Economies of conflict in Myanmar's 2011-21 political trajectory

This study seeks to understand how the international community's engagement with economies of conflict contributed to the violent turn in Myanmar's ten-year liberal transition, interrupted by brutal a coup d'état. Economies of conflict - structural rent-seeking legacies rooted in the country's history of authoritarian control and conflict dynamics which preceded the transition - were pervasive throughout the transition period. The study will look at how the international community's engagement with these economies of conflict, which directly enabled military power structures to run alongside the liberal peacebuilding model of governance, contributed to the deepening structural violence that grew to characterise Myanmar's political trajectory.

In 2011, following five decades of military governments, Myanmar was launched on an unexpected path to reform, commencing a move away from a decades-long, closed, authoritarian regime. High levels of optimism from the international community greeted the initial years of the country's opening up: the apparent willingness of the military to cede control of the country and the rise to power of Aung San Suu Kyi, the widely supported leader of the National League for Democracy previously banned from participating in elections, drew significantly increased flows of development assistance and foreign investment and Myanmar became the site of a post-regime transition anchored in market-oriented and democratic governance reforms.

At the same time as this sweeping transition proceeded, the military, which had so recently conceded its stranglehold, continued to hold the balance of power, through its control of key political levers and crucially, through its management of large portions of the country's economic resources from which it drew substantial rents. These rent-seeking arrangements were intricately entangled with the ongoing civil war between the military and ethnic armed groups around the country and directly facilitated military-controlled power structures to run in parallel to the transition. This in turn enabled the military to orchestrate a deepening structural violence which over time, gripped the country in uncertainty, even as the widely endorsed liberal peacebuilding reform process progressed in tandem. Employing a qualitative, causal and explanatory case-study approach, this study uses semi-structured interviews and documentary data, to examine how through a set of key reforms, the international community's interaction with these rent-seeking legacies influenced the trajectory of the transition. Overseas fieldwork to collect primary data for the study will be conducted over two phases in northern Thailand, where there is a significant diaspora and political community of Myanmar political actors, researchers, activists and ethnic armed organisations.