The politics of federalization in Myanmar : a study of causal relationships, negotiation mechanism, and historical evolution

Abstract

Myanmar, which is a multi-ethnic state that was under a military authoritarian regime with a highly centralized structure for nearly half a century, has been currently moving along the federalizing process. Federalism has been receiving increasing attention from several political stakeholders across the country, especially in the federal negotiations between the government and ethnic minority armed forces, which aim to develop Myanmar into a constitutional democratic federal state. This has led to questions being raised about the major driving forces behind federalization, the political actors' strategic interaction in federal politics, and the dynamism of federalism in Myanmar's political development.

This thesis analyzes and examines the politics of federalization in Myanmar, encompassing the causal variables that are conducive to federalization, the political actors's attitudes and strategies in federal politics, and the trajectory of federalization in Myanmar's historical process. To achieve this, various theories and qualitative research methods, such as causal mechanism, strategic bargaining game, and historical institutionalism have been utilized as frameworks of analysis.

The study discovered that Myanmar's federalization in the current transition has been caused by three political forces: constitutionalization, conflict management, and democratization. The confluence of these forces at a critical juncture led to significant changes in Myanmar's federal politics. Interestingly, the causal interplay of these variables operated through the dynamic bargaining game between the Myanmar government and ethnic armed groups. These former political adversaries have changed their previous goals and attitudes by accepting a federalist solution for addressing the prolonged political conflict. However, while both sides have begun to employ a compromising strategy through an institutionalized peace process, they have also conducted a competing strategy, intending to protect their status quo and increase power in the negotiation game. The federal pathway went through stages of progress and stagnation and this was not only due to the relative strength of each causal variable and the various strategies of political actors. Rather, it was also affected by the opportunities and threats in Myanmar's transitional context and the historical antecedent, especially the embedded historical imprint of the origin of federal arrangement in 1947, which was then overturned by the coup d'état in 1962 and the strong national unification project led by Myanmar's Armed Forces.

Finally, by incorporating the three political forces of constitutionalization, conflict management, and democratization, the actors' strategic options, and the historical evolution of federal dynamics, this thesis constructed a new classification system on the possible types of Myanmar's federation in the future. This classification scheme will be beneficial not only for conceptualizing the politics of federalization in Myanmar but also for wider application in other comparative case studies.