| The remarkable feature of world political development in the late twentieth century is that more than 30 countries around the world began to change from the totalitarian or authoritarian system to democracy,which Huntington described as the third wave of democratization in human history.Myanmar,which borders China’s southwest,is no exception,and there have been many protest and demonstrations for democracy and against the military government.However,the status quo did not became better,and the army came forward to calm the situation to establish a new military government.After the new constitution in 2008 and the largest multi-party elections in 2010,the military government handed over power to President Thein Sein’s government,and opens up new reforms in politic,economy and society.In 2015,Htin Kyaw,a senior member of the National League for Democracy Party,won the first general election since the new constitution was implemented.As the first civilian President after more than 50 years of military rule in Myanmar,Htin Kyaw came into power in 2016.And it would be a symbolic step in Myanmar’s long road to democracy.Looking back on the history of Myanmar’s political history,the road to democracy can be described as a long twists and turns.Short-term parliamentary democracy hastily ended,and the later history was written by the old and new military government one after another.It was not easy that Myanmar,a small and developing country can finally get this step.And that has to raise the question of why Myanmar,which has ruled over half a century by the military regime,can start a democratic transition and finally get it done?There have been some studies on the reasons for the democratic transition in Myanmar.Combing the existing literature,domestic and foreign research either emphasizes the internal causes of the transition,or emphasizes the external intervention of the transition,and they from different aspects of the description and analysis to explore the reasons of its transformation.The thesis tried to introduce the theory of political opportunity structure on the basis of previous studies;starting from the elements take care of the reality of Myanmar’s political and social factors,and summarizes the Myanmar’s junta’s democratic transition lies in its special political opportunity structure factors:power center’s multivariate distribution,political architecture’s limited closeness,the political alliance’s instability,the challengers with supports and the junta’s promotion.The elements of political opportunity work together with the military government,then the transition of democracy can be reopened and advanced.The paper consists of five parts.The first part is introduction:comb the domestic and foreign literature as the theoretical premise of research,and define the relevant concepts including military government,authoritarian system,democratization,democratic transformation and political opportunity structure theory The second part outlines the historical background of the democratic transformation of the Myanmar’s military government and makes a brief analysis of the historical stance after the independence of Myanmar.The third part mainly describes the political forces in the process of transformation,and summarizes the three political forces:the military group,the democratic forces and the armed groups of ethnic minorities.The fourth part mainly elaborates the political situation after the transformation of the military government:facing the legacy of authoritarian regimes,the civil government must carry out economic reform to seek social development,in order to cope with the challenges of democratic consolidation.The fifth part is the end of the paper.On the basis of the background of the transformation,the game in the transition process and the situation after the transformation,the author points out that the democratic transformation mechanism of the Myanmar’s military government lies in the institutional factors of political opportunity,The characteristics of the process. |
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