Myanmar Transformed?: People, Places and Politics

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.

• Justine Chambers, Editor

  Justine Chambers is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) and a Research Fellow at the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University.

• Gerard McCarthy, Editor

  Gerard McCarthy is the associate director of the Myanmar Research Centre and a doctoral candidate in the Coral Bell School of Asia and Pacific Affairs at the Australian National University.

• Nicholas Farrelly, Editor

  Nicholas Farrelly is associate dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific and was previously Director of the Myanmar Research Centre, both at the Australian National University.

• Chit Win, Editor

  Chit Win gained his PhD in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University.