Institute of Development Studies | bulletin.ids.ac.uk 5 Conclusion Understanding Myanmar’s political transition primarily through the lens of democratisation is misleading and problematic. The political reforms of 2011 were orchestrated by the country’s military in ways that safeguard its own power interests. This explains the persistence of authoritarian rule and military dominance in contemporary Myanmar politics. The country’s top-down transition poses severe challenges for civil society. On the one hand, transition has not progressed in a linear fashion towards liberal democracy as demonstrated by recent crackdowns on press freedom and other civil liberty rights. On the other hand, transition itself has created new challenges. While the rapid liberalisation of the public sphere has created space for civil society mobilisation, it has also provided a platform for uncivil society: ultranationalist forces promoting sectarian violence on the basis of exclusionary identity politics. While this has erupted most violently against the country’s Muslim communities, including the culmination in military-led ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Rakhine State, inter‑communal conflict between different ethnic groups is simmering across Myanmar. This in turn strengthens authoritarian rule by playing to the self-portrayal of the Tatmadaw as the guardian of the nation. At the same time, the rapid influx of the international aid community attempting to support what it misconceived as democratisation has created additional challenges for civil society. In fact, Myanmar makes for a rather cautionary tale of an aid industry crash-landing in a country without profound knowledge of its intricate politics. The very assumption that Myanmar’s transition is a process of democratisation has not only proven wrong but deeply problematic. It has contributed to a wholesale shift of donor funds from supporting long-standing grass-roots networks based on the Thai–Myanmar border to state bureaucracies. This has not only left existing CSOs struggling to survive. It has also accentuated the danger that international aid ends up being co-opted by militarised power for the purposes of ethnocratic statebuilding and counterinsurgency. This is particularly so in the securitised space of the country’s conflict-ridden borderlands where state apparatus and military authorities remain inextricably linked up until today. Unsurprisingly then, international aid has not always contributed to, but also undermined, progressive social and political action in Myanmar. To find more constructive ways of supporting civil society in this challenging environment, both in central and borderland Myanmar, international donors and development agencies should focus on: (a) rethinking the nature of Myanmar’s transition, including the legacy of protracted authoritarianism and conflict, as well as the ill-founded assumption that it was driven by democratic forces from below and is leading to a Western-style liberal democracy; (b) being more reflexive about the impact of international aid on the fragile politics of transition, conflict, and peace. Understanding the concerns of local civil society, including the inconvenient truths about the nature of transition and the state, in places outside of urban centres is indispensable in this IDS Bulletin Vol. 50 No. 3 September 2019 ‘Accountability Amidst Fragility, Conflict, and Violence: Learning from Recent Cases’ 17–36 | 31