ABSTRACT
Burma today is in the midst of what will likely be a drawn-out game of political transition. Any hope for democratic change in Burma must confront the hard realities of the constitution that the military imposed in 2008. If the 2008 Constitution goes unrevised, Burma could find itself stuck indefinitely with a hybrid system, part democratic, part military-dominated, and intrinsically prone to instability stemming from the irreconcilable tension between those two competing sources of authority. It is unlikely that Burma's military regime will agree to a wholesale rewriting of the 2008 Constitution. In terms of national identity, Burma is among the most deeply divided transitional countries that anyone has seen since the 'third wave' began in 1974. Up to a third of Burma's estimated 54 million people are outside the Burman majority, sharing neither its language nor its ethnic identity.
