Ceasefires and Post-War Democratisation: A Comparative Study of Two Conflict-Affected Ethnic Societies in Myanmar

Abstract

Ending four decades of all-out civil war, Myanmar s military government during the early 1990s managed to institute ceasefires with most of the minority ethnic insurgent groups. Most scholars were critical of the ceasefires, arguing that the failure to reach more lasting political settlements obstructed more fundamental progress in the affected areas. Some even argued that the ceasefires undermined the pressure for democratisation and therefore were detrimental to the country s political broader development. To the contrary, it is the argument of this thesis that the ceasefires served as a catalyst for important social, political and economic change processes that in turn improved the uptake of democratic opportunities in the relevant areas after the start of the liberalisation process in 2011. This is confirmed by tracing and comparing developments in two conflict-affected minority ethnic regions of Myanmar from the early 1990s until the present day: Mon-populated areas which benefitted from the ceasefire agreement between the government and the New Mon State Party in 1995, and Karen populated-areas which continued to be affected by armed conflict between the government and the Karen National Union until 2012. The thesis is primarily based on primary data, including personal observations from the direct involvement of the author in Myanmar politics over the past three decades, as well as scores of semi-structured interviews with key informants in the two regions, mainly conducted during fieldwork in 2016-17.