ABSTRACT
In the last five years, Myanmar’s transition away from military governance has garnered much attention from analysts and scholars. Yet this attention has often focussed on the question of how far the country has moved from constrained authoritarianism to a new era of open democracy based on international norms. Far less consideration has been given to the ways that a new era of ‘international standards’, and of participation and democracy, might have its own new mechanisms for constraint, co-option, or defusing of citizen voices. Rapid political and economic liberalisation has meant that there has been a stark shift in the culture of governance—particularly around the implementation of new development projects and the displacement of local populations. The example of the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), near Yangon, and the development of a complaints mechanism for displaced communities, demonstrates the rapid infusion of ‘post-political’, consensual forms of governance into Myanmar’s urban development. Yet the context is also characterised not by the elimination of political and ideological struggle, but rather its emergence in new and unexpected sites. In this case the seemingly technocratic mechanism of the complaints procedure has been a central focus of contest as various actors struggle over who has claim to ‘international standards’. However, in resisting using ‘international standards’ to resist the process of implementation of the SEZ, citizens and activists also serve to bolster the new mechanics of technocratic governance.
