This case of activists, democratic leaders and aid workers in Myanmar – and the ways in which they communicate about democracy – reveals lessons that can be applied more broadly to endeavours to understand democracy promotion around the world. In this chapter, I address both the democracypromotion literature and also practical implications for practitioners working on governance or democracy programs in international donor agencies or NGOs.

Before addressing these implications, however, I recap the significance of this study for consideration of meanings of democracy. As described in Chapter Two, I have taken a different path to that of mainstream studies of democracy. Rather than beginning with an ‘ideal type’ from which to analyse meanings that citizens or political actors give to the word ‘democracy’, I have instead drawn on Gallie's (1956) notion of ‘essentially contestable concepts’. Using ‘essential contestability’ as the conceptual foundation allows meanings of democracy, in countries like Myanmar, to be considered on their own terms rather than as pale reflections of an ideal democracy that exists elsewhere.

There are, of course, few democratisation scholars who would deny that there is normative contestation over how democracy should be practiced, for example, with the participation of women, the practice of voting, and so on. However, the case of activists and democratic leaders in Myanmar reveals contests over both the practice of democracy and also contests over the very components of the concept of democracy itself. This is a crucial distinction. The liberal, benevolence and equality narratives portray profoundly different versions of challenges, visions and strategies related to democracy in Myanmar. It is this finding that supports Gallie's (1956) arguments and challenges notions of an ‘ideal type’ of democratic values and institutions that transcends cultural or temporal context.