Parliamentary Life under the NLD

This paper examines the functioning of the Union parliament elected in November 2015 and compares it with the experiences of the previous USDP-controlled legislature (2011-2016). It interrogates whether the entrance in parliament of a large cohort of political neophytes and novice legislators drawn from pro-democracy forces – only 13 percent of incumbent MPs were re-elected in 2015 – has translated into meaningful changes in the legislative behaviour and socialization of new members, as well as in the lawmaking process and tentative scrutiny of the executive. How has parliamentary life been shaped under the dominance of the NLD? Halfway through the second post-junta legislature, how have the three core functions of parliament – representation, lawmaking and oversight – been performed by elected and military-appointed MPs? Have consolidated parliamentary procedures and rules transformed the thinking and behaviours of new legislators? Is a process of institutionalization emerging? Building on ethnographic research regularly carried out in Naypyitaw since 2013 and the literature on legislatures and democratic change, the paper discusses the attitudes of new MPs towards representation, the relative effects of party discipline in the NLD-dominated legislature, the relations between the new executive and legislative organs, the impact of capacity-building programs, and the new trajectories of civil-military relations in the house. The study hopes to contribute to a better understanding of the causes and potential consequences of high turnovers of legislators in post-junta 6 Myanmar and the enduring dominance of senior, experienced politicians in a polity facing a long and arduous process of democratization.