The polarized debate about democracy in Burma: Right answers, wrong answers and public opinion
From the annulled elections in 1990 until the beginning of democratic reforms in 2011, Burma — or Myanmar — was subject to an intense debate outside of the country that is usually not bestowed upon third world dictatorships.
In this debate, crudely put, people and organizations fell into two main camps: Pro-pressure and pro-engagement.
The pro-pressure camp
The pro-pressure camp was characterized by very ambitious — some would say lofty — goals, especially in terms of establishing democratic rule.
For the majority of the people and groups in this camp, the strategy followed was to not engage with the Burmese government, but instead to have the international community apply pressure on it — especially through sanctions.
In this camp, we found — almost uniformly — the advocacy groups, the exile NCGUB government[1] and the rest of the Burmese exile democracy movement. Many of these were based in Thailand, while there also were a very substantial number of pressure groups based in Europe and the United States.
This exile democracy movement was a highly mixed bag of apples working for democracy, release of political prisoners, human rights, ethnic rights, women´s rights, environmental rights, religious rights, economic rights and so on and so forth.
In terms of the people involved, they were an equally mixed bunch of Burmans, ethnic minorities and well-meaning Western human rights campaigners. Also in this camp was the prominent Burma-writer Bertil Lintner and a couple of notable academics such as Sean Turnell and Des Ball.
The pro-engagement camp
Compared to the pro-pressure camp, the pro-engagement camp consisted to a large degree of academics[2]. These academics were oftentimes country experts on Burma and had spent many years working with this subject.
Many of them had a detailed understanding of the country, the society and the mindset of the generals running it. And crucially — unlike nearly all of the people from the pro-pressure camp — many of them had spent substantial time inside the country, in government controlled areas.
This intimate knowledge of the country, and its almost endless challenges, impacted their analyses and recommendations.
First of all, these scholars recognized that democracy was not likely to come overnight[3]. Despite an economy in shambles and a string of ethnic rebel armies along Burma´s borders, the generals and their military — the Tatmadaw — faced no truly serious threats.
Furthermore, blunt international pressure and economic sanctions was more likely to make the deeply paranoid, proud, nationalistic and xenophobic generals close their country off even more than to open it up[4].
In addition to this, these academics were willing the address the moral question, which the democracy advocacy movement apparently was not: The terrible consequences for the Burmese economy, and in effect ordinary Burmese people, of the economic sanctions — with the garment industry as one of the best and saddest examples of this[5].
So instead of the advocacy movement´s grand statements of attaining full-blown democracy through pressure, these academics recommended more limited and realistic goals in areas where the international community and the military government did have common interests, and where it was possible to work together — as for example in battling the narcotics trade or implementing better health services.
These pursuits would have been worthwhile in and of themselves. And it could have helped starting a process, where the generals´ paranoia towards the outside world could have been reduced and where work and reforms in other areas could have been considered.
Public opinion
When we look at these two camps, it is obvious that the pro-engagement camp had a much more realistic approach to unlocking a highly entrenched conflict. However, it is also true that the pro-engagement camp did very little to influence public opinion and Western policy makers.
So while the pro-engagement camp were right in a lot of what they were saying, they lacked the desire to ´getting their hands dirty´ and involving themselves in the very important public debate about how to work for progress in Burma.
The consequence of this was that they — effectively — led themselves to be overpowered by the pro-pressure camp, who ran away with public opinion and the hearts, minds and interest of important policy makers.
The nature of social scientists
The case with Burma illustrates the reluctance of social science scholars to becoming involved in the public debate — especially when it comes to emphatically promoting a certain course of action.
In addition to this, these scholars for the most part chose to make their voices heard in academic journals. The problem, however, with this approach is that ordinary people did not read these journals. And that the great insights of these experts completely bypassed the general public, which proved so crucial in motivating Western policy makers to adopt certain Burma policies.
Aiming for the better argument and the higher moral ground is a worthy cause. But if the knowledge is not presented to the general public, and used by people in positions of authority, then what is the point?
Making your voice heard
The lesson of the debate about Burmese democracy is twofold. First of all, generally speaking, if you have an informed opinion on such an important topic, you have an obligation to letting it be known to as wide an audience as possible.
And secondly, this example illustrates the profound need of reform of the field of social science. If social science wants to be relevant to the world, it needs to be willing to accept interaction with it. That is how it works in the natural sciences and has resulted in countless breakthroughs for the benefit of humankind, in areas like energy and medicine.
If social science scholars shy away from this interaction and continue to produce science to no larger audience, they will remain largely irrelevant.
As they — very regrettably — were to a very large extent, when it came to choosing the most promising and less harmful methods to promote democracy in Burma.
For more information contact Jens on globejens@hotmail.com or follow him on Medium.com, Academia.edu, Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube.
[1] National Coalition Government of The Union of Burma.
[2] Such as Andrew Selth, Mary Callahan, Morten Pedersen, David Steinberg, Trevor Wilson and others.
[3] https://www.cgdev.org/doc/shortofthegoal/chap7.pdf
[4] https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1117&context=law_globalstudies
