"Since first coming to direct political power in 1958, Myanmar’s military (Tatmadaw) has dominated the country’s politics and controlled the state apparatus. 2 Despite a series of challenges to its rule, the Tatmadaw has been able to constantly reinvent itself and, ultimately, to reassert its dominance over Burmese society. Cycles of popular protests, economic and political crises, and dissatisfaction with military rule failed to overthrow or undermined the military’s organizational coherence. The most tangible outcome of the 1988 public protest movement and its suppression was the collapse of Ne Win’s Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP). For it was those events that permitted the Tatmadaw to return Myanmar to direct military rule under the ostensible leadership of the State Law and Order Council (SLORC), later renamed as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The SLORC/SPDC regime effectively crushed protests, arrested opposition leaders, and began a process of rebuilding the military to become the most competent and formidable institution in the country with uncontested control over the state apparatus (ICG 2001: 24; ICG 2011; Kyaw 2009: 272). Given its dominance, it is thus puzzling that the SPDC self-elected to dissolve itself and allow the formation of a nominally-civilian government in 2011. By 2012, this new government has declared its intention to liberalize Myanmar and has introduced a series of dramatic changes that permit expanded pluralism, economic freedoms, and freedom of the press. 3 This paper examines the historical development of the Tatmadaw as an organizational actor since its rise to power in 1962. It seeks to understand and clarify the significance of recent reforms in which the Tatmadaw appears to have ceded powers. In so doing, two prominent approaches to regime change are considered in turn. First, the game theoretic model that focuses on the personalities of reformers and challengers in explaining why authoritarian regimes reform. While such frameworks offer helpful insights in the dynamics of political change, they nevertheless fall short in explaining why changes are taking place at an institutional/regime-level. This paper will thus focus on a chronological path-dependent approach that traces the organizational evolution of the Tatmadaw and identifies how it sought to strategically reposition itself vis-à-vis society. By adopting regime typologies introduced in the works of Linz and Stepan (1996), this paper will argue that current developments should be seen as a diminished form of authoritarianism. The conclusion discusses the present situation and its implications for the country’s trajectory of political development. The paper’s main claim is that the ongoing dramatic reforms introduced since mid-2011 should not be understood simply as an exit strategy by the military to retreat from national politics. On the contrary, this paper suggests that ceding dominance is in fact an evolving strategy by the Tatmadaw to continue consolidating its organizational powers and to institutionalize its influence over government, though without the responsibility for the direct administration of the state. The Tatmadaw no longer governs directly and reforms have increased political competitiveness on the national stage. 4 Be that as it may, the Tatmadaw has designed various mechanisms to safeguard its interests. It has done so through the creation of what Linz and Stepan referred to as “reserve domains” (1996: 67). Hence, while there is no doubt that major changes in Myanmar are underway, it is premature to assume this entails a fundamental realignment of political power, let alone a transition to consolidated democracy. Game theoretic perspectives on Myanmar’s transition Much of the popular reports on current liberalization efforts in Myanmar have explained recent changes by essentially adopting a classical game theory model. Many Myanmar watchers and popular press for example have examined current political transition as a strategic game between regime softliners/reformers versus hardliners with a particular focus on the elite actors (Callahan 2012, Fuller 2012, Jagan 2012, Kyaw 2012, Tin 2012). For example Kyaw Yin Hlaing explains that in the absence of intervention from the retired Than Shwe, some officials within the new government have emerged labeling themselves as liberals while calling for further liberalization of the country’s political economy (Kyaw 2012: 209). Similarly, Callahan (2012: 122) argues that despite having hand-picked his successors, Than Shwe have now “lost the ability to control the [reform] process from behind the scenes.” She credited this as a long-held “pent-up pressure” from Than Shwe’s subordinates that are now well placed to “push the envelope” and essentially curb the “once-boundless policy-making powers” of the Tatmadaw. Under this model, game theorists argue that democratization is possible for authoritarian regimes when moderates from both the ruling elites and the opposition compromise and work together in other to prevent backlashes from their respective hardliners (Przeworski 1992: 105-53; Linz and Stepan 1996: 61). Additionally, according to Linz and Stepan (1996: 65), military authoritarian regimes that are hierarchical in nature are among the most likely regime types to allow this type of transitional path towards democratization, as the “military as institution” views the cost of maintaining the “military as government” as too high, thus would eventually compromise and allow liberalizing reforms as an exit strategy for the “military as institution.”5 Though the hardliner versus moderate argument certainly gives a plausible explanation of how a regime can democratize, it nevertheless falls short of articulating why a consolidated military regime, which is in a position of strength both as an institution and as government, would choose to liberalize. It is certainly important to understand the role of elite “reformers” such as President Thein Sein and Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann and how they have coordinated for a push for liberalization of Myanmar’s political economy, yet it is also vital to note that they were both key members of the preceding SPDC regime and the Tatmadaw, and neither individual previously demonstrated that they would push for further political reforms in a post-SPDC state.6 What then allowed these actors to change the “rules of the game” and thus effectively reposition themselves as liberals in a reforming regime? As O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986: 21) point out, in authoritarian regimes, “no transition can be forced purely by opponents against a regime which maintains the cohesion, capacity, and disposition to apply repression.” Additionally as Huntington (1991: 114) suggests one must examine the “continuum in terms of the relative importance of the governing and opposition groups as the source of democratization.” However, in the case of Myanmar, in the absence of any effective and unified political opposition that could realistically topple and replace the military regime (Mya 1992: 146- 59; Kyaw 2008: 128-9), current political reforms are led from the top-down by military elites as part of a “transformation” process (Huntington 1991: 114). Given the non- democratic credentials of the Tatmadaw’s long authoritarian rule over Myanmar, current attempts to “transform” the regime should not be understood as an attempt to introduce a top-down transition towards a Western-style liberal democracy per se, but rather as a strategy for the military to prolong its continued dominance over the state apparatus, as well as to ensure that the core interests of the military are preserved. 7 When the Tatmadaw first took direct control of the state apparatus in 1962, the Revolutionary Council (1962-1971) under the leadership of General Ne Win attempted to transform Myanmar by purging all forms of pluralism to ensure the primacy of the Tatmadaw as the only potent political force responsible for the affairs of the state. At the height of the Ne Win regime, the Tatmadaw attempted to regulate all aspects of social life but was unable to achieve absolute domination over its population and was constantly challenged by armed insurgencies on the peripheries suggesting that the regime was at best an “arrested totalitarian” regime. Additionally, the regime elites were disillusioned and lacked commitment to the proclaimed Burmese Way to Socialism ideology (Kyaw 2003: 35). Subsequently, in order for the Tatmadaw to regain control and support for the state, the arrested-totalitarian authoritarian regime began to co-opt traditional non-state actors that had “roots in society before the establishment of the regime” (Linz and Stepan 1996: 44). This led the regime to seek support from the very actors, for example private businesses and monastic organizations, that it had initially aimed to purge, thus modifying the character of the Tatmadaw as government. The result was the establishment of the de jure BSPP single-party state apparatus, whereby the party was theoretically leading the Tatmadaw (Taylor 2009a: 317). However, the inability of the authoritarian BSPP regime to further correct problems brought about by its grossly mismanaged economy finally led to the collapse of order thus paving way for the re-emergence of an authoritarian military SLORC/SPDC regime which was no longer committed to the socialist vision of its BSPP predecessors. Though the SPDC was able to preserve some sort of peace and stability for nearly two decades, the mass protests of 2007, popularly referred to as the “Saffron Revolution,” indicated that the SPDC’s rule had not fundamentally led to a sustainable state-societal relationship.8 The 2007 crackdown of the mainly urban protests saw the return of order and the re-silencing of the regime’s critics. However, it also signaled that a re-negotiation of the socio-political order between the state and its society was long overdue. In order to understand this evolutionary development of the shifting attitude between the state and its society, the evolution of the Tatmadaw as the state apparatus will be traced including why reforms in the current context came about as a calculated top-down process that was designed to preserve the interest of the Tatmadaw..."