Collapsing democracy in the 21st century : the case of Myanmar

Abstract

The Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw, put an end to the country’s democratic experience on the 1st of February 2021 staging a coup d’etat. This event closed a decade of allegedly inadequate democratic reforms in the hopes of the western democracies in South-East Asia after their failed interventionism in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, the Tatmadaw promoted the beginning of the democratisation process post-2010. Aiming at analysing the reasoning behind why military elites decide to modernise the political institutions of a country, this paper explores the relations between the Tatmadaw and the civilian pro-democratic movement during the last decade in Myanmar. Meanwhile, the world democracies experience new challenges in the nature of their polity and struggle to defend the principles of the right mode of governance since the end of the Cold War.