Dean: Myanmar legislatures, and parties, and their importance to the reproduction of authoritarian rule, Croissant and Kamerling (2013) argue that the political institutions created in the 2008 constitution embody a survival strategy for the military. The participation of the NLD in the elections, while legitimizing the “system … agreed upon by the authoritarians” was intended to reform them “from within” (Bünte 2016: 379). The NLD 2015 election campaign slogan "Time for Change" was devised—and read by the electorate and the international community alike—as heralding attempts to achieve genuine democratization, given the party’s history of struggle for freedom and democracy by non-violent means. The NLD’s well-known legal adviser U Ko Ni, also instrumental in creating the position of “state counsellor” for Aung San Suu Kyi to effectively lead the government despite being barred from the presidency under the 2008 constitution, argued publicly that drafting a new constitution is the only way to overcome ‟the constitutional barrier” (Ei 2016). 5 A constitutional law expert and a prominent critic of the military's continued control of key security ministries and guaranteed seats in parliament, U Ko Ni in 2016 publicly proposed that the NLD accept a less conciliatory approach in the unique power-sharing arrangement with the military that it had so far (Ei 2016). Having been under surveillance for years, in 2017 he was assassinated in daylight at Yangon airport. State coercive capacity: Not scaling down but changing pattern Armed forces are generally considered ‟one of the most effective coercive devices” available for the incumbent elites (Albertus and Menaldo 2012: 153). The military has been the long-term office holder in Myanmar with a history of exercising unhindered coercion at will, over time consolidating into a disciplined, cohesive and robust regime, and creating extensive revenues to sustain it. Based on interviews with former members of Myanmar’s armed forces and archival work, Callahan (2004: 3) notes that ‟critical periods of state building and transformation in wartime situations created the particular coercion-intensive institutions that dominated relations between the Burmese state and society throughout the twentieth century.” The most commonly used indicator of a state’s coercive capacity is the ratio of military personnel in the population or the workforce (Fortin-Rittberger 2014: 1251; see also Hendrix 2010). The gargantuan size of Myanmar’s armed forces—roughly half a million—has been highlighted by several observers (for numbers, see the Correlates of War Project 2017; SIPRI 2017; for an overview, see Selth 2015; Callahan 2012). Fortin-Rittberger (2014: 1251) who regards the size of the conventional military as a crude measurement since it may not always capture ‟the full gamut of repressive agencies,” adds the military expenditures per capita to analysis as it additionally measures sophistication and surveillance capacity. Gauging military expenditure in Myanmar can only be estimated in both the pre- and post-2011 eras, moreover because it has huge stakes in economy and revenues from natural resources. The new constitution allows the chief of staff of the armed forces to draw unlimited additional finances from a ‟special fund” without the consent of parliament, while it is not known if this facility has been used so far (SIPRI 2017). The military expenditure as percentage of GDP during 2012-2015 was 4.4 per cent on average, rising to 4.8 per cent in 2015 according to official state budget available for the first time—this ranks Myanmar officially 11th in the world after Azerbaijan, Algeria, Russia, Iraq, Israel, South Sudan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Syria (ibid.). All analysts note that both the size of the military and its expenditure are notably high for a country with neither external enemy, external wars nor potential external threats. The threats for the military governments have been internal, embodied in the ethnic armed political organizations demanding federal autonomy or in the persons (or groups) expressing political, social or economic dissent, involved in relevant activities or 5 In 2014, the NLD, in partnership with other democracy activists (Generation 88), gathered over 5 million signatures to a petition calling for changes to Constitution’s section that gives the military a veto over constitutional change, and the section 59(f) barring Aung San Suu Kyi from the presidency (because some of her family members are foreign nationals), and submitted these to parliament. In 2015, it proposed changes through a constitutional amendment committee. Both bills for amendment were blocked by the military (Ei 2016). Surveillance & Society 15(3/4) 499