Nation-building, hegemonic ideology and the limits of democratization in Myanmar

Myanmar’s short-lived opening between 2010 and 2020 is a widely studied topic in the political science literature on Southeast Asia. Existing studies tend to focus on the role of elite power-sharing frameworks and the institutions they produced to explain the limits to democratization during this period. Taking an understudied approach to the topic, this thesis argues that hegemonic nation-building ideology helped constrain democratization. This ideology can be understood through two core narratives: (1) exclusive national membership based on “official races,” or taingyintha, and (2) the myth of their unity. By focusing on the role of ideology, the thesis makes several contributions. First, it posits that examining the barriers to expanding democratic citizenship rights helps link Myanmar’s historical nation-building issues to recent struggles with democratization. Second, the thesis shows that historical institutions were fundamentally ideological devices that the Myanmar military used to repackage and reinforce a core set of nation-building narratives in response to challenges to its political dominance. Third, moving beyond institutional legacies, the thesis finds that major sociopolitical actors across the political spectrum also helped sustain this ideology after liberalization began. These included the country’s largest pro-democracy party (NLD), the military’s proxy party (USDP), and religious-nationalist associations (969 and Ma Ba Tha), all of which adopted converging narratives about nationhood and exclusive, race-based citizenship. The hegemonic ideology and its exclusionary effects were effectively reproduced in the liberalized public sphere, creating a political environment that restricted suffrage and representation on the basis of ethno-religious identity.