Institute of Development Studies | bulletin.ids.ac.uk Myanmar’s Top-Down Transition: Challenges for Civil Society* David Brenner1 and Sarah Schulman2 Abstract This article historicises the nature of political transition in Myanmar to better appreciate the challenges faced by civil society. After Myanmar’s political reforms in 2011, Western donors rushed into the country in support of what they misunderstood as a remarkable instance of democratisation. In 2019, escalating civil war, ethnic cleansing, and contracting civil liberties urge a rethink. This article argues that viewing transition in Myanmar through the lens of democratisation has always been misleading and problematic. Partial liberalisation was orchestrated by the military to safeguard its own power. Reforms have not only benefited civil society but also enabled the growth of uncivil society, fuelling sectarian violence and bolstering military rule. Operating on the assumption of democratisation, Western donors shifted funds from grass-roots networks to militarised state bureaucracies that seek to co-opt peace-building and development projects for the purposes of ethnocratic state-building and counterinsurgency. Rethinking the nature of transition is pivotal for preventing inadvertently aiding authoritarianism and conflict. Keywords: civil society, democratisation, civil–military relations, ethnic conflict, aid, Myanmar, transition, development, civil war, peace‑building. 1 Introduction The political landscape of Myanmar has changed significantly since former dictator Than Shwe paved the way for a series of wide-ranging reforms in 2011. A nominally civilian government was sworn in and political prisoners were freed. Most visibly, long-term opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has ascended to power after her long-banned opposition party – the National League of Democracy (NLD) – won the historic elections of 2015 by a wide margin. The country’s vibrant civil society also benefited from the lifting of restrictive laws on media and public mobilisation. Despite these remarkable transformations, Myanmar’s transition has seemingly slowed down and the space for progressive social and political action has contracted once again. Particularly worrying is the situation in the country’s borderlands, © 2019 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2019.128 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited and any modifications or adaptations are indicated. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 50 No. 3 September 2019 ‘Accountability Amidst Fragility, Conflict, and Violence: Learning from Recent Cases’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.