"Having endured more than a half-century of military rule, Myanmar appeared to be the least likely candidate for democratic transition in Southeast Asia. Although the prospects for Myanmar’s democratization resurged with the landslide victory of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the 2015 election, this political change has been a top-down transition in the system–-from military rule to electoral authoritarianism–-not in the military’s dominance in politics. The military’s continued dominance was institutionalized by the “roadmap to democracy” engineered by the military regime in 2003. Most notably, this included the drafting of a new constitution in 2008 which allots a quarter of the seats in both houses of Parliament to the military. As the civilian control of the military is a necessary precondition for a democracy, the persistence and entrenchment of Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, has led to a late and limited democratic transition. Myanmar’s continued military dominance despite its recent transition is not only a divergent pattern in the world, but also in Southeast Asia, as the Tatmadaw has outlasted its Filipino and Indonesian counterparts. This raises the following question: how can the enduring strength of the Tatmadaw be explained? The essay argues that Tatmadaw’s persistent hold on power results from its continuous elimination of democratic forces, its substantive involvement in the national economy, and its management of longstanding centre-periphery conflicts over the course of a half century of military rule; this has established the Tatmadaw as the country’s predominant political, economic, and even cultural elites, overshadowing any other contending force. Today, other than the Sangha, the military is the most deeply embedded institution in Myanmar’s politics, economy and society..."