A Root Cause Analysis Of Political Transition Of Myanmar’s Military Regime(1988-2015)

After the 1990 election,the Military Regime led by Su Maung ceased Myanmar’s political transition;after the 2010 election,the Military Regime led by Than Shwe launched a political transition process by peacefully handing part of power over to the Thein Sein regime;the Thein Sein regime deepened this transition by handing over power to the NLD(National League for Democracy)after the relatively fair and free election in 2015.Although it is still in dispute whether or not Myanmar has completely transformed into a democratic regime,it is uncontroversial that Myanmar has made great progress in political transition: from a pure military regime(Than Shwe)to a military-dominated and civilian-supplemented regime(U Thein Sein),and then to a civilian-dominated and military-auxiliary regime(Aung San Suu Kyi and U Htin Kyaw).This Ph.D.thesis attempted to analyze the root causes of Myanmar’s political transition by answering the following questions: Why did the three transitions in Myanmar have different consequences? Why,in contrast to the Su Maung regime,did the Than Shwe regime and the Thein Sein regime have more driving forces to relax its power controls to advance a democratic transition? What are the root causes and the conditions of Myanmar’s political transition?In the literature,there are mainly four accounts of the causes of Myanmar’s political transition: the internal/external-pressure account;the international-situation account;the elite-domination account;the military-interest account.I argued for a root cause analysis on the basis of the last two accounts.To support this analysis,I developed an interpretative theoretical framework,which was inspired by the theories of political transition of military regime contributed by scholars(such as Samuel E.Finer,Samuel P.Huntington,Daron Acemoglu,James Robinson)and,in particular,by Douglas North’s theory of the open access society which claims that there are three doorstep conditions for transition.I argued that both the change of the target of interests and the satisfaction of supporting conditions motivate Myanmar’s Military Regime to loosen its control to restart and then to deepen a democratic transition.Specifically,the target of interests of the Military Regime has changed: it is not a complete control but a key control over power that became its objective.Compared with full control or non-control,key control can produce the maximum net income,especially when the satisfaction of three supporting conditions(institutional guarantee,organizational guarantee and military guarantee)can greatly reduce the risk of pursing a key control over power.This dissertation made a comparative analysis of three cases in the history of political transition of Myanmar’s Military Regime: the negative case(the suspension of the transition of the Su Maung Military Regime after the 1990 election);two positive cases(the restarting of the transition of the Than Shwe Military Regime after the 2010 election;the deepening of the transition of the Thein Sein regime after the 2015 election).My analysis showed: it is neither when Myanmar was under the maximum external pressure,nor when Myanmar stayed at the lowest level of economic growth and was under the maximum social pressure,that Myanmar Military Regime loosened its control over power;on the contrary,when it refused to loosen its control,it was under the maximum external and internal pressures.This comparative analysis confirmed my interpretive framework and discredited the main competing accounts: the internal/external-pressure account.The dissertation constructed an integrative and systematic interpretative framework to understand the essence of Myanmar political transition.This framework contributes to understanding the behavior logic of post-transition Myanmar.After transition,the new government under the leadership of the NLD of Aung San Suu Kyi and U Htin Kyaw will have a profound influence on the relationship between China and Myanmar.