Abstract:
The landslide victory of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the Myanmar elections held on 8 November marks a watershed for Myanmar’s political development. For the second time since 1990, the Myanmar electorate voted for a comprehensive political change. The two landslides of the NLD demonstrate the strong desire of the Myanmar people to embrace democracy. This challenges the reform path taken by military leaders, who have slowly liberalized the political system since 2011. The military has initiated these reforms from a position of strength after it managed to design a political system that gives them the role of guardians or moderators.
This presentation discusses the state of democratization after the historic 2015 elections. It analyses the main results and outlines the main challenges for a NLD-government in a polity still imbued with “praetorian” characteristics. It argues that Myanmar still follows a protracted model of transition to full democratization, despite the democratizing power of the recent elections.
Short bio:
Dr. Marco Bünte is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations and Deputy Head of School (Research) in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Monash University, Malaysia Campus. Before coming to Kuala Lumpur in 2013 he has worked for over a decade at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, one of the largest and renowned area studies institutes in Europe. He has taught classes at the universities of Bangkok, Göttingen, Hamburg, Helsinki, Jakarta, Kiel and Perth, among others. His research interests include democratization and authoritarian resilience, human rights and civil military relations. He has published widely in leading academic journals and is a founding editor of the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs. He is the co-editor of Constitutions and Politics in Southeast Asia (Routledge forthcoming), The Crisis of Democratic Governance in Southeast Asia (Palgrave 2011) and Democratization in Post-Suharto Indonesia (Routledge 2009).
