Negotiating Parliamentary Control of the Armed Forces in Praetorian Regimes. Evidence from Myanmar

Using the case of transitioning Myanmar and its decades-old legacy of military involvement in politics, this project seeks to understand how nascent civilian institutions establish and consolidate mechanisms for the oversight of the armed forces under conditions of entrenched praetorianism – a situation where the military holds decisive influence over the political process. Have civilian agencies and elected representatives been able to effectively challenge the continuing dominance of the military in post-junta Myanmar? How have the resolutely interventionist armed forces responded to initial steps taken towards civilian control? What does it tell us about Myanmar’s trajectory of democratization, and the role of civilians in overseeing powerful militaries in Southeast Asia, and beyond? Capitalizing on the PI’s ongoing field research on military intervention and the resurgence of parliament in post-junta Myanmar, this GRF project focuses on the national legislature, crafted by the 2008 Constitution and tasked with the scrutiny of other government branches. It interrogates the legitimacy, viability, and achievements of the legislative organs in designing and employing procedures of oversight of the military since parliament reconvened in 2011. It will probe into the proposition that Myanmar’s nascent parliament and its members have attempted to challenge the dominance of the military whilst scrutinizing its activities, expenditures and behaviours. The study is guided by four interrelated research questions: (1) how effective has the annual legislative scrutiny of the defence budget proven to be; (2) has the ritual of parliamentary questions in the Union legislature offered a meaningful opportunity for backbenchers to expose military misconduct and forced the army into (re)action; (3) have legislative investigations been effectively carried out on matters related to military (mis)conduct – particularly land seizures – and if so, have these parliamentary inquiries yielded positive results; and (4) how have Myanmar’s armed forces responded to these above attempts at contesting its autonomy and reserved domains? The planned contribution of this project is twofold. First, informed by the political science literature on civilian control, the study hopes to enhance our theoretical grasp of the patterns of civil-military relations under uncertain army-driven transitions. Second, the PI will mine unexplored Myanmar-language material – i.e. proceedings of the first two “post-junta” legislatures (2011-16 and 2016-21) – to unearth empirical evidence of civilian control and assess the initial steps taken towards parliamentary oversight of the military. The analysis of legislative records will be refined through in-depth interviews with parliamentary and military officials in Yangon and Naypyidaw.