Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Elucidating the Meaning of Democracy through Narrative
- 3 Toward the ‘Ocean of Democracy’?: The British Colonial Administration, the Thakin and Contests over Meanings of Democracy in late Colonial Burma
- 4 Burma after Independence: From Moral to ‘Disciplined’ Democracy
- 5 A liberal Narrative
- 6 A benevolence Narrative
- 7 An Equality Narrative
- 8 Exposing the Political use of Narratives
- 9 Beyond an ‘Ideal type’
- 10 Playing Different Games: Myanmar’s Future Challenges
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Elucidating the Meaning of Democracy through Narrative
- 3 Toward the ‘Ocean of Democracy’?: The British Colonial Administration, the Thakin and Contests over Meanings of Democracy in late Colonial Burma
- 4 Burma after Independence: From Moral to ‘Disciplined’ Democracy
- 5 A liberal Narrative
- 6 A benevolence Narrative
- 7 An Equality Narrative
- 8 Exposing the Political use of Narratives
- 9 Beyond an ‘Ideal type’
- 10 Playing Different Games: Myanmar’s Future Challenges
- Index
Summary
Abstract
This chapter unpacks a liberal narrative of democracy. It grounds and locates the ways that many aid workers in Myanmar understood and communicated about democracy. The chapter outlines three elements of this narrative. First, most international aid workers involved in the research pointed toward the challenge of ethnic and religious divisions in the country. These aid workers described how divisions in Myanmar were perpetuated by a personalised political culture where formal institutions of democracy were insufficiently embedded. Second, aid agency representatives often expressed a vision of a formal procedure-based democracy supported by liberal values of human rights, pluralism and the protection of minorities. This vision also had a future orientation, where proponents of this narrative saw Myanmar's democratisation as being set within the context of other transitional countries around the world – moving away from traditional systems toward a democratic future. Third, many aid workers emphasised a strategy of government and civil society capacity building led by international aid agencies.
Keywords: donor agencies, liberal, democracy, aid, rights
In President Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union address he declared that ‘a new beginning in Burma has lit a new hope’ (Obama 2012). This ‘new beginning’ was embodied in reforms by the Thein Sein government, such as the establishment of a new parliament, a gradual freeing of press censorship and the release of many long-term political prisoners – most notably Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Four months after Obama's State of the Union address, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton (2012) glowingly said that, ‘[a]fter decades of internal repression, we see dramatic and hopeful changes taking place in Burma. Here is a democratic transition unfolding in a peaceful, collaborative fashion – acclaimed by the domestic electorate and the international community.’ Western embassies in Myanmar likewise had buoyant expectations about Myanmar's progress. Over the following year, many OECD governments responded by easing longstanding sanctions against the Myanmar government and scaling up the budgets and presence of donor agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID).
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- Information
- Narrating Democracy in MyanmarThe Struggle Between Activists, Democratic Leaders and Aid Workers, pp. 95 - 118Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021