Myanmar Media in Transition


Book Description

Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change is the first volume to overview the country’s contemporary media landscape, providing a critical assessment of the sector during the complex and controversial political transition. Moving beyond the focus on journalism and freedom of the press that characterizes many media-focused volumes, Myanmar Media in Transition also explores developments in fiction, filmmaking, social movement media and social media. Documenting changes from both academic and practitioner perspectives, the twenty-one chapters reinforce the volume’s theoretical arguments by providing on-the-ground, factual and experiential data intended to open useful dialogue between key stakeholders in the media, government and civil society sectors. Providing an overview of media studies in the country, Myanmar Media in Transition addresses current challenges, such as the use of social media in spreading hate speech and the shifting boundaries of free expression, by placing them within Myanmar’s broader historic social, political and economic context.




Myanmar’s Political Transition and Lost Opportunities (2010–2016)


Book Description

This book is about the politics of Myanmar under the reformist president Thein Sein. After taking office in March 2011, Thein Sein initiated the bloodless Myanmar Spring. He was able to transform Myanmar into a more transparent and dynamic society, bring Aung San Suu Kyi and other opposition activists into the political process, initiate a peace process with the ethnic armed organizations, reintegrate Myanmar into the international community after five decades of isolation, and, most importantly, for the first time since the country regained independence in 1948, he was able to enact the peaceful transfer of power from one elected government to another. But Thein Sein also lost opportunities to deliver what the people anticipated, and he failed to bring his USDP party to victory in the 2015 election. This book is not about the successes of the Thein Sein administration. Rather, it examines the reasons behind the lost opportunities in the transition to democracy. It draws on the author’s experiences as a member of Thein Sein’s cabinet as well as on extensive interviews with other cabinet members and politicians involved in the crucial events that took place between 2010 and 2016. The book is a must-read for anyone interested in this critical period of change for Myanmar.




Myanmar's Transition


Book Description

With the world watching closely, Myanmar began a process of political, administrative and institutional transition from 30 January 2011. After convening the parliament, elected in November 2010, the former military regime transferred power to a new government headed by former Prime Minister (and retired general), U Thein Sein. With parliamentary processes restored in Myanmar's new capital of Naypyitaw, Thein Sein's government announced a wide-ranging reform agenda, and began releasing political prisoners and easing press censorship. Pivotal meetings between Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi led to amendment of the Election Law and the National League for Democracy contesting by-elections in April 2012. The 2011 Myanmar/Burma update conference considered the openings offered by these political changes and media reforms and the potential opportunities for international assistance. Obstacles covered include impediments to the rule of law, the continuation of human rights abuses, the impunity of the Army, and the failure to end ethnic insurgency.




From Grassroots Activism to Disinformation


Book Description

This book reflects on the role of social media in the past two decades in Southeast Asia. It traces the emergence of social media discourse in Southeast Asia, and its potential as a “liberation technology” in both democratizing and authoritarian states. It explains the growing decline in internet freedom and increasingly repressive and manipulative use of social media tools by governments, and argues that social media is now an essential platform for control. The contributors detail the increasing role of “disinformation” and “fake news” production in Southeast Asia, and how national governments are creating laws which attempt to address this trend, but which often exacerbate the situation of state control. From Grassroots Activism to Disinformation explores three main questions: How did social media begin as a vibrant space for grassroots activism to becoming a tool for disinformation? Who were the main actors in this transition: governments, citizens or the platforms themselves? Can reformists “reclaim” the digital public sphere? And if so, how?




The Economic Transition in Myanmar After 1988


Book Description

For many years Myanmar operated an inward-looking economic system built on import substitution. Ultimately this policy failed, leaving behind inefficient state economic enterprises and widespread poverty. Political unrest in 1988 led a newly installed military government to liberalize the economy, opening it to foreign investment and private participation in trade. This move towards a market economy was in line with world-wide trends, but political instability forced the country to follow a course different from neighboring countries. By analyzing economic policies and performance across the economic spectrum, this book presents an overall picture of economic development in Myanmar between 1988 and the early 2000s. The authors synthesize both macro and micro level data to overcome some of the limitations of unreliable national statistics, and show how the government attempted to deal with two key issues it faced. The first was how to reform the inefficient socialistic economic system in conformity with a market economy, and the second was how to develop the agricultural and underdeveloped economy to alleviate mass poverty.




Demystifying Myanmar’s Transition and Political Crisis


Book Description

This book offers the assessment of Myanmar’s societal changes, development aspects, and political situation over the course of the nation’s short lived democratic transition disrupted by the coup d’état on 1 February 2021. A multitude of authors with different expertise add new dimensions of analysis to provide a foundation for any future international cooperation in Myanmar’s center and peripheries. The military’s institutionalization of its influence and control in political, economic and social affairs has negatively affected the safety, security and peace of people and their communities at the periphery. This in turn has led the people to undertake local grassroots initiatives towards securing a genuine democratic transition at the local and national level. The chapters probe into Myanmar’s transition and political crisis through in-depth discussion on the issues such as, but not limited to, state fragility, community resilience, political leadership, ethnic women’s organizations, human security, education equality, IDPs and non-state actors, ethnic community-based health organizations, the 2020 election, peace process, development issues, the coup’s destruction, and a new-born unity. The book covers an important collection of inputs from young and prominent scholars alike, offering a valuable resource for general readers, students, and practitioners. The editors present this volume as a vital collection to literature at a time of heated political crisis and societal responses on her current course since the contributors highlight the state of Myanmar by also focusing on the margins, the grassroots, and the recent coup.




Metamorphosis


Book Description

With a young population of more than 52 million, an ambitious roadmap for political reform, and on the cusp of rapid economic development, since 2010 the world’s attention has been drawn to Myanmar or Burma. But underlying recent political transitions are other wrenching social changes and shocks, a set of transformations less clearly mapped out. Relations between ethnic and religious groups, in the context of Burma’s political model of a state composed of ethnic groups, are a particularly important “unsolved equation”. The editors use the notion of metamorphosis to look at Myanmar today and tomorrow—a term that accommodates linear change, stubborn persistence and the possibility of dramatic transformation. Divided into four sections, on politics, identity and ethnic relations, social change in fields like education and medicine, and the evolutions of religious institutions, the volume takes a broad view, combining an anthropological approach with views from political scientists and historians. This volume is an essential guide to the political and social challenges ahead for Myanmar.




Myanmar Transformed?


Book Description

The triumph of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy at the 2015 election was supposed to mark the consolidation of a reformist trajectory for Myanmar society. What has followed has not proved so straightforward. This book takes stock of the mutations, continuities and fractures at the heart of today’s political and economic transformations. We ask: What has changed under a democratically elected government? Where are the obstacles to reform? And is there scope to foster a more prosperous and inclusive Myanmar? With the peace process faltering, over 1 million people displaced by recent violence, and ongoing army dominance in key areas of decision-making, the chapters in this volume identify areas of possible reform within the constraints of Myanmar’s hybrid civil–military governance arrangements. This latest volume in the Myanmar Update Series from the Australian National University continues a long tradition of intense, critical engagement with political, economic and social questions in one of Southeast Asia’s most complicated countries. At a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, the 13 chapters of Myanmar Transformed? offer new and alternative ways to understand Myanmar and its people.




Myanmar in Transition


Book Description

Myanmar, which is emerging from decades of isolation, is poised to accelerate its economic growth on the back of its abundant labor force, rich natural resources, and geographical location. But the country faces many development challenges to achieve strong and inclusive growth. To take advantage of its rich potential and endowments, Myanmar can also use its strategic location between the People's Republic of China and India, and act as a conduit between South and Southeast Asia. To sustain its growth momentum in the long run, Myanmar should aim for a growth trajectory that is inclusive, equitable, and environmentally sustainable. This special report assesses the country's strengths and weaknesses and highlights the challenges and risks. The key lies in prioritizing the actions to surmount the challenges and introducing the requisite reforms.




Democratisation of Myanmar


Book Description

On February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military coup abruptly ended a decade of a civilian-military hybrid regime – a massive setback for the democratisation process. Citizens from all walks of life took to the streets and protests erupted over the following weeks, and Myanmar became the centre of global attention. This book brings up to date how the story of Myanmar’s experiment with democracy unravelled over the last few years. This second edition: ● Traces the political transition of Myanmar from a military rule of nearly five decades to a short-lived democratic experiment; ● Outlines the factors that contributed to this transition and the circumstances in which it took place; ● Shows how political groups – especially Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) – and the military worked together and paved the way for democratisation and what led to the failure of the NLD government; ● Examines the 2020 general election and the declaration of national emergency following the NLD landslide electoral win. Bringing together a balance of primary ethnographic fieldwork and nuanced analysis, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of Asian and Southeast Asian Studies, politics and political processes, democratisation process and democratic transitions, international relations and peace and conflict studies, especially those concerned with Myanmar.