The first elections in Myanmar since 1990, held on 7 November 2010, were a significant moment in the country's political life. Admittedly, the elections were organized to ensure continuity of ultimate military control, and to adapt and preserve such control rather than to make a break with the past. Moreover, as has been widely reported, the electoral process was neither free nor open, with unverified “early votes” brought in to decide results in favour of the government party. Another problem was the lack of inclusiveness, because opportunities for popular involvement in the election were restricted by the authorities, with many opposition groups at home and abroad — most notably the National League for Democracy (NLD) — boycotting them. Nevertheless, in spite of all these factors, the elections restored a degree of representative government for the first time in more than two decades, and ended the one-party system that had prevailed for more than four decades.

The changes that followed the elections made the year 2011 even more momentous than observers could have predicted. The “new” civilianized government under President (former General) Thein Sein announced a series of policy changes that included relaxation of long-standing censorship arrangements; launched several initiatives to start a process of substantive reconciliation involving Aung San Suu Kyi as well as members of the expatriate pro-democracy Burmese diaspora; and supported various practical measures (such as open workshops and seminars) designed to foster participative public policy debate about more significant long-term policy directions for Myanmar. Some of these measures were immediately significant for what they meant for the character of the new government. Other changes, it is foreshadowed, will be gradual, will not threaten overall social and economic stability, and will speed up Myanmar's effective integration into regional cooperation arrangements (to which it had previously been largely a bystander).

The main reason why the elections, which marked the completion of the “Road Map” laid out in 2003 by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), were not recognized internationally as a substantial change is that more than two thousand prisoners of conscience remained in detention, including NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (who was released a week later) and the leaders of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (the second-most successful party in the elections of 1990).