Against the Current: The Survival of Authoritarianism in Burma

THE LAST TWO DECADES have witnessed an unprecedented growth of democracy around the world. Freedom House estimates that the number of free countries, that is, democracies without serious violations of human rights, has gone up from thirty to seventy-six between 1973 and the beginning of 1996.1 Burma, however, has gone against the current. In the Pacific Rim, South Korea and Taiwan have recently democratized, and so have Burma's neighbors, Bangladesh and Thailand. India is a democracy, and the world's largest one for that matter. Burma seems the odd country out in Southern Asia. It has been under continuous authoritarian rule since 1962. The regime has been isolated from most of the world, partly by choice and partly by the unwillingness of many countries to support the repressive junta. Burmese authoritarianism does not even have the high economic performance that has somewhat legitimized a few other non-democracies, such as the big power adjacent to it China. How, then, has authoritarianism in Burma been able to survive for so long? This is the question the paper at hand seeks to answer. The global wave of democratization has inspired a spate of studies in the social sciences. Most, however, while underscoring movement toward democracy, usually omit from their inquiry the survival of monolithic repressive regimes.2 A more complete understanding of recent