The Junta's Soft Landing

Why a sham election may be even better for the people of Burma than a legitimate one.

BY DARON ACEMOGLU , JAMES A. ROBINSON | SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

With Burma's government holding a rare election in November, it's fair to wonder whether the military junta has real changes in store for the beleaguered country. Last Friday, a Burmese official at the United Nations even went so far as to insist that the leader of the Burmese opposition, Aung San Suu Kyi, will have a chance to cast a ballot. Unfortunately, the full evidence suggests that the regime isn't inclined to initiate any deep reforms after 48 years of autocratic rule: Although Suu Kyi will be able to vote, she was barred from running for office, and her imposed house arrest has yet to be lifted.

Nonetheless, Burma's rulers may be paving the way for their own eventual eclipse.

Even flawed elections can make a meaningful difference to the people of Burma. Indeed, things could hardly get worse for them. For the duration of the junta's rule, the Burmese have been plagued by terrible government and a barely functioning economy: They have suffered rulers who were insecure in their hold on power, but who were capable of easily enriching themselves through natural resources like timber and opium.

One of the reasons that Burma's economy is in such dire shape is that the junta has felt that economic growth would imperil their rule. The military junta, after all, hadn't merely imposed itself on an anarchic society -- it overthrew a popular democracy. Starving the country of dynamism has been one of the ways that the military has managed to consolidate its rule against the specter of an uprising among Burma's minorities.

By introducing mild liberal reforms, the junta now wants to shift from near-constant crisis management to the cultivation of longer-term legitimacy and stability for the current regime. That's what these elections are more-or-less explicitly about -- in contrast to the country's last elections, which were held 20 years ago, in 1990. Then, the junta was taken by surprise by the victory of Suu Kyi. The regime's response was to reverse the results, and rescind all of its nascent democratic reforms at the time.

This time, military leaders are making sure in advance that the outcome will be to their liking. Aung San Suu Kyi has been barred from running for president, 25 percent of legislative seats have been reserved for the military, and a powerful national defense and security council has been established that will be free of democratic oversight. Already, more than 20 high-ranking officials in the junta have resigned from the army to re-invent themselves as civilian candidates under the banner of a new party, Union Solidarity and Development Association.

It's clear that the regime is less interested in establishing a democracy than in resisting pariah status on the international stage and forestalling discontent at home. Whether they're motivated by the bite of sanctions, the restiveness of domestic ethnic minorities, or the discontent of a younger generation of officers among the junta, Burma's rulers want to restore some measure of legitimacy for themselves -- without, of course, loosening their grip on the country's levers of power.

Getty images

 SUBJECTS: EAST ASIA
 

Daron Acemoglu is professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and James A. Robinson is professor of government at Harvard University. Their forthcoming book, Why Nations Fail, will be published by Crown in 2011.

OZGURDUNYAM

6:06 PM ET

October 1, 2010

Thanks

Thank you for the information your provide.

 

FREEDOM410

8:21 PM ET

October 8, 2010

Really? Do these authors even know about Burma

The general gist of this article is that because some authoritarian leaders inadvertently allow a transition to democracy when they are secure in their rule, Burma will probably democratize eventually after the elections. This is both simplistic and misleading. Burma is nowhere close to where Taiwan was even in the 1970s. The better comparison might be Indonesia under Suharto. The Taiwans and South Koreas (and the 19th century Britains and United States) of the world had something Burma lacks - relatively strong institutions, a professional bureaucracy, and a relatively unified populace. By contrast, Burma's institutions are broken and the country is still wracked by civil wars. Furthermore, one can also point to make examples of regimes that used institutions to secure their power AND have endured, such as China. Egypt is another good example of a regime that has, through institutional reform, endured for over 50 years.