Otherwise the [military elites] will interpret [the new ideas] as foreign ideas. There will be more resistance. It is very clear.’38 Ultimately, proponents of this narrative argued that change in the formal procedures of liberal democracy – which were emphasised in the liberal narrative – would not be able to shift the core problem of political culture. There was hesitancy about what was described as ‘minimalist’ models of representative democracy. U Ye Thu commented that, ‘in the [international] view the definition of governance means “management”’.39 He stressed that the required democratisation in Myanmar society needed to go beyond ‘management’ and be driven through a more direct and equal style of decision-making. Importantly, he argued that liberal, representative institutions cannot sufficiently change the underlying hierarchies in Burmese social and political life. Democracy, he suggested, would require a more thoroughgoing change of an inherently authoritarian culture. This meant that U Ye Thu was also particularly cautious about the Western donor approach of institution building in democracy promotion, fearing that it misdiagnosed the core obstacle to democratisation. 40 He suggested that such an approach could even unwittingly perpetuate an authoritarian culture. Usually the aid agencies, the democracy-promotion agencies, they focus on institution building. They want to work with the Union Election Commission, they want to work with the legislature. […] I think [international aid agencies] also need to review their program. Working with the government is fine, but what I am worried about is their ideology. […] The problem is they are minimalists, meaning that they are just focussing on [institutions]. […] In Myanmar, we [might] have everything – legislature, electoral commission. And then they will say, ‘It is okay,’ […] [but] I think that will create an opportunity for the authoritarians to persist in another form. 41

For U Ye Thu, the ‘minimalist’ or liberal approach to promoting democracy ignores the wider challenge of hierarchy in Burmese culture – and the ongoing role of ar nar shin. Similarly, U Kyaw Kyaw reflected that Western 38 Interview 9, October 2013, English/Burmese. 39 Interview 19, November 2013, English. 40 Interview 15, November 2013, English. 41 Ibid.

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

165

agencies tend to focus on ‘hardware’ and ‘skills’ in their aid programs rather than the more important dimension of a ‘change of attitude’. 42 Recalling Myanmar history during parliamentary rule, several activists argued that formal procedures of government were peripheral to the actual practice of democracy. 43 The adopted institutions in the parliamentary period in Burma (1948-1962) – which were closely modelled on the British Westminster system – were not seen by contemporary activists to have been able to constrain the chaos of national division. Yet, while there was scepticism of the liberal narrative focus on capacity building for democracy, proponents of this narrative were also critical of the moral education encouraged by proponents of the benevolence narrative. Such moral education was seen to reproduce the core authoritarian tendencies in Burmese political culture, thereby suppressing the citizens’ ability to question the perspectives of those in leadership. Therefore, instead of cultivating a singular unity based around one leader, proponents of the equality narrative focussed on fostering debate in the movement.44 Opposite to the emphasis on unity in the benevolence narrative, activist leader U Myo Myint explained that respecting diversity needed to be centrally important to the strategy of the activist groups and democratic leaders. We always think exclusive, the other movement is not the right thing, they will harm my strategy, they will harm the reform process. That makes us divided, instead of diverse. So I think that for me is the biggest challenge.45

One example of this perceived lack of pluralism was in tensions in the lead up to the 2015 elections between the NLD and growing ‘social movements’ (focussing on labour rights, land rights or education policy). U Myo Myint reflected that [a]ll of the political parties think the social movement – labour movement and land movements – are not good for the reform process. And the labour movement, land movement [and] peace movement are thinking MPs in the parliament is not going to work. […] Some MPs explicitly mention that these [protests] are not necessary at the moment. [They say], ‘We are on the right way, we are trying to do our best – trying hard within 42 Interview 11, October 2013, English. 43 Ibid. 44 Interview 7, October 2013, English/Burmese. 45 Interview 31, February 2014, English.

166 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

the parliament. And you are making trouble for us.’ I have that kind of perception from both sides. 46

In this sense, proponents of the equality narrative advocated for more diversity in strategy, including both advocacy in parliament and citizen protest. Thus, they were sceptical about the benevolence narrative emphasis on unity and discipline. The rigid focus on unity was considered by some to be an attempt to control the voices of activists who may desire more radical social action. Ultimately, there was no consensus between activists and democratic leaders about the appropriate strategy toward fostering democracy in Myanmar. For many Western aid workers, the liberal structures of state – along with the liberal values which support them – were considered to be at the centre of the process of democratisation. Strengthening these institutions through capacity building was therefore a necessary strategy in democracy promotion. Meanwhile, for both the benevolence and equality narratives, democracy was more frequently referred to in terms of everyday life and strategies focussed on the personal and relational rather than formal liberal realm. U Phyo Maung concluded that Myanmar’s issues are ‘very deep […] and a democratic government cannot solve the problem, only a democratic society’.47 Yet there were also stark contrasts between the strategies proposed in the benevolence and equality narratives. The strategy of moral education undertaken by many democratic leaders was designed to strengthen unity in society and build on existing norms of relational obligations. In contrast, proponents of the equality narrative emphasised cultural reform and sought to question and overturn norms of relational obligations.

Conclusion Uncovering interpretations of democracy amongst democratic leaders and activists in Myanmar unsettles any notion of a single Myanmar understanding of democracy. Even amongst activists and leaders within the Burmese democracy movement there were starkly opposing accounts of the challenges, visions and strategies of democracy. The equality narrative presented a radical critique of many of the key elements of the benevolence narrative. On one hand, proponents of the benevolence narrative saw Buddhistinspired relational norms as a foundation for democracy and it was assumed 46 Interview 31, February 2014, English. 47 Interview 47, August 2014, English.

AN EQUALIT Y NARRATIVE

167

that benevolent leadership, and unity and discipline, in the movement and in society more broadly, were critical for democracy. On the other hand, within other networks of activists and writers, these relational norms and the notion of the benevolent leader were considered to be core obstacles to genuine democratic transition. For proponents of the equality narrative, unless there was reform of these norms of social and political life, the country would continue to be characterised by an authoritarian culture. Further, what was strikingly clear was that activists and NLD leaders often understood democracy in far more personal and relational terms than international aid workers. The informal, interpersonal nature of democracy was seen by many Burmese activists and democratic leaders to be more important than its formal procedures. I have so far outlined three contrasting contemporary narratives of democracy, drawing together interpretations of challenges, visions and strategies. There were overlaps between these narratives in their opposition to the ‘disciplined democracy’ of the military and in the expectation of the presence of basic formal procedures (elections, parliament and reformed constitution) in any genuine Myanmar democracy. Yet I have also described many lines of contrast between these narratives and the ways that they are informed by the unique historical, linguistic and cultural context of the movement. In unpacking these narratives, however, I do not suggest that they are an exhaustive account of the ways in which democracy has or is given meaning in Myanmar. Even within Western donor agencies and the NLD there may be multiple other storylines about democracy. Amongst ethnic minority groups, religious leaders, or non-elite Myanmar citizens there are almost certainly many other varied ways of understanding and communicating about democracy. Yet, having established examples of the different ways in which democracy is narrated, Chapter Eight turns to the question of how these contrasting narratives were wielded as political tools to further the agendas of different groups.

References Aung San Suu Kyi. 1988. ‘Speech to a mass rally at the Shwedagon Pagoda’. http://www.ibiblio. org/obl/docs3/Shwedagon-ocr.htm. Last accessed 2 December 2019. Aung San Suu Kyi. 1991. Freedom from Fear. London: Penguin. Candier, A. 2011. ‘Conjuncture and reform in the late Konbaung period: How prophecies, omens and rumors motivated political action from 1866 to 1869’. Journal of Burma Studies 15 (2): 231-262.

168 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Ei Ei Toe Lwin. 2013. ‘Fury over Letpadaung copper mine report’. Myanmar Times. 18 March. https://www.mmtimes.com/national-news/5175-fury-at-copper-mine-report.html. Last accessed 3 December 2019. Keeler, W. 2017. The Traffic in Hierarchy: Masculinity and Its Others in Buddhist Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Maung Maung Gyi. 1983. Burmese Political Values: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarianism. New York: Praeger. Mitchell, D. 2013. ‘Burma’s challenge’. The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 37 (3): 13-20. Myanmar Knowledge Society. 2016. ‘Editorial’. Journal of Democracy and Human Rights 4 (2): 3. Pye, L. 1962. Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma’s Search for Identity. New Haven: Yale University Press. Taylor, R.H. 2009. The State in Myanmar. Singapore: NUS Press. Thant Myint-U. 2014. ‘Opening plenary presentation’. Presented at the International Burma Studies Conference. Singapore. 1-3 August.

8

Exposing the political use of narratives Abstract This chapter turns to the task of exposing the ways that meanings of democracy are wielded politically by networks of aid workers, activists and democratic leaders in Myanmar. Rather than narratives being neutral or objective, it describes how understandings and communication about democracy are embedded within unequal relations of power. Activists and aid workers use narratives of democracy to position themselves in relation to rivals and to establish themselves and their allies as experts who can define what ‘genuine’ democracy is and is not. Narratives are a tool through which activists, opposition leaders and aid workers can exercise power in a discursive form. Keywords: interpretivism, narrative, Myanmar, democracy, contest

In the terms of Schaffer (2016), the ‘elucidation’ of concepts requires the intellectual tasks of grounding, locating and exposing. I have devoted the previous three chapters to describing contrasting storylines of democracy drawn on by activists, democratic leaders and aid workers – the liberal, benevolence and equality narratives. These chapters have firstly focussed on the task of grounding the concept of democracy by examining how key political actors themselves understand democracy and democratisation in Myanmar. The previous three chapters have also focussed on locating these meanings of democracy – tracing out the historical and cultural embeddedness of the narratives and how they have been produced by political actors. It is clear from this grounding and locating of the meaning of democracy that democratic leaders and activists in Myanmar, and their supporters, were not all running toward the same finishing line. Tracing out different narratives, with their origins, overlaps and distinctions, can make the actions and beliefs of Burmese and international political actors more comprehensible. Having laid these foundations in the previous chapters, this chapter turns to the task of exposing the ways that meanings of democracy are wielded

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch08

170 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

politically by networks of aid workers, activists and democratic leaders in Myanmar. Rather than narratives being neutral or objective, I describe how understandings and communication about democracy are embedded within unequal relations of power. Activists and aid workers use narratives of democracy to position themselves in relation to rivals and to establish themselves and their allies as experts who can define what ‘genuine’ democracy is and is not. Narratives are a tool through which activists, opposition leaders and aid workers can exercise power in a discursive form. The earlier chapters in this book established some of the historical ‘legacies of power’ (Schaffer 2016) that shaped contemporary narratives, for example, through the longstanding rule of the Burmese military. In this chapter, however, I focus on narratives of democracy as a contemporary instrument of power (ibid.). In the first section of this chapter I describe how storylines of democratisation – including particular constructions of plot and characters – are used by political actors to forward their own interests or to capitalise on particular incentives. I uncover how the construction of plot and characters through the liberal, benevolence and equality narratives serve the interests of certain actors, while marginalising others. In the final part of this chapter, I then stress that while narratives were a mechanism for the exercise of power, the conceptual struggles over meanings of democracy were not always overt. In fact, the nature of narratives and their associated practices often served to mask conceptual contests. What is striking is not the degree of open argumentation over meanings of democracy, but rather the lack of open debate. Conceptual contests were obscured not only through the way people communicated, but also through everyday social practices that reflected, and reinforced, particular dominant stories. This is not, however, to deny the agency of aid workers and activists. In this chapter, I also highlight several examples where the obscuring of conceptual contests created opportunities for political actors to circumvent the discursive power of their rivals.

Narratives of democracy as instruments of power How does narrative theory help us to expose the use of meanings of democracy as an instrument of power? How does attention to storylines help us to understand conceptual contests? What is it particularly about the nature of stories, and their ‘narrativity’, that helps us to understand the construction of meanings of democracy? Central to these questions is the observation that politics is not only about the control of material resources; there can

Exposing the political use of narr atives

171

also be a political contest over concepts. Power, in this sense, is exercised not only from above through, for example, the use of force by Myanmar’s military, but also through everyday communication and the way that certain actors can control the ‘true’ meaning of democracy. Power can relate to the ability of political actors to position themselves or others as ‘experts’, set the agenda of action, or define what are reasonable, and unreasonable, courses of action in a particular situation. Narrative plots can obviously be constructed by political actors in direct opposition to narratives of their rivals. In Boswell’s (2013a) account of narratives of obesity in Australia and the UK, he unpacks the ways that particular public counter-narratives emerged in direct opposition to dominant narratives from government departments. Similarly, my analysis of activists and NLD leaders, and their international allies, demonstrates the common stark opposition to the military narrative of ‘disciplined democracy’. All participants in the study expressed opposition to a ‘guardian’ role for the military in Myanmar’s governance. Each of the liberal, benevolence and equality narratives were, in some respects, constructed in reaction to the ‘disciplined democracy’ narrative. This is a large part of the reason why the other struggles for democracy – that are at the heart of this book – have been so obscured in the Myanmar context. Yet to characterise counter-narratives as constructed by political actors purely in opposition to their rivals would be to overlook the ways that narratives can also subtly reproduce elements of rival narratives. While the benevolence narrative clearly adopted the military’s ‘disciplined democracy’ as a counter-position, it also resonated with key elements of the military storyline. For example, si kan (‘discipline’) featured prominently in both narratives, with Aung San Suu Kyi and prominent activists such as Min Ko Naing repeatedly emphasising its importance. Narrative plot may be constructed through conceptual contests, yet it is not always predictable as to how political actors will oppose, or reproduce, elements of the narratives of their rivals. As I described in Chapter Two, along with construction of plot, narratives also contain portrayals of different political actors as either ‘heroes’, ‘villains’ or simply bystanders. Central to exposing the political use of narratives is sensitivity to the ways that characters are constructed in narratives, as this can serve to produce, or undermine, the discursive power of political actors. If political actors can control how words like ‘democracy’ are used in certain settings, such as partnership meetings, reports or informal teashop conversations, then they can construct rival uses of the word as either relevant, or irrelevant. In turn, this allows donor agencies, advocacy

172 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

organisations or political parties to reinforce their own position. They can establish themselves and their allies as ‘experts’ and set the agenda for action. In narrative terms, there is power associated with the trust and credibility of the narrator (Jones & McBeth 2010: 344) – and in Foucauldian terms certain people can hold an ‘authority to speak’ while others are denied this. Activists or aid workers in Myanmar not only attempt to push forward their own version of the plot of the democracy story but also portray and position themselves and other actors in certain ways. In Chapter Two, I described the work of Claire Moon (2006) on the narrative of ‘reconciliation’ in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and how particular characters of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ were afforded the right to create the ‘truth’ about apartheid. In this section, I reflect on the liberal, benevolence and equality narratives, how characters were constructed and what this meant for the exercise of discursive power by different actors. I also use a number of practical examples of interactions between different political actors to highlight the tangible impacts of this character construction. Liberal narrative The liberal narrative portrayed Myanmar as being in transition from a traditional form of personality-based politics – with its associated intractable divisions – to a modern democratic state. Similar transitions were seen by its proponents to be occurring in various other countries around the world. As one donor manager suggested, all countries make a democratic shift from the unregulated to the regulated, and from the informal to the formal.1 Within this process of democratisation, Western aid agencies could play a valuable capacity-building role – transferring ideas, skills and knowledge to Burmese political actors. Therefore, for proponents of the liberal narrative, Western aid agencies were portrayed as offering invaluable input about democracy which could assist local actors, including activist networks or local advocacy NGOs. In contrast, Burmese opposition leaders and activists were constructed through this narrative as having insufficient technical knowledge of democratic governance. Local political actors had been ‘frozen in time’, as one international aid worker suggested,2 and had little understanding of global norms or appreciation of liberal values. Therefore, the democracy movement was dependent on international support in order 1 2

Interview 4, October 2013, English. Interview 17, November 2013, English.

Exposing the political use of narr atives

173

to be effective. International agencies were constructed as being pivotal to the storyline of democracy. This construction of characters within the liberal narrative may be made more tangible through an example. In a meeting of local and international organisations that I attended in Yangon, Daw Chaw Su – the leader of a local women’s network – outlined the work that she had recently completed on recommendations for amendments to Myanmar’s constitution to make it more explicitly gender inclusive. She explained the key points and then offered to send the draft recommendations to others at the meeting. An international advisor from a European democracy-promotion agency then suggested that Daw Chaw Su first might like to look through a constitution design ‘toolkit’ that his organisation had used in many other countries. The ‘toolkit’ covered the main debates about different types of constitutions and he suggested that it might be of benefit to them in informing their recommendations. While such offers of capacity building were commonplace within interactions between international and local agencies engaged in democracy or governance programs, the relationship was, in some ways, structured by assumptions within the liberal narrative. Despite the extensive experience that Daw Chaw Su and her network had in analysing constitutional politics in Myanmar, the dynamics of the meeting would have made it unusual, or perhaps inappropriate, for her to offer advice to the international agency – for example, on how their constitution ‘toolkit’ could be improved. In contrast, the reverse offer of support – from an international democracy-promotion agency to the local women’s network – was assumed within that setting to be unproblematic. This is not to make assumptions about the motivations or intentions of all the individuals involved in that meeting. Rather, I am interested in the contrasting levels of credibility afforded to different actors to speak about democracy. Knowledge about democracy – including about gender and constitutional amendments – was constructed within the liberal narrative as flowing primarily in one direction, from ‘global’ to ‘local’. The way proponents of the liberal narrative created characters in the story was also a means for their exercise of discursive power. The construction of the story meant that aid workers could, in certain settings, position themselves as ‘experts’, and define what were reasonable, and unreasonable, courses of action. Yet, as Moon (2006) suggests, power, in a discursive form, is dependent not only on the credibility of the narrator, but also on the context in which stories are narrated. The ability of an aid worker or activist to control the way that democracy was discussed, was dependent on who their audience was and the language of their narration. Another example highlights this contingent

174 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

nature of discursive power and its relation to social context. U Zaw Aung, a local NGO manager who was well recognised within Yangon-based activist networks, was giving occasional lectures (in Burmese) for young activists on topics of political theory and Myanmar’s democratisation. We were both invited to attend a European donor partner workshop that was held in the large meeting room of another local organisation with which U Zaw Aung was closely affiliated. It included around 20 participants – several senior visitors and parliamentarians from the donor government and representatives from Myanmar ‘civil society’ – and the workshop was chaired by a high-level European government representative. During the meeting, the chairperson asked U Zaw Aung about his views on the role of civil society organisations in Myanmar’s political change. In the next few minutes, U Zaw Aung attempted to give an explanation to the group of his perspective on the meaning of ‘civil society’. Perhaps due to the complex nature of his response, or his limitations in spoken English, many of the visiting donor country officials began to make expressions of confusion. The chair of the meeting then leaned across to another foreign official and asked quietly but audibly to others present, ‘Did you understand that?’ The other official shook his head. The chair of the meeting then cut off U Zaw Aung’s explanation and addressed the group suggesting that they should ‘move on to a new topic’. While the reasons for U Zaw Aung’s response being curtailed by the meeting chair may not be clear, there were striking contrasts in the extent to which U Zaw Aung was afforded credibility to speak about democracy in different social contexts. Had he been attending a workshop in that same meeting room with a group of Burmese activists, it would have been unusual for his comments to be curtailed. Yet in the context of this particular European donor meeting – despite it being physically located in the same room – U Zaw Aung’s narration of the country’s democratisation was given only limited weight. In particular social settings political actors may be able to establish themselves as ‘experts’, or as having the ‘authority to speak’ about democracy. Yet changes in that social setting – whether in the language that is spoken or the people who are present – can disrupt activists or aid workers’ perceived role as an expert. These observations on the way meanings of democracy serve to position political actors in certain ways are reflected in both critical democracypromotion literature and in Myanmar-specific literature. In relation to democracy-promotion or governance programs, Hobson (2009: 397) argues, the privileging of a specific democratic model encourages the prioritization of the agency and democratic ‘knowledge’ of external actors, having

Exposing the political use of narr atives

175

already ‘achieved’ liberal democracy, and therefore more ‘progressed’ than those still seeking to make this transition.

Narratives of democracy emphasised within international aid programs serve to support the knowledge of OECD donors and aid agencies – which, in turn, gives them power to define the ‘correct’ manner in which democracy ought to be discussed. Teivainen (2009: 164) puts it more bluntly, arguing that democracy promotion constructs a relationship where Western actors assume ‘the social function of the teacher whose role is to instruct and guide the more “child-like” countries’.3 Or, similarly, in his research on the role of discourse in the peace building sector in Myanmar, Bächtold (2015) says that ‘the discursive formation linking technical capacity to a legitimate speaking position […] has proven very effective in structuring the interaction between international and local actors’ (ibid.: 1979). Insofar as recognising the ways in which narratives of democracy are a mechanism for the exercise of power in a discursive form, I agree with these arguments from critical scholars (Hobson 2009; Teivainen 2009; Bächtold 2015). Within aid project interactions, Myanmar actors such as U Zaw Aung were ascribed a particular, bounded role. The core knowledge required for building democracy and good governance was portrayed within the liberal narrative as being held by international agencies. The authority to speak was dependent on perceived access to this knowledge, and also the skills to communicate that knowledge in the English language. However, the critical portrayal of the role of donor agencies in controlling meanings of democracy is limited in two respects. First, concluding, as Teivainen (2009: 164) does, that a rigid ‘teacher-child’ relationship – between international and local agencies in aid programs – can underestimate the agency of local activists or opposition leaders. In the final section of this chapter, I argue first, that the role of narratives and their associated practices in obscuring contest can also create certain opportunities for activists to circumvent the discursive power of donor representatives. The exercise of discursive power in democracy-promotion programs is not fixed. Second, this relationship between narratives and discursive power is not unique to international-local interaction. The work of critical scholars such as Hobson (2009), Teivainen (2009) and Bächtold (2015) , which I have outlined above, emphasises the privileged position of Western donor agencies. Yet they give 3 Teivainen’s teacher-child image is a provocative one, and echoes the ‘people at school’ description from Burmese colonial officials such as Fielding-Hall (1906), which I highlighted in Chapter Four.

176 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

relatively less attention to the exercise of discursive power across other types of relationships. I now address this issue by turning to the construction of characters within the benevolence narrative and examples of how meanings of democracy are policed within the democracy movement. Benevolence narrative For proponents of the benevolence narrative, the core challenge was that the country had long been controlled by military ar nar shin (‘dictators’). It was only through sedana (‘benevolence’) leadership and unity amongst citizens that the country could genuinely democratize. Fulfilment of relational obligations, selflessness and discipline were also seen to be crucial components of the vision, giving the word ‘democracy’ a deeply personal and moral, rather than procedural, focus. When asked in this study about the most important factor in the country’s democratisation, U Aung Naing, a member of the National League for Democracy, said: ‘We need people with true sedana.’4 Within the benevolence narrative, it was the character of the selfless democratic leader or activist who was afforded credibility to speak truth about democracy. Given the emphasis on selflessness, it was often former political prisoners such as Aung San Suu Kyi, or those who had shown extreme commitment to the democratic cause, who were afforded a privileged position to speak about democracy. In contrast, Western aid workers were seen by many activists to have, on the whole, not demonstrated personal commitment or sacrifice to the cause of Burmese democracy. Despite their technical knowledge, they had little claim to the sedana (‘benevolence’) that was at the centre of the democratic vision. The construction of democracy movement leaders at the centre of the benevolence narrative was also supported by a self-reinforcing logic of unity. Embedded within the benevolence narrative were particular assumptions about relationships of mutual obligation – whether in the household, in schools or in national political leadership. Leaders and citizens were assumed, by some activists and NLD leaders, to have certain obligations to each other which, when fulfilled, could foster unity. In contrast, if anyone questioned the privileged voice of leaders, then this opposition could be characterised by leaders in the movement as immaturity or moral failure – where the vision of the wider group was jeopardised by a narrow self-interested

4

Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese.

Exposing the political use of narr atives

177

few.5 To gain credibility within this sphere, activists were required to speak the language and perform the practices of ‘unity’, thereby limiting the avenues through which the dominant narrative could be questioned. In other words, proponents of the benevolence narrative created mechanisms for marginalising the voices of those who questioned the key tenets of the narrative. I agree with Walton (2015), that this dynamic creates a ‘disciplining discourse of unity’ in Burmese politics, which gains weight by being linked to Theravada Buddhist concepts of moral maturity. Walton (ibid.) suggests that a rigid understanding of unity has allowed political movements – both the military and NLD – in Myanmar to be characterised by highly centralised forms of leadership and control. It is ‘unity through hegemony’, he concludes (ibid.: 2). In this way, the benevolence narrative was a means for positioning rival actors as immoral through creating a self-reinforcing logic of unity. The construction of characters within narratives, however, is also malleable. When faced with dilemmas, individuals, at times, actively reject or adapt narratives and challenge established practices which support them (Bevir & Rhodes 2003). For example, activist and writer U Wunna, who articulated the key tenets of the benevolence narrative, described his own dilemma in understanding the role of Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD). Aung San Suu Kyi and other key figures in the NLD had crucial positions of credibility supported by the benevolence narrative. They were commonly portrayed as leaders with ‘true motivations’. However, in his interactions with the NLD, U Wunna came to question whether its key leaders indeed had the sedana (‘benevolence’), required for leadership. ‘Daw Suu controls everything, and it is a problem,’ he said. ‘She has become an ar nar shin [“dictator”].’6 He expressed his ‘surprise’ in the workings of the National League for Democracy suggesting that true democratisation would require different leadership.7 In this way he reassessed the dominant way in which the benevolence narrative portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi. Political actors are constructed as characters within narratives, yet the portrayal of actors – as ‘villains’, ‘heroes’ or ‘bystanders’ – is not always fixed. Equality narrative The core challenge to democratisation in the equality storyline was not only the role of ar nar shin (‘dictators’), but also hierarchical norms within 5 Interview 5, October 2013, Burmese. 6 Interview 1, October 2013, Burmese. 7 Ibid.

178 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Myanmar society more widely. It was assumed by some activists to be only through a wholesale transformation of culture toward more relational equality that the country could democratize. Activist leader U Maung Maung argued that the most significant challenge to the country’s democratisation was ‘the culture […] the hierarchy and religious teaching’.8 In other words, for proponents of this narrative, key values supported in the benevolence narrative were in fact considered to be obstacles to democracy. The only way to reform culture was through critical reassessment of hierarchical relational norms and that process could best be guided by educated activist intellectuals. The story constructed activist intellectuals within the democracy movement as having credibility to speak ‘truth’ about democracy. Through formal political knowledge and education, they could challenge the dominant hierarchical norms, and gain true perspectives on democracy in Myanmar. In contrast, prominent opposition leaders, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, were portrayed within the equality narrative as recreating the authoritarian values of the military under a democratic guise. As I have suggested, the credibility of the narrator depended on the context or social setting in which the story was narrated. The ability of an activist or aid worker to claim status as an expert, or to have the authority to define genuine democracy, was contingent on their audience and the dynamics of interaction, especially the language used. Within the scope of my interactions with aid workers, activists and democratic leaders, proponents of the equality narrative were the most marginalised. The equality narrative was communicated only within certain pockets of activist networks and, on the whole, these activists had only limited relational connection to the influential leadership of the NLD or high-profile activist organisations such as the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society. The narrative was prominent amongst informal circles of activists, writers and academics and within lower-profile organisations which had the aim of reform through political education. Overall, the ‘disciplining discourse of unity’ (Walton 2015: 2) within the democracy movement often served to exclude proponents of the more radically critical equality narrative. While they constructed their own version of the plot and characters of democracy in Myanmar, they had limited opportunity to exert this storyline more widely within the movement. The limit of their credibility was partly due to their critiques of key NLD leaders, such as Aung San Suu Kyi, who still retain significant legitimacy amongst Myanmar citizens. Yet their critique of hierarchy and Buddhist teaching 8

Interview 9, October 2013, English/Burmese.

Exposing the political use of narr atives

179

also meant that they challenged the authority of some religious leaders to bring ‘correct’ interpretations about Buddhism and democracy. In competing with the established authority of the country’s prominent political and religious leaders, progressive activists often found themselves with few supporters. Therefore it was both the dominance of the Western-centric liberal narrative within the international aid architecture – and the potency of the benevolence narrative amongst NLD supporters and activists – that together served to mark out the boundaries of influence for proponents of the equality narrative. As they narrated democracy, activists, democratic leaders and aid workers in Myanmar not only attempted to push forward their own version of the democracy story, but also positioned themselves and other actors in certain ways (Hajer 1995). The way that different characters in the story were represented, and the portrayal of the relationships between them, was significant in establishing who held the upper hand and credibility to define what genuine democracy was, and was not – to define what were reasonable approaches to promoting democracy, and what were not. The credibility of the narrator was also dependent on the particular social setting – the audience and the language of communication.

The overt and covert nature of conceptual politics The previous section sought to expose the way narratives can be used by political actors as instruments of power. Yet a further crucial insight of narrative theory is that constructions of plot and character, and their associated practices, are also a means for masking conceptual contests. Narrative is a means through which power is exercised in a discursive form. At the same time, narratives, and their associated practices, can also obscure their political role. One of the striking features of other struggles for democracy are their largely covert, rather than overt, natures. At one level, mechanisms for the obscuring of contest are contained within communication of narratives themselves. The use of ‘boundary words’, as Boswell (2013a) suggests in his analysis of narratives of obesity, can obscure the more profound differences between narratives. Calls, for example, for ‘integration’ and ‘coordination’ in responses to obesity, and recognition that the issue of obesity is ‘complex’, serve to build only ‘shallow points of agreement’ (ibid.: 161). In a similar way, activists and aid workers in Myanmar used boundary words to establish superficial points of agreement in interactions. One international observer highlighted the

180 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

use of the word ‘democracy’ itself as a ‘code word’ within the aid sector.9 He suggested that in speeches or workshops, international aid workers would often make brief and ambiguous references to democracy in their introduction, before proceeding with more specific policy discussions.10 The code word ‘democracy’ was used as a legitimating device and to establish a shallow foundation for agreement. In the introductory overview of their ‘Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights’, the European Commission (2016: 4) called for the ‘development and consolidation of democracy’. When unpacked in more depth the different narratives described in my study gave widely divergent portrayals of what ‘development and consolidation of democracy’ would entail. Yet, when used in ambiguous ways, these boundary words or phrases could establish a shallow point of agreement. Meanwhile, in the Burmese language, opposition leaders often publicly stressed the need for sedana (‘benevolence’) or nyi nyut gyin (‘unity’). As I have described in depth, in relation to democracy, the meanings behind these words are deeply contested. Yet, when used ambiguously in workshops or meetings, they could establish superficial points of overlap between different actors in the movement. Further, discursive power was not only exercised through language but also often through associated social practices – routine everyday practices within activist networks, political parties or aid agencies through which narratives were enacted. Proponents of different narratives had particular expectations about actions or practices that could resonate with their particular story of democracy. The dominance of particular ‘storylines’ – and masking of difference – is often due to the way they are reinforced by these everyday actions (Hajer 1995). Bridoux, Hobson and Kurki (2012: 2) suggest that it is primarily the ‘working practices’ or routines within aid programs which serve to restrict ‘discussion, exploration and reflection’ on what the word ‘democracy’ means. Though, importantly, the practices associated with narrative may not be perceived as political, either by the audience or narrators themselves. A critical example of seemingly non-political practices that both reinforced, and masked, the dominance of the liberal narrative within aid projects were cycles of funding, monitoring and evaluation. In documents or personal interactions, these cycles commonly served to reiterate the liberal narrative. Donor calls for proposals for governance or democracy-promotion programs detailed the particular problems to be addressed, the goals to 9 Interview 41, August 2014, English. 10 Ibid.

Exposing the political use of narr atives

181

which projects should work, and even the correct language which should be used within applications. Proposals from local groups were then assessed by donors according to their alignment with this logic, and project goals, objectives and activities were often redrafted in order to more closely reflect it. Finally, local groups were required to submit ongoing project reports – and an end-of-project evaluation report – to demonstrate how closely the project had matched the original logic set out by the donor. The everyday process of proposal or report submission and review was a tool for reinforcing a correct manner in which to discuss Myanmar’s governance or democracy. The donor cycle of project applications and monitoring and evaluation activities was routinised and seemingly non-political, and yet at the same time served to police any deviations from the dominant liberal narrative.11 Importantly, these formal everyday interactions within the donor-funding cycle were also most commonly conducted in English. Building on Moon’s (2006) observation that the discursive power of different political actors involved in South Africa’s TRC was dependent on the social setting of the narrator, it is also dependent on the language of narration. Within aid partnership meetings between international and local agencies, a story narrated in English held a higher level of credibility than one told in Burmese, or other languages. The logic within narratives, for example, the benevolence story of Myanmar’s democracy, was partly dependent on the language of its communication. Key concepts such as sedana (‘benevolence’) were not easily translated or coherent within the format of an English-language proposal. Thus, not only the project cycle but also its widespread dependence on the English language served to minimize the opportunities for overt contest over narrative plot or characters.12 Whilst the donor-funding cycle served to police the construction of plot and characters of democracy in Myanmar, the obscuring of conceptual contests also created certain opportunities for Burmese activists to 11 U Maung Maung, an activist organisation director, was concerned that international agencies were dictating specific agendas in their relationships with local groups. In a meeting, he warned other local organisations that they need to be careful not to become gyun (‘servants’ or ‘slaves’) in their partnerships. 12 It should be noted, however, that between different donors and international agencies, the practices associated with the project-funding cycle varied. For example, the European Commission’s ‘European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights’ (2016) was highly formalised, with funding decisions preceded by a public call for proposals where project aims and parameters were closely spelled out. In contrast, some intermediary organisations (such as Norwegian People’s Aid) had a more flexible approach to funding partnerships. Yet, whether codified in formal calls for proposals or not, the liberal narrative routinely served to establish the ‘rules’ of what qualified as genuine democracy promotion or governance work.

182 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

circumvent the discursive power of donor representatives. U Than Aung, a local NGO manager, acknowledged the dominance of donor perspectives within aid partnerships. Yet he suggested that rather than challenging this dominance, it was easier to take a pragmatic approach. ‘At the conceptual philosophical level there are differences. At the practical level it is not about ultimate role but about programmatic arrangements, and you can negotiate those,’ he concluded.13 As donor representatives dominated the ‘conceptual philosophical level’, oftentimes it was easier for members of local organisations to communicate using key elements of the dominant narrative where necessary, and yet keep the relationship focussed on more practical topics, such as budgets or activities.14 The obscuring of contest in some ways allowed activists such as U Than Aung and his networks to establish their own sphere of understanding and communication about democracy that was independent from the relationship with donors. Narratives were a mechanism for obscuring conceptual contests, yet this could also create opportunities for activists to manoeuvre within aid project systems and, at times, circumvent the influence of donor agencies. On one hand, I agree with Burmese academic Maung Zarni’s (2012) observation that practices within the aid architecture in Myanmar reinforce the power of international agencies. Maung Zarni (ibid.: 299) argues that ‘civil society in Burma is already being made to dance to the tune of its international donors and micromanaged by the in-country international NGOs and [donors]’. Everyday practices in the aid sector in Myanmar can indeed serve to support the dominance of the liberal narrative. This was particularly important in the formal realm of interaction between donor agencies and local organisations, through project reporting and through partnership meetings. Yet I have also suggested that the obscuring of contest can create opportunities for activists to circumvent the discursive power of donor agencies. Outside of those formal systems of interaction, activist groups and networks could manoeuvre to take actions or develop strategies that they perceived to be more relevant than those promoted in the liberal narrative. Further, to characterise this issue in democracy promotion as one concerned only with international aid agencies would be to overlook crucial ways in which conceptual contests are also obscured within Burmese political parties and activist networks. This dynamic is illustrated through an example of a large regional meeting of the National League for Democracy 13 Interview 33, February 2014, English. 14 Interview 22, November 2013, English.

Exposing the political use of narr atives

183

(NLD) that I attended in 2014, during a local-level campaign to amend the 2008 Constitution. The NLD was seeking a range of amendments to the constitution – including to articles related to the provision of parliamentary seats to the armed forces, the processes of constitutional amendment itself and, importantly, restrictions on eligibility for the Myanmar presidency. The meeting was described by the organisers as a swe nwe pwe (‘discussion meeting’) and hundreds of local NLD supporters were expected. At the entrance to the meeting room, attendees signed their names on a sheet and ticked whether they supported the amendment of the Myanmar constitution (which was the NLD policy position), or whether they preferred a complete rewriting of the constitution. Local NLD officials sat next to the sign-in sheet and by the time I entered my own name all 50 people who had already signed in had ticked the box indicating their support for the NLD’s position. Over 300 people sat on mats or plastic chairs and listened to four speeches by local party leaders over the two hours of the meeting. At its conclusion, the chair asked the gathered group in Burmese, ‘Do we accept the constitution needs to be amended?’ ‘We accept,’ replied the participants in unison. The question was repeated three times, with the same audience response. This was followed by the question, ‘Do we accept that the constitution needs to be rewritten?’ (which was contrary to the NLD position), to which all meeting participants responded, ‘We do not accept.’ In the context of a swe nwe pwe (‘discussion meeting’),15 the agenda and practices in the meeting were clearly oriented toward the promotion of a unified position. Within the logic of the benevolence narrative, it was necessary that the emphasis on unity and obligation flowed into everyday interactions in political parties or activist networks. Amongst the organisers of the meeting, and the attendees that I spoke to, there appeared to be no incongruence between the expectations of a swe nwe pwe, and the eventual form of the meeting. For an individual to voice critical opposition to the NLD policy in that forum would have been to flagrantly disrupt the expected practices associated with the benevolence narrative. As with the dominance of the liberal narrative within aid partnerships, the central tenets of the benevolence narrative were often supported by everyday practices, within activist networks or political parties, which appeared to be natural and non-political. Given the sharp differences in the ways democracy was given meaning – between groups of aid workers, NLD leaders and activists – my 15 There was some confusion between NLD members at the meeting as to whether the meeting should be described as a swe nwe pwe (‘discussion meeting’) or a haw pyaw pwe (‘speech meeting’). Most of the NLD leaders present described it as a swe nwe pwe.

184 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

research revealed a striking absence of open debate and argumentation about meaning. Conceptual contest was not always dynamic and obvious but was often routinised and almost imperceptible. As Hajer (1995: 57) importantly argues, not all actions are ‘the result of an active process of taking up or denying of positionings’. Political actors often do not recognise ‘moments of positioning’ (ibid.) but rather assume that particular use of language and associated practices are natural in that circumstance. Normalised ways of seeing within activist networks or aid agencies served to disguise the implications of particular constructions of plot and characters. Conceptual contests were often covert, submerged in everyday practices and interactions within the movement. Discursive power is exercised not only through the way people communicate, but also through everyday social practices that reflect, and reinforce, particular dominant stories.

Conclusion How are narratives of democracy wielded politically? My argument in this chapter has been that activists and aid workers use narratives of democracy to position themselves in relation to rivals, to establish themselves and their allies as experts who can define what ‘genuine’ democracy is, and what it is not. Meanings of democracy, drawn on by activists or aid workers, are not neutral but rather entwined in conceptual contests and the exercise of power in a discursive form. Grounding and locating concepts of democracy in Myanmar supports the connection between particular linguistic, historical and cultural contexts and contrasting ways in which democracy is given meaning by political actors. Yet it is crucial to also expose the ways in which meanings of democracy are wielded politically by democracy promoters, activists and democratic leaders. Further, these struggles over the concept of democracy are not always overt. In fact, the nature of narratives and their associated practices often serves to mask conceptual contests. Routinised aid project cycles or political party meeting practices reinforce certain narratives, and yet these practices are often considered to be non-political. This meant that interactions within the democracy movement, and with its supporters, were often characterised not by constant argumentation over how democracy is given meaning, but rather by the absence of open debate. What, then, does all of this mean for the study of democracy promotion, or for the practice of promoting democracy?

Exposing the political use of narr atives

185

References Bächtold, S. 2015. ‘The rise of an anti-politics machinery: Peace, civil society and the focus on results in Myanmar’. Third World Quarterly 36 (10): 1968-1983. Bevir, M., and Rhodes, R.A.W. 2003. Interpreting British Governance. London: Routledge. Boswell, J. 2013a. ‘Between facts and fictions: Narrative in public deliberation on obesity’. PhD thesis. Australian National University. Boswell, J. 2013b. ‘Why and how narrative matters in deliberative systems’. Political Studies 61 (3): 620-636. Bridoux, J., Hobson, C., and Kurki, M. 2012. ‘Rethinking democracy support’. Policy Paper. Aberystwyth University and United Nations University. https://collections.unu.edu/view/ UNU:1620#viewMetadata. Last accessed 6 December 2019. European Commission. 2016. ‘European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) country-based support scheme for Myanmar 2016: Guidelines for grant applicants’. https:// webgate.ec.europa.eu/europeaid/online-services/index.cfm?ADSSChck=1573249469095&d o=publi.detPUB&page=3&searchtype=QS&aoref=151418&orderbyad=Desc&orderby=upd& nbPubliList=15&userlanguage=en. Last accessed 13 December 2019. Fielding-Hall, H. 1906. A People at School. London: Macmillan. Hajer, M.A. 1995. The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hobson, C. 2009. ‘The limits of liberal-democracy promotion’. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 34 (4): 383-405. Jones, M.D., and McBeth, M.K. 2010. ‘A narrative policy framework: Clear enough to be wrong?’ Policy Studies Journal 38 (2): 329-353. Maung Zarni. 2012. ‘Orientalisation and manufacturing of civil society in contemporary Burma’. In Z. Ibrahim (ed.), Social Science and Knowledge in a Globalising World. Petaling Jaya: Persatuan Sains Sosial Malaysia and Strategic Information and Research Development Centre. 287-310. Moon, C. 2006. ‘Narrating political reconciliation: Truth and reconciliation in South Africa’. Social & Legal Studies 15 (2): 257-275. Schaffer, F.C. 1997. ‘Political concepts and the study of democracy: The case of demokaraasi in Senegal’. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20 (1): 40-49. Schaffer, F.C. 2000. Democracy in Translation: Understanding Politics in an Unfamiliar Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Schaffer, F.C. 2014. ‘Thin descriptions: The limits of survey research on the meaning of democracy’. Polity 46 (3): 303-330. Schaffer, F.C. 2016. Elucidating Social Science Concepts: An Interpretivist Guide. New York: Routledge. Teivainen, T. 2009. ‘The pedagogy of global development: The promotion of electoral democracy and the Latin Americanisation of Europe’. Third World Quarterly 30 (1): 163-179. Walton, M.J. 2015. ‘The disciplining discourse of unity in Burmese politics’. Journal of Burma Studies 19 (1): 1-26.

9

Beyond an ‘ideal type’ Implications for democracy promotion Abstract This case of activists, democratic leaders and aid workers in Myanmar – and the ways in which they communicate about democracy – reveals lessons that can be applied more broadly to endeavours to understand democracy promotion around the world. This chapter addresses both the democracy-promotion literature and also the practical implications for practitioners working on governance or democracy programs in international donor agencies or NGOs. Keywords: democracy promotion, narrative, donor agencies, aid, liberal

This case of activists, democratic leaders and aid workers in Myanmar – and the ways in which they communicate about democracy – reveals lessons that can be applied more broadly to endeavours to understand democracy promotion around the world. In this chapter, I address both the democracypromotion literature and also practical implications for practitioners working on governance or democracy programs in international donor agencies or NGOs. Before addressing these implications, however, I recap the significance of this study for consideration of meanings of democracy. As described in Chapter Two, I have taken a different path to that of mainstream studies of democracy. Rather than beginning with an ‘ideal type’ from which to analyse meanings that citizens or political actors give to the word ‘democracy’, I have instead drawn on Gallie’s (1956) notion of ‘essentially contestable concepts’. Using ‘essential contestability’ as the conceptual foundation allows meanings of democracy, in countries like Myanmar, to be considered on their own terms rather than as pale reflections of an ideal democracy that exists elsewhere.

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch09

188 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

There are, of course, few democratisation scholars who would deny that there is normative contestation over how democracy should be practiced, for example, with the participation of women, the practice of voting, and so on. However, the case of activists and democratic leaders in Myanmar reveals contests over both the practice of democracy and also contests over the very components of the concept of democracy itself. This is a crucial distinction. The liberal, benevolence and equality narratives portray profoundly different versions of challenges, visions and strategies related to democracy in Myanmar. It is this finding that supports Gallie’s (1956) arguments and challenges notions of an ‘ideal type’ of democratic values and institutions that transcends cultural or temporal context. It should be noted, however, that critics of Gallie’s notion of democracy as an essentially contested concept (Gray 1977; Clarke 1979; Sartori 1987; Lawson 1995) are, at least at one level, justified in their caution. Authoritarian leaders throughout modern history, including in Myanmar, have undoubtedly abused the word ‘democracy’. I have no intention in this book of validating the use of the word ‘democracy’ by Burmese military elites, who simultaneously spoke of democratic goals while violently suppressing peaceful citizen protests and holding many people as political prisoners. Nor should the current NLD government escape scrutiny as it claims the appellation of democracy, yet seemingly fails to treat citizens equally across ethnic and religious divides. Yet, as Whitehead (2002: 14) argues, to acknowledge the essential contestability of democracy is not to argue that democracy can mean anything at all. There is no taken-for-granted meaning of democracy, yet this does not mean that ‘anything goes’ (ibid.). The tendency in democratisation scholarship is to draw the lines too tightly around an ‘ideal type’ of democracy. Critics of Gallie (1956) set up an unnecessary dichotomy where they assume that any questioning of a universal meaning of democracy necessarily descends to a situation where any meaning of democracy is acceptable. Engaging with democracy activists and democratic leaders and the diversity of contests over democracy’s meaning reveals that such stark dichotomies are overly restrictive. The danger of this dichotomy is that it leads scholars such as Diamond (2008) to reject, or describe as ‘deviant’ (Seeberg 2014), any meanings of democracy that stray outside the borders of the liberal ‘ideal type’. Democratisation scholarship is therefore prone to dismissing vast sections of democratic thought. This book underscores the point that the actions of democracy activists or opposition leaders cannot be understood without grasping the underlying meanings that they attach to the word ‘democracy’. My examination of the British colonial administration in Chapter Three showed how colonial administrators assessed the Burmese Thakin activists

Beyond an ‘ideal t ype’

189

through a narrative of an ‘Ocean of Democracy’, where the West is at the centre and the East in the backwaters. It is tempting to quarantine such assumptions to colonial era representations of Burma. Yet more recent scholarly representations of democracy in Myanmar use strikingly similar imagery of a traditional country moving inevitably to the ‘mainstream’ of democracy. For example, based on the Asian Barometer survey project, Welsh, Huang and Chu (2016) highlight the persistence of ‘illiberal values’ in Myanmar. They interpret this as persistence of ‘traditional’, ‘authoritarian’ values in the country’s political culture and a fundamental ‘lack of understanding of how democracy should function’ (ibid.: 135). Welsh, Huang and Chu (ibid.: 135) then optimistically suggest that with ‘modernization, globalization, and greater regional integration, these values are likely to change’. Myanmar may not be in the centre of the ‘Ocean of Democracy’, yet the forces of modernisation will draw it inevitably into the mainstream. As in the colonial era, such accounts of democratisation add little to our attempts to understand circumstance-attached meanings of democracy on their own terms. The challenge for scholars of democratisation is to prise open new analytical spaces where meanings of democracy and their contests around the world can be examined as more than just deviations. Recent interpretive scholarship on meanings of democracy around the world has gone some way toward this goal. Taking an interpretive approach, a number of scholars have valuably traced out how the word ‘democracy’ is given meaning in particular cultural, linguistic, religious and historical contexts, from Morocco to rural India. The arguments of this book about the prominence of moral notions of democratic leadership support the central arguments of these interpretive studies about meanings of democracy being circumstance-attached. Yet the case of Myanmar highlights the need for attention on a further analytical step. It is one thing to illuminate the links between meanings of democracy and the cultural and religious context in which political actors create them. It is another to expose the ways that these circumstance-attached meanings are also wielded as instruments through which to gain political advantage over one’s rivals. Meanings of democracy are inevitably political. Kurki (2013) makes a valuable contribution to literature on democracy promotion by insisting that the politics around ‘democracy’ is not only over control of material resources, but that there is also a conceptual politics around meanings given to the word ‘democracy’ itself. The context of democracy-promotion programs in Myanmar reinforces the arguments of Kurki (ibid.) by highlighting that – between aid workers and Burmese activists – there was often divergence in meanings given to the word ‘democracy’. For example, the procedural

190 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

focus of the liberal narrative contrasted with a far more personal emphasis in both the benevolence and equality narratives. Within the vast Euro-American scholarship on democratic theory there are countless debates about the merits of different models or theories of democracy. Kurki (2010, 13) is right to point out that the breadth of these debates – about social or liberal democracy, radical or deliberative democracy – is not sufficiently carried into debates about democracy promotion. Yet, in tracing out the nuances of different narratives, I have sought to highlight that conceptual contests over meanings of democracy are themselves circumstance-attached and may have only tenuous links to established scholarly categories and debates. The particularities of Myanmar’s democratic struggles against military regimes – and the backdrop of, for example, Buddhist thought, and Myanmar intellectualism – have created contests that are not easily pinned down along established lines of theoretical debate. What’s more, these conceptual contests were not only those between Western aid agencies and local activists; there were also profound conceptual contests within the democracy movement. To build on the existing literature, I have drawn on narrative, both as a concept and as a methodology in the form of narrative analysis. My argument has been that a narrative approach can unlock new perspectives on meanings of democracy. I have described, in this book, three different narratives drawn on by activists, aid workers and opposition leaders in Myanmar – the liberal, benevolence and equality narratives. Democracy is understood and communicated through these simplified stories containing challenges, visions and strategies related to democracy. Contrasting activist and aid worker responses to key issues – such as communal violence, capacity-building programs and the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi – were often embedded in these wider stories. Yet, using a narrative approach, I have suggested that further steps need to be taken in grasping how meanings of democracy are constructed. Activists and aid workers used narratives to position themselves in relation to rivals. There were contests within the Burmese democracy movement over both narrative plot and the construction of characters. In this sense, narratives were a mechanism for the exercise of power in a discursive form. Meanings of democracy were not just neutral reflections of cultural or religious context; they were, in part, embedded in conceptual contests. Finally, a narrative approach also alerts us to the way that these conceptual contests are often covert rather than overt. Within the Burmese democracy movement, narratives, and their associated practices, were also a mechanism for the masking or obscuring of contest.

Beyond an ‘ideal t ype’

191

The implications of other struggles for democracy Attention to narratives of democracy amongst political actors reveals diverse interpretations of challenges, strategies and visions, and even of temporal range and orientation. Furthermore, it is possible to expose the ways that these different narratives of democracy are deployed politically, by activists and party leaders, in order to gain influence over their rivals. How then might attention to these other struggles for democracy change the way we think about the endeavour of promoting democracy? This question is important as democracy promotion remains a significant focus for Western donor agencies. Under the labels of ‘human rights and democracy’, ‘civil society strengthening’, ‘governance’ or ‘strengthening the work of parliament’, global democracy assistance spending exceeds five billion US dollars per year (Burnell 2008: 414). USAID’s 2017 budget alone – for democracy, human rights and governance programs globally – was $2.3 billion (USAID 2016). Democracy assistance remains a major policy instrument for Western governments. What might attention to other struggles for democracy mean for democracy-promotion scholarship and practice? There are two broad streams of scholarship that explicitly address the issue of democracy promotion: mainstream democratisation studies and more critical literature on ‘conceptual politics of democracy promotion’ (Hobson & Kurki 2012; Wolff 2012). My argument here is that attention to other struggles for democracy extends the analysis of democracy promotion within these mainstream and critical streams of literature, though in different ways. Mainstream perspectives As I have described, the tendency in democratisation scholarship is to assume the existence of a universal ‘ideal type’ of democracy and then use this as a yardstick from which to map ‘deviations’ around the world. Yet this is not to suggest that mainstream democracy-promotion scholars advocate for a simplistic, one-size-fits-all template for democracy promotion. There is, in fact, a chorus of scholarly voices emphasising the need for contextualisation and greater fostering of local ownership in democracy-promotion programs (Carothers 2002; Hyman 2002; Wollack 2002; Börzel & Risse 2004; Diamond 2008; Stewart 2009). Few scholars would dismiss the idea of making democracy-promotion programs more sensitive to context. The focus of mainstream democracy-promotion scholarship, however, is still largely on questions of how democracy promotion might be more effective, rather than

192 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

on the ways democracy itself is given meaning in different contexts. In the words of Youngs (2009: ix), democracy-promotion research has largely been on the ‘how’ of ‘democratic advancement’ rather than the ‘what’. The corollary of this narrow focus on questions of ‘how’ rather than ‘what’ is that planning and evaluation of democracy or governance programs is most commonly debated through the implicit (or explicit) framework of progress toward liberal democracy (Ethier 2003; Burnell 2008). In their program frameworks in Myanmar, DFID and USAID use the Freedom House index (Freedom House 2015) to track changes toward a liberal model of democracy. In contrast, the findings of my own study in Myanmar highlight the importance of putting questions of what democracy is back into studies of democracy promotion. My argument is that scholarship and practice of democracy promotion would be enhanced by turning to questions of how democracy is given meaning amongst activists and opposition leaders, and to trace out the ways that these meanings might be constructed through conceptual contests. Activists and democratic leaders in Myanmar understood democratic progress with reference to contrasting visions – visions that did not always align with, for example, the measures contained in the Freedom House index. There was no universal yardstick from which success in democracy promotion could be evaluated. Given these differing assumptions about democracy, it is therefore deeply problematic to assume that activists in democracy movements around the world are all running toward the same finishing line, toward building the same ‘ideal type’ of democracy. Perceptions of success and failure amongst political actors cannot be taken for granted. A key aim of democracy-promotion scholarship should, therefore, be to uncover the ways that political actors may be, in Schaffer’s (1997) terms, ‘able players’ within their own context. The narrative approach I have used in this study can help scholars and practitioners to make sense of the actions and beliefs of activists and opposition leaders, their enthusiasm for certain strategies and visions, and their resistance to others. Analysing the actions of activists, aid workers or governments through narratives can help to understand how these actors might be highly capable within their own logic of democratic progress. In contrast, mainstream scholars of democracy promotion are in danger of reinforcing a program approach, where local activists or opposition leaders are seen as deficient in their ‘capacity’ or lacking in their understanding of democracy. False assumptions can easily be made about democratic practice if the underlying meanings attached to democracy by relevant political actors are not sufficiently explored. Failing to examine the plurality of meanings

Beyond an ‘ideal t ype’

193

of democracy can lead to what Gallie (1956) cautions as the ‘chronic human peril’ of underestimating the value of rival positions. Unpacking rival stories of democracy on their own terms can help democracy promoters to reassess their own assumptions about what democratisation ought to entail in different contexts. In addressing the challenges of democracy promotion, scholars and practitioners should avoid a reinvigorated emphasis on issues of implementation or strategy alone. Rather, this study points to the need for examination of the way democracy itself is given meaning – a need to address the question not only of ‘how’ to promote democracy but ‘what’ democracy is. Critical perspectives In contrast to mainstream scholarship, a common refrain within critical democracy-promotion literature is toward the vision of ‘democratizing democracy promotion’ (Santos 2005; Koelble & Lipuma 2008; Kurki 2010; Wolff 2012; Bridoux & Kurki 2014).1 This vision is of aid agencies taking a more inclusive and open approach to the question of what kind of democracy should be promoted around the world. This emphasis from critical scholars is a welcome one, and one that resonates with the key arguments in this book. Yet attention to the ways that narratives are situated within webs of power – and exposing the ways that meanings of democracy are used as instruments to promote the voices of some while marginalising others – highlights some limitations to the goal of ‘democratizing democracy promotion’. I first outline how this vision is described within critical democracy scholarship before highlighting how this vision might be nuanced. There are growing calls amongst critical scholars for democracy promotion itself to be democratised (Kurki 2010; Hobson & Kurki 2012; Wolff 2012; Bridoux & Kurki 2014; Youngs 2015). In her work on the conceptual politics of democracy promotion, Kurki (2010) argues that ‘democratic’ values should also be applied to democracy-promotion programs themselves. Kurki (ibid.: 377) suggests that, [i]f we take ‘listening to different perspectives’ to be a key democratic value […] then hearing and explicitly encouraging a plurality of views on the meaning of democracy in academic and policy debates, would seem to be desirable. 1 Koelble and Lipuma (2008) focus on ‘democratizing democracy’ especially through rethinking the ‘measurement’ of democracy.

194 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

This aim of ‘democratizing democracy promotion’ is set out in practical terms by Wolff (2012) in his study of democracy promotion in Bolivia. Wolff (ibid.: 12) argues for democracy promotion to be understood as a ‘joint search process’. Local organisations and international donors could work together to develop new context-specific models of democracy. Wolff (ibid.: 12) envisages ‘a peaceful and inclusive process of constructing a model appropriate for the specific country’. There may be no prescribed end point for democratisation and democracy promotion. Rather, meanings of democracy could be coconstructed between international and local actors, or at least a conceptual pluralism could be emphasised within programs. Amidst the perception of a ‘backlash’ against Western interventions around the world (Carothers 2002), a number of critical scholars hope that a more participatory approach to democracy support can make it a more a ‘democratic’ endeavour (Santos 2005; Koelble & Lipuma 2008; Kurki 2010; Wolff 2012; Bridoux & Kurki 2014). As Youngs (2015: 159) suggests, ‘much can be gained by a cooperative search for new forms of democratic quality’. Insofar as the desire is to reorient democracy-promotion scholarship and practice to give more attention to the plurality of meanings given to democracy, I agree with these critical scholars. However, this book has revealed some limits to ‘democratizing democracy promotion’ in such a way. The narrative approach I have used has not only illuminated the ways in which religious, linguistic or cultural context informs meanings of democratisation, it has also shown the ways in which narratives are a means for the exercise of power in a discursive form. The construction of characters in the liberal narrative served to create an unequal ‘teacher-student’ relationship between international and local agencies. Meanwhile, proponents of the benevolence narrative created a ‘disciplining discourse of unity’ (Walton 2015) in Myanmar politics, where dissenting views from activists or minority groups were often dismissed by democracy movement leaders as immoral. This is not to suggest that individual activists or aid workers do not have the agency to challenge or negotiate narrative construction. I earlier gave several examples of the agency of actors in the democracy movement to creatively adapt or circumvent dominant narratives. However, the construction of meanings of democracy through conceptual contests presents challenges to the ideal of a wholly ‘peaceful and inclusive process’ of creating new meanings within democracy-promotion programs. One implication of my study is that there are no neutral ways in which democracy can be discussed. However ‘participatory’, ‘inclusive’ or ‘peaceful’ the approach of democracy promoters might be, the word ‘democracy’ is never used in a neutral way in workshops or aid program meetings. Communication about

Beyond an ‘ideal t ype’

195

democracy always invokes particular constructions of plots and characters, while marginalising others. Making the ‘democratisation of democracy promotion’ even more challenging is the role of narratives, and their associated practices, in obscuring conceptual contests. Aid workers, and democracy activists and opposition leaders, can simply play out everyday routinised interactions and are not necessarily aware of the ways in which meanings of democracy are contested. They may be engaged in activities which in themselves are not considered to be ‘political’. Yet, at the program level, the ‘peaceful and inclusive’ process described by Wolff (2012) requires, at least to some degree, a conscious dialogue or debate about meanings of democracy and conceptual contests. Such dialogue in programs may of course be possible. Yet attention to conceptual contests, and their often-obscured nature, brings a more sober assessment of the potential for co-constructing meanings of democracy in a way that is wholly inclusive. The narrative approach taken in this book can thus help scholars and practitioners of democracy promotion to unpack both the possibilities and constraints of democracy promotion. A narrative approach can bring greater awareness of the plurality of meanings of democracy. Yet a narrative approach can also assist scholars to recognise the limits of attempts to make the practice of democracy promotion more inclusive and participatory.

Conclusion Democracy is central to the global political lexicon of the twenty-first century. It is ‘the single most powerful political formula in today’s world’ (Dunn 2014: 12). Democratisation scholars such as Diamond (2008) are right to point to the stunning levels of citizen support around the world for democracy as a form of government. From South America to Africa and Asia, public opinion surveys reveal the widespread popularity of the word ‘democracy’. Democracy, in Gallie’s (1956: 184) terms, is indeed the ‘appraisive political concept par excellence’. Yet as democracy becomes increasingly embedded as a political concept around the world, it, in turn, becomes increasingly important to unpack the many ways in which it is given meaning, and the ways that these meanings are deployed for political ends. Democracy may be a highly valued concept, yet it is impossible to pin down. The word ‘democracy’ may be a point of consensus, yet the narratives surrounding it are diverse. Uncovering other struggles for democracy is therefore crucial if aid agencies and scholars are

196 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

to make sense of the actions and beliefs of democracy activists around the world. Greater understanding of these struggles, and their circumstanceattached nature, must be at the heart of future efforts to foster democracy. In the final chapter of this book, I turn back to the case of Myanmar and explore the future prospects for the realisation of different visions of democracy, and the role of international aid agencies.

References Börzel, T.A., and Risse, T. 2004. ‘One size fits all! EU policies for the promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law’. Prepared for the Workshop on Democracy Promotion, 4-5 October. Center for Development, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Stanford University. Bridoux, J., and Kurki, M. 2014. Democracy Promotion: A Critical Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. Burnell, P. 2008. ‘From evaluating democracy assistance to appraising democracy promotion’. Political Studies 56 (2): 414-434. Carothers, T. 2002. ‘The end of the transition paradigm’. Journal of Democracy 13 (1): 5-21. Carothers, T. 2004. Critical Mission: Essays on Democracy Promotion. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Carothers, T. 2006. ‘The backlash against democracy promotion’. Foreign Affairs 85 (2): 55-68. Carothers, T. 2012. Democracy Policy under Obama: Revitalization of Retreat? Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Clarke, B. 1979. ‘Eccentrically contested concepts’. British Journal of Political Science 9 (1): 122-126. Diamond, L.J. 1996. ‘Is the third wave over?’ Journal of Democracy 7 (3): 20-37. Diamond, L.J. 2002. ‘Elections without democracy: Thinking about hybrid regimes’. Journal of Democracy 13 (2): 21-35. Diamond, L.J. 2008. The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World. London: Macmillan. Dunn, J. 2014. Breaking Democracy’s Spell. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ethier, D. 2003. ‘Is democracy promotion effective? Comparing conditionality and incentives’. Democratization 10 (1): 99-120. Freedom House. 2014. ‘Freedom in the World Report’. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ files/FIW2014%20Booklet.pdf. Last accessed 25 November 2019. Freedom House. 2015. ‘Freedom in the World Report’. https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/ files/01152015_FIW_2015_final.pdf. Last accessed 13 December 2019. Gallie, W.B. 1956. ‘Essentially contested concepts’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1): 167-198. Gray, J.N. 1977. ‘On the contestability of social and political concepts’. Political Theory 5 (3): 331-348. Hobson, C., and Kurki, M. (eds.) 2012. The Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion. New York: Routledge. Hyman, G. 2002. ‘Debating the transition paradigm: Tilting at straw men’. Journal of Democracy 13 (3): 26-32. Koelble, T.A., and Lipuma, E. 2008. ‘Democratizing democracy: A postcolonial critique of conventional approaches to the “measurement of democracy”’. Democratization 15 (1): 1-28. Kurki, M. 2010. ‘Democracy and conceptual contestability: Reconsidering conceptions of democracy in democracy promotion’. International Studies Review 12 (3): 362-386.

Beyond an ‘ideal t ype’

197

Kurki, M. 2013. Democratic Futures: Revisioning Democracy Promotion. London: Routledge. Lawson, S. 1995. ‘Culture, relativism and democracy: Political myths about “Asia” and the “West”’. Working Paper 1995/6. Department of International Relations, Australian National University. http://ir.bellschool.anu.edu.au/experts-publications/publications/1760/culture-relativismand-democracy-political-myths-about-asia. Last accessed 25 November 2019. Santos, B.d.S. (ed.) 2005. Democratizing Democracy: Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon. New York: Verso. Sartori, G. 1987. The Theory of Democracy Revisited. Chatham: Chatham House. Schaffer, F.C. 1997. ‘Political concepts and the study of democracy: The case of demokaraasi in Senegal’. Political and Legal Anthropology Review 20 (1): 40-49. Seeberg, M. 2014. ‘Mapping deviant democracy’. Democratization 21 (4): 634-654. Stewart, S. 2009. ‘Democracy promotion before and after the “colour revolutions”’. Democratization 16 (4): 645-660. USAID. 2016. ‘FY 2017 development and humanitarian assistance budget’. US Agency for International Development. https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/fact-sheets/fy2017-development-and-humanitarian-assistance-budget. Last accessed 6 December 2019. Walton, M.J. 2012. ‘Politics in the moral universe: Burmese Buddhist political thought’. PhD thesis. University of Washington. Walton, M.J. 2015. ‘The disciplining discourse of unity in Burmese politics’. Journal of Burma Studies 19 (1): 1-26. Welsh, B., Huang, K.-P., and Chu, Y.-H. 2016. ‘Burma votes for change: Clashing attitudes toward democracy’. Journal of Democracy 27 (2): 132-140. Whitehead, L. 2002. Democratization: Theory and Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wolff, J. 2012. ‘The conceptual politics of democracy promotion in Bolivia’. In C. Hobson and M. Kurki (eds.), The Conceptual Politics of Democracy Promotion. New York: Routledge. 119-130. Wollack, K. 2002. ‘Debating the transition paradigm: Retaining the human dimension’. Journal of Democracy 13 (3): 20-25. Youngs, R. 2009. ‘Democracy promotion as external governance?’ Journal of European Public Policy 16 (6): 895-915. Youngs, R. 2015. The Puzzle of Non-Western Democracy. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

10 Playing different games Myanmar’s future challenges Abstract Drawing on this history of conceptual contests over democracy in Myanmar, this chapter looks forward to how contests over the meaning of democracy might shape areas of political decision-making and policy in Myanmar over the coming decade. How might the particular examples of narratives, and their political use – within activist networks, the NLD and aid agencies – apply to the future of Myanmar’s politics? What challenges might there be for activists, democratic leaders and aid agencies through future contests over the meaning of democracy? Keywords: Myanmar, elections, benevolence, National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi

I began this book with reflections on the historic election victory of the NLD, which catapulted the long suffering NLD party, and Aung San Suu Kyi, into power. Much of the rest of this book has been oriented to look back from that pivotal moment in 2015 – to the transition after 2010, to the decades of authoritarian rule, and then even further back to the independence era and the late colonial period in Burma. Drawing on this history of conceptual contests over democracy, in this chapter, I now look forward to how contests over the meaning of democracy might shape areas of political decision-making and policy in Myanmar over the coming decade. How might the particular examples of narratives, and their political use, that I have described within activist networks, the NLD and aid agencies apply to the future of Myanmar’s politics? What challenges might there be for activists, democratic leaders and aid agencies through future contests over the meaning of democracy? Since the 2015 elections there have been many attempts to identify the core future challenges that Myanmar faces – related to political leadership

Wells, Tamas, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar: The Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463726153_ch10

200 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

(Blaževič 2016; Barany 2018; Roman & Holliday 2018), Muslim minorities and citizenship (Kosem & Saleem 2016; Win & Kean 2017; Ahsan 2018; Mukherjee 2019), ethnic conflict and peace (Dukalskis 2017; Ganesan 2017; South 2018; Wilson 2018) and ongoing military influence in politics and the economy (Huang 2017; Selth 2018). Most analysts implicitly or explicitly ask, as Roman and Holliday (2018) do, ‘What are the prospects for liberal democracy in Myanmar?’ Some authors are hopeful of movement toward liberal democracy (Blaževič 2016), or at least ‘cautiously optimistic’ (Steinberg 2015). Roman and Holliday (2018: 202) conclude that ‘meaningful democratic progress’ is ‘not impossible’ in Myanmar. Others, and especially those writing after the crisis in Rakhine State, are more pessimistic. Yet, whether optimistic or pessimistic, asking about the prospects for liberal democracy necessarily limits the ability of scholars or practitioners to approach the many varying strands of Burmese political thought on their own terms. Analysts commonly nuance their work by insisting reforms need to be locally led, sensitive to local conditions and not led by predetermined agendas (Steinberg 2015). Roman and Holliday (2018: 188) insist that they approach the data with ‘no assumptions’. However, the core question – ‘What are the prospects for liberal democracy in Myanmar?’ – immediately tethers the country to an axis of movement toward or away from liberal democracy thereby constraining the endeavour of grounding, locating and exposing the concept of democracy in particular contexts in Myanmar. Rather than identifying ‘contradictions’ in the beliefs of Burmese political actors in relation to the tenets of Western liberalism, we must look to examine those beliefs on their own terms and reveal new axes of contest. My argument in this book is that attention to the many narratives of democracy in Myanmar can allow us to see the country’s fundamental challenges through a new prism. Rather than one axis of movement, toward or away from liberal democracy, attention to narratives reveals multiple axes of potential movement. In this book, I have argued that the most potent storyline of democracy amongst contemporary Burmese democratic leaders is one centring around the value of benevolence and selflessness. This is not at all to offer my own support of the benevolence narrative, and in the previous chapters I have highlighted numerous ways in which this story can serve to entrench power hierarchies. Rather, it is to suggest that this narrative retains a dominance amongst elite networks of activists and NLD members and this will likely continue to shape debates about the meaning of democracy for some time to come. Therefore, rather than asking what the prospects are for liberal democracy in Myanmar, in this conclusion I focus on a different axis. I ask what the

Pl aying different games

201

prospects are of bringing about the kind of moral democracy that many activists and democratic leaders envision, and what challenges that may face in the coming decade. At the end of this chapter, I then reflect on the role of international aid agencies in Myanmar and how attention to meanings of democracy in Myanmar necessitates a rethinking of their approaches.

Prospects for a benevolent democracy Given its prominence amongst NLD members of parliament and their grassroots activist supporters, the benevolence narrative plays a critical role in national political calculations. For many activists and democratic leaders that I met, the core challenge to democratisation was dictatorial leadership and the moral failure of citizens, and there was a vision of a morally transformed society based on benevolent leadership and the values of unity and obligation. Most obviously, proponents of the benevolence narrative face the enormous dilemma of leadership transition. With Aung San Suu Kyi now in her mid-70s, the next decade will likely see transition to a new leader of the NLD party. Within the logic of the benevolence narrative, moral leadership is crucial to ‘genuine’ democratisation. While widely criticised internationally due to her supposed fall from ‘saint to pariah’ (Wilson 2018: 20), Aung San Suu Kyi continues to enjoy considerable status and respect as a leader with sedana – within the NLD, within circles of activists, and more broadly amongst citizens. More than the liberal or equality narratives that I have described, proponents of the benevolence narrative are uniquely focussed on moral leadership as an integral part of democratisation. Leadership succession in the NLD is therefore a critical issue for some democratic leaders and activists. Wilson (ibid.) optimistically looks to the potential for ‘internationally connected young leaders’ to move into NLD party leadership. Yet, given the NLD’s conservative approach to leadership, with a penchant for choosing septuagenarians in key positions, appointment of a young leader seems unlikely. More pessimistically, Taylor (2018) wonders if the NLD party can even survive beyond the active political career of Aung San Suu Kyi. Whether it is sooner or later, the eventual end of Aung San Suu Kyi’s political career raises considerable uncertainty for realising the vision of a benevolent or sedana-centred democracy. Realisation of the vision of a benevolence-centred democracy is also hampered by challengers on several flanks. On one side, as Selth (2018) and others suggest, Burmese military elites continue to hold considerable

202 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

constitutional, political and economic power. The 2015 and 2020 elections were convincingly won by the NLD. Yet a quarter of seats in the Myanmar parliament are still allocated to military personnel. Constitutional amendments require 75 percent approval of parliament, thereby effectively giving the military veto power. This leads Selth (ibid.) to suggest that, from the perspective of military elites, the current trajectory of the country’s politics – with ongoing political and economic status for military and ex-military elites – is ‘all going to plan’. An agenda of moral transformation and benevolent leadership is, to some degree, hamstrung by the ongoing influence of the military – who are most commonly perceived by NLD leaders and activists to be ar nar shin (‘dictators’), and thus, unworthy of leadership positions. In the coming years, it will be unlikely that military elites will voluntarily roll back their constitutional privileges, unless from a position of relative strength. And then, even if constitutional privileges for the military were removed, military elites would still retain significant economic interests and influence in Myanmar’s politics. Military leadership is anathema for proponents of the benevolence narrative, yet ongoing military power will likely continue to present an obstacle to the realisation of the vision of benevolence-centred democracy. On another flank, proponents of the benevolence narrative face increasing criticism from activists and civil society organisations who are advocating for, amongst other things, culture change in political leadership – especially in relation to a perception of hierarchy and centralised decision-making. I have described an equality narrative which presents a sharp critique of the Buddhist foundations of the benevolence narrative – not through rejecting Buddhism but through insistence on a new interpretation of teachings. Notions of unity or nyi nyut gyin – which are commonly deployed by democratic leaders to portray these critics as immoral – at one level serve to contain conflict. Yet, at the same time, this discourse of unity will also reinforce old hierarchies and thus spawn further opposition from proponents of the equality narrative. In the coming years, Burmese activists, intellectuals and writers who are seeking a new democratic culture based around equality will likely increase their criticism of the role of activists and NLD leaders in supposedly reinforcing hierarchies. The rhetoric of unity and discipline, no matter how vigorously employed, will never completely contain voices advocating for a different vision of democracy. Beyond the struggles amongst bamar activists and democratic leaders that I have described in this book, the heavy emphasis on unity by democratic leaders also both contains and feeds ethnic and religious conflict. Democratic leaders I interviewed often assumed that it was the responsibility of

Pl aying different games

203

ethnic or religious minorities to enact and demonstrate their loyalty to the government and the country. Gerard McCarthy (2019) describes a dynamic of ‘democratic deservingness’ enacted in central Myanmar where local communities demonstrate to decision-makers that they deserve support and assistance. This dynamic was also very much in play when NLD leaders and activists considered the place of ethnic and religious minorities in the country’s politics. The demonstration of deservingness was often assumed to be a precondition for negotiations of peace or citizenship. This issue is compounded by the fact that the vision of benevolent democracy is often uniquely embedded in Buddhist thought and the assumptions of a predominately bamar leadership. This narrowness of vision will ultimately exclude the aspirations of many ethnic and religious minorities. It is likely that the insistence on unity and ‘deservingness’ by Myanmar government elites will continue to undermine the practical dimensions of peace and reconciliation processes. This dynamic will likely also affect the future electoral prospects of the NLD. There are multiple reasons why the United Nationalities Alliance, a coalition of ethnic minority parties, pledged to cooperate in their opposition to the NLD in the 2020 elections (Swe Lei Mon 2019). Yet the expectation from some NLD leaders that ethnic minority groups need to demonstrate their unity to the Burman majority is likely to have galvanised this political opposition to the NLD. In the 2015 elections, ethnic minority populations on the whole supported the NLD in its attempt to win against the militarybacked USDP. Yet, in future national elections, ethnic minority voters may be more supportive of ethnic minority party visions, and reject narrower Burman- and Buddhist-inspired visions of a democratic future. The prospects of realising the vision of a unified, benevolence-centred democracy are ultimately limited by the exclusivity of the benevolence narrative vision itself. Finally, proponents of the benevolence narrative have received intense criticism from European and North American human rights organisations, and in the international media, since the Rakhine State crisis began to draw global attention in 2017. Myanmar’s democratic leaders are insulated to some degree by domestic support for a hard-line stance against Muslim minorities, and there is a chorus of support, both inside the country and from the Burmese diaspora, for ‘Mother Suu’ (Beyer and Girke 2019). Political leaders in Myanmar have also historically shown the capacity to bunker down in the face of relentless international criticism. Thus, in some respects, proponents of the benevolence narrative can simply ignore the criticisms from international media and from donor representatives and diplomats from Europe or North America. Yet as Myanmar faces a lawsuit through the

204 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

International Court of Justice – invoking the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – for the country’s treatment of the Rohingya, the cost of isolation grows. Even the most ardent Burmese advocates of a moral democracy based on the value of sedana recognise that Myanmar cannot chart a future path that resembles the international pariah status of the 1990s and 2000s. The prestige of ‘the West’ has waned in Myanmar with the economic rise of its neighbours. Yet European, Australasian and North American aid, trade and diplomatic opportunities will likely continue, at least in the coming decade, to be valued by NLD leaders. In this sense there are pressures on some proponents of the benevolence narrative to moderate the Buddhist ‘protection’ and anti-Muslim dimensions of the narrative, at least when engaging with Western interlocutors. The future realisation of the benevolence narrative vision is hampered by several challenges. Where political leadership and personality-based politics is a critical dimension for the vision of benevolent democracy, the country will, sooner or later, enter into a period of considerable leadership uncertainty as an ageing Aung San Suu Kyi eventually withdraws from politics. Beyond political leadership, there are also key threats to the vision expressed by proponents of the benevolence narrative – from ongoing military influence, activist efforts at cultural transformation, the inherent ethno-religious centricity of the narrative, and marginalisation by international agencies seeking liberal reforms.

The future of democracy promotion and governance reform in Myanmar In this context of Myanmar’s overlapping and diverging visions of democracy, what lessons are there for international donor agencies endeavouring to promote democracy in the future? The country’s parliament has functioned in a stable manner since 2011, holding open debate about policy issues in a way that was inconceivable in the previous decade. The historic victory of the NLD in the 2015 elections saw the first peaceful transition of government power since independence and there have been significant openings in freedom of expression in Myanmar compared to the period before 2011 (Cockett 2015). At least at the level of democratic institutions, and when compared to the opaque and authoritarian era of the Than Shwe government, the vision of a liberal democracy appears to have progressed in Myanmar. At the same time, liberal visions for Myanmar have been

Pl aying different games

205

shattered in recent years by human rights abuses against Rohingya and other minorities, ongoing ethnic conflict and some reversals of freedoms of speech. European and North American scholars have thus heavily critiqued Myanmar’s leaders for their failure to meet liberal expectations (Barany 2018). What particular challenges, then, do international aid agencies face in attempting to promote democracy amidst a stream of overlapping and diverging visions? My purpose in this book has not been to produce detailed policy prescriptions for donor agencies. Rather, I have sought to describe an alternate lens through which democracy promotion, and diversities of democratic meanings, can be viewed. Attention to this diversity of meanings of democracy in Myanmar reveals four crucial, but largely ignored, challenges for donor programs in Myanmar – related to secularism, the role of formal institutions, the perceived source of ‘solutions’, and the impact on internal struggles within democracy movements. A first crucial challenge for those hoping for the realisation of the liberal vision in Myanmar is in its almost exclusively secular vision. Despite the profound role of Buddhist thought in Myanmar’s politics, donor agency capacity-building efforts in Myanmar are routinely silent on, or at best deeply sceptical of, the role of religion in shaping institutions of governance. Donor agencies in many respects perpetuate the British colonial view that ‘religion’ can be categorised and quarantined from relevant issues in political life. Turner (2014, 149) rightly challenges these categories of analysis in colonial Burma where ‘religion was limited and bounded as a domain by the recognition of the secular social world as the universal state of common existence and interaction’. The creation of the category of ‘religion’ separated it from the other areas of political interaction. In the current context, it is not that proponents of the liberal narrative often actively reject the relevance of Buddhist thought to notions of good governance, it is more likely to never enter the conversation. Yet, secular assumptions about democracy have never gained ascendancy in Burmese politics. Schober (2011: 147) rightly argues that, for many Burmese, ‘secularism is not synonymous with good governance’, and the notion of secular government often implies ‘abdication’ rather than progress in ‘political ethics and justice’. Contests over the political implications of Buddhist teaching – for example, over the place of hierarchical relationships – play, and will likely continue to play, a central role in Burmese democratic thought. If donor agencies continue to assume that democracy in Myanmar must progress on a purely secular trajectory, then they will miss an opportunity to engage with and influence current and future democratic leaders on

206 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

topics of political ethics and justice. Can North American or European donor agencies come to grips with a trajectory of ‘good governance’ which does not involve a progressive draining of religious thought from the political realm? A second challenge for donor agencies in Myanmar is the focus on building capacity for formal democratic institutions. For European and North American donors, the most common priority – not unlike the British colonial strategy of dyarchy in the 1930s – is in building institutional capacity for democracy through elections, parliamentary procedures and so on. In their focus on formal institutions, the danger for donor agencies is to overlook the importance of other concerns amongst Burmese government and non-government leaders. To some extent, activists and NLD members in Myanmar continue to show interest in offers of ‘capacity building’ from donors. Yet, for proponents of the benevolence narrative, the demonstration of selflessness was more immediately relevant. Or alternatively, for proponents of the equality narrative, the reform of culture was of most interest and they gave relatively less attention to formal procedural reform. Within social movements, it is not a given that formal institutional development will be a priority. The danger for democracy promoters in the future in Myanmar is that they misinterpret the actions and responses of local political actors. A lack of enthusiasm about capacity building for formal institutions amongst activists could be wrongly interpreted as a lack of understanding of, or lack of commitment to, democracy. Another contrast in democratic thinking that I have described was in relation to temporal range. Proponents of the liberal narrative curtailed the story of Myanmar’s democracy and interpreted the country’s past in a primarily negative light. In contrast, some activists were at pains to stress the value of building on an inherent democratic culture in Myanmar and looking to Myanmar’s past for solutions. It is crucial for democracy promoters to acknowledge that local partners may not always be enthusiastic about external solutions that are perceived to devalue the country’s past experiences. F. Burton Leach’s (1937) ‘Ocean of Democracy’ narrative devalued Burma’s political past, which spurred intense opposition from the Thakin activists in the 1930s. Similarly, certain ‘evidence-based’ solutions around institutional development may seem unquestionable to international democracy promoters, yet it is not a given that local activists and international democracy promoters will hold to a shared interpretation of the country’s past and the relevance of this past in forming governance ‘solutions’. Democracy promoters from Europe, North America or Australia must grapple with the fact that Burmese democratic leaders and activists may not be as enamoured by international and future-oriented solutions as they are.

Pl aying different games

207

Finally, I have argued in this book that there is no straightforward localinternational divide over meanings of democracy. The danger for democracy promoters in Myanmar, then, is that they do not sufficiently acknowledge conceptual tensions within movements over the meaning of democracy. Democracy promoters need to be aware of the ways that project-funding partnerships can strengthen certain individuals and coalitions of actors, and reinforce certain narratives, while also weakening others. For example, funding can support centralisation of power around particular figures in political parties or organisations, and thus reinforce narratives with notions of the benevolent leader in the Myanmar context. As democracy promoters look to the next decade in Myanmar, they need to be cognisant of the impact that partnerships and funding can have on narrative contests within political parties and social movements.

Other struggles for democracy National politics in Burma/Myanmar over the last 50 years has been dominated by military authoritarianism under the banners of a ‘Burmese Road to Socialism’ or ‘disciplined democracy’. Activists and opposition leaders in the Burmese democracy movement – from high-profile leaders such Aung San Suu Kyi to younger leaders such as Nay Pyone Latt – have suffered enormously as they struggled against a military regime that attempted to stifle even the use of the word ‘democracy’. It is, to some degree, understandable, then, that scholars analysing Burma/Myanmar over these decades have characterised the country’s struggle for democracy in Manichean terms – as a struggle between a ‘good’ democracy movement and an ‘evil’ junta. If we look to the next decade of Myanmar’s politics, however, assessment of the struggle for democracy must necessarily take on new prisms. The Burmese military remains a potent force in the country’s politics, both in a constitutionally mandated way and through economic and political interests that transcend formal institutions. The ongoing struggle to remove the fingers of military and ex-military actors from the country’s governance will undoubtedly be a prominent one in the coming decade. The argument of this book, however, is that the future of Myanmar’s democracy will also depend on the outcomes from other struggles for democracy – not just those against the Burmese military. These struggles are over the meaning that democracy ought to take in contemporary Myanmar and the path that the country ought to take toward democratisation. These struggles are also about who has the power to control that meaning.

208 

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

Across Myanmar, through peace negotiations, aid partnership meetings, Buddhist festivals, writers’ workshops and grassroots political party meetings, the meaning of democracy is being contested. In this book I have revealed examples of these struggles – between activists, NLD leaders and aid workers – and the contrasting ways in which democracy is narrated. In my view, critical struggles for democracy in the coming decade in Myanmar will not only be between authoritarians and democrats, but also amongst ‘democrats’, between activists and leaders who have suffered in the past for their commitment to democracy. Through attention to these struggles and the nuanced ways in which narratives of democracy are rejected, adapted and adopted, my hope is that we may be able to avoid the ‘chronic human peril’ that Gallie (1956) describes, the peril of underestimating the arguments of one’s opponents. Our instinct as scholars or practitioners should be to consider Burmese activists and democratic leaders not as lacking capacity for liberal democracy, but rather as sophisticated players of different kinds of games. Attention to the ways different stories of democracy are told can help to illuminate these games.

References Ahsan, S.B. 2018. ‘The Rohingya crisis: Why the world must act decisively’. Asian Affairs 49 (4): 571-581. Barany, Z. 2018. ‘Burma: Suu Kyi’s missteps’. Journal of Democracy 29 (1): 5-19. Beyer, J., and Girke F. 2019. ‘Aung San Suu Kyi at the International Court of Justice: When the personal is political’. Open Democracy. 8 December. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/ transformation/aung-san-suu-kyi-international-court-justice-when-personal-political/. Last accessed 9 December 2019. Blaževič, I. 2016. ‘Burma votes for change: The challenges ahead’. Journal of Democracy 27 (2): 101-115. Cockett, R. 2015. Blood, Dreams and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dukalskis, A. 2017. ‘Myanmar’s double transition: Political liberalization and the peace process’. Asian Survey 57 (4): 716-737. Gallie, W.B. 1956. ‘Essentially contested concepts’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1): 167-198. Ganesan, N. 2017. ‘Democratization and its implications for the resolution of ethnic conflict in Myanmar’. Asian Journal of Peacebuilding 5 (1): 111-129. Huang, R.L. 2017. ‘Myanmar’s way to democracy and the limits of the 2015 elections’. Asian Journal of Political Science 25 (1): 25-44. Kosem, S., and Saleem, A. 2016. ‘Religion, nationalism, and the Rohingya’s search for citizenship in Myanmar’. In R. Mason (ed.), Muslim Minority-State Relations: Violence, Integration, and Policy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 211-224. Leach, F.B. 1937. The Future of Burma. Rangoon: British Burma Press.

Pl aying different games

209

McCarthy, G. 2019. ‘Democratic deservingness and self-reliance in contemporary Myanmar’. SOJOURN: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 34 (2): 327-365. Mukherjee, K. 2019. ‘Race relations, nationalism and the humanitarian Rohingya crisis in contemporary Myanmar’. Asian Journal of Political Science 27 (2): 235-251. Roman, D., and Holliday, I. 2018. Liberalism and Democracy in Myanmar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schober, J. 1997. ‘Buddhist just rule and Burmese national culture: State patronage of the Chinese tooth relic in Myanmar’. History of Religions 36 (3): 218-243. Schober, J. 2011. Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Selth, A. 2018. ‘All going according to plan? The armed forces and government in Myanmar’. Contemporary Southeast Asia 40 (1): 1-26. South, A. 2018. ‘“Hybrid governance” and the politics of legitimacy in the Myanmar peace process’. Journal of Contemporary Asia 48 (1): 50-66. Steinberg, D.I. 2010. Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steinberg, D.I. (ed.) 2015. Myanmar: The Dynamics of an Evolving Polity. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Swe Lei Mon. 2019. ‘Ethnic parties pledge to work together in 2020’. Myanmar Times. 1 October. https://www.mmtimes.com/news/ethnic-parties-pledge-work-together-2020.html. Last accessed 9 December 2019. Taylor, R.H. 2009. The State in Myanmar. Singapore: NUS Press. Taylor, R.H. 2018. ‘The army and the future of the National League for Democracy’. LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre Blog. 6 June. https://lseseac.medium.com/the-army-and-thefuture-of-the-national-league-for-democracy-d08212c86b7b. Last accessed 6 December 2019. Turner, A. 2014. Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press. Wilson, R. 2018. ‘Myanmar today: Democracy or demagoguery’. New Zealand International Review 43 (4): 20-23. Win, C., and Kean, T. 2017. ‘Communal conflict in Myanmar: The legislature’s response, 2012-2015’. Journal of Contemporary Asia 47 (3): 413-439.

Index Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) 56, 64-66, 69-70, 73-74, 77-81, 90, 123 Ar nar shin (Dictator) 120, 122-126, 128, 131, 143, 149, 152-54, 161, 164, 176-177, 202 Aung San 56, 62, 64-67, 70-72, 77, 80, 85, 87, 123, 134 Aung San Suu Kyi 11, 15-17, 19, 21, 24, 26, 28-30, 50, 65-66, 78, 85, 87-90, 92, 95, 100-101, 103-104, 112-117, 119-121, 123, 127-128, 130-135, 139-141, 153-56, 160, 171, 176-178, 190, 201, 204, 207 benevolence see Sedana Buddhism (and democracy) 57, 68-69, 72, 79, 121-122, 127, 136-138, 151, 158-160, 162, 179, 202 Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) 8384, 92, 125, 154 Burmese Road to Socialism 80-84, 86, 152, 207 capacity building 16, 21, 26, 56, 61, 64, 91, 95, 97, 106, 110-113, 125, 139, 142-143, 161, 163, 165-166, 172-173, 175, 190, 192, 205-206, 208 colonial Burma (British) 55-73, 77, 83, 89, 102, 105, 109-110, 143, 157-159, 161, 175, 188-189, 199, 205-206 Daw Aung San Suu Kyi see Aung San Suu Kyi democracy democracy promotion 25, 27-28, 36, 70, 114, 164, 166, 175, 181-182, 184-185, 187, 189, 191-197, 204-205 disciplined democracy 47, 78, 80, 84, 86-87, 90, 92, 115, 128-129, 141-144, 160, 167, 171, 207 liberal democracy 18-19, 34-36, 57, 71-72, 101, 136-138, 161, 164, 175, 190, 192, 200, 204, 208 Department of International Development (DFID) 22, 96-98, 105, 192 discipline see si kan elections 16-17, 37, 77-78, 81, 83-86, 88, 90, 92-93, 96, 102, 105, 107, 112-115, 125, 129, 133, 140, 147-148, 165, 167, 202-204, 206 equality 21-22, 27, 50, 78, 91, 122, 126-127, 136, 147-167, 170-172, 177-179, 188, 190, 201-202, 206 essential contestability 27, 31, 37-40, 50, 187 European Union 95, 97, 105-106 General Aung San see Aung San General Ne Win see Ne Win General Than Shwe see Than Shwe

hierarchy 103, 135-136, 147-156, 161-162, 164, 178, 202 Independence (Burmese Independence) 27, 47, 50, 55-56, 62, 64-73, 77-82, 89, 98, 123-124, 127-128, 133, 138-139, 156-157, 160, 204 interpretivism 31-32, 40, 49, 169 King Mindon see Mindon King Thibaw see Thibaw Kodaw Hmaing 56, 65, 67-68, 89, 156 Leach, F.B. 55-58, 60-64, 66-68, 71, 73, 83-84, 109, 206 military see Tatmadaw Min Ko Naing 90, 127, 132-133, 142 Mindon (King Mindon) 123 Muslim 17, 26, 50, 99-101, 107-109, 116, 137-138, 203-204 Nagani Book Club 66, 156 narrative 21-28, 31-32, 42-50 National League for Democracy (NLD) 15-18, 21, 24, 26, 44, 85-88, 90, 97, 103-104, 112-129, 132-134, 140-144, 147, 151-155, 165, 167, 171, 176-179, 183, 188, 199, 200-208 Ne Win 77, 80-87, 92, 124-125, 152, 154 Nu (U Nu) 65-66, 71-72, 78-83, 123-124 nyi nyut chin (unity) 77-78, 80-84, 114, 119-120, 128-129, 134, 136-142, 144, 147-148, 151, 156, 160, 165-167, 176-178, 180, 183, 194, 202 Obama, Barack 16, 95 personalised politics 21, 24, 61, 91, 98, 102, 104-105, 110, 115-116, 120, 126, 129, 143, 147-149 rights 16-17, 21, 89, 93, 95-96, 105-109, 111, 115, 119, 133-138, 148, 156-160, 163, 165, 180-181, 191, 196, 203, 205 Roadmap to Democracy 86-87 Rohingya 17, 99, 108, 114, 204-205 sedana (benevolence) 21, 47, 50, 71, 91, 116, 119-122, 126-143, 147-153, 160-161, 165-166, 170-181, 183, 188, 190, 194, 200-206 si kan (discipline) 12, 21, 24, 79, 91-92, 128-129, 135, 140-144, 161, 166-167, 171, 176, 202 State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) 84-87, 92, 124, 131 State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) 87, 92, 124, 131

212  Tatmadaw 18-21, 24, 47, 55, 73, 77-87, 98-100, 102, 105, 109, 112-116, 121, 124-125, 128-131, 133-134, 140, 142-144, 147, 152, 154-156, 160-161, 164, 167, 170-171, 176-178, 188, 190, 201-204, 207 Thakin 55-56, 61, 64-73, 90, 156-158, 188, 206 Than Shwe 84, 86, 204 Thein Sein 15-16, 25, 77, 86, 90, 95, 98, 102-103, 112, 114, 116 Thibaw (King Thibaw) 58-60, 123, 133

Narr ating Democr ac y in Myanmar

U Nu see Nu Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) 112-114, 125, 140, 203 United States Agency for International Development (USAID) 22, 96-97, 106, 110-112, 191-192 unity see nyi nyut chin Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) 69