190 Lisa Brooten International Journal of Communication 10(2016) Who Is Driving the Change? Commentators have described Burma’s contested 2010 elections and changes since as “topdown” (International Crisis Group, 2012; “Myanmar’s Startling Changes,” 2012; Nemoto, 2014), and, although many reforms have indeed been initiated by former military leaders, the situation is complex, involving bottom-up and external pressures as well. The reforms are largely neoliberal in nature, directed by the Myanmar government, foreign governments, and international organizations. Changes in media laws and policies have been driven by the Ministry of Information in consultation with UNESCO, other foreign experts, and various media development organizations. The Myanmar Press Council has also been central in the development of media laws and lobbying for improvements in government-drafted laws, although, as noted, it has been marginalized at various points in the process. The grassroots and nongovernmental sectors have had some influence, but the state unsurprisingly prioritizes and publicizes friendly organizations in alliance with its goals, and media and scholarship tend to focus on the state and its officers, with much less attention paid to civil society organizations, minorities, women’s groups, students, and other local agents. I concur with Wells and Kyaw Thu Aung (2014) that the top-down argument is too simplistic because it disregards the development of grassroots groups and networks— including media—both inside and outside the country since 1988 (Brooten, 2013a, 2013b; Pidduck, 2012; South, 2004). In Indonesia, although the reformasi movement was triggered by student-led protests in 1998, the reforms after the fall of Suharto, as in Myanmar, were understood to be an elite-led, top-down process that occurred while a hardline faction was still very strong and determined to prevent significant reforms (Abdulbaki, 2008). This dispelled certain assumptions about democratic transitions, including that development and a public, democratic culture are necessary preconditions to democracy (Abdulbaki, 2008). Indonesia’s experiences provide evidence that elite-driven reform, democratization processes, and democratic culture can develop simultaneously, especially given the decreasing influence of Indonesia’s military in politics and the economy (Mietzner, 2011). Myanmar could head down a similar path if the military’s influence can be similarly reduced, but policy makers and funders must recognize and support independent and diverse media if democratic values are to take hold and remain strong enough to counter the weight of Burma’s history. Path Dependency, or the Importance of History In early 2013, journalist and trainer Ye Naing Moe was asked to lead a workshop for 47 Myanmar government spokespersons from more than 33 ministries on how to deal with the media. He was invited by then deputy information minister, U Ye Htut, and “what he said was, just change the way they think about media. You have three days,” Ye Naing Moe recalled, laughing. So he took on the challenge, and found himself confronted on the first day with a room full of grim government spokespeople. “When I started my class . . . somebody stood up and said, simply, ‘we don’t trust you guys’” (personal communication, July 26, 2013). Patterns of behavior reinforced over time often dictate the relationship between media and politics, contributing to a process of path dependency in which the characteristics of the previous ruling