ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the career of democracy in Burma/Myanmar by focusing on context reaching back to the nineteenth century, initial experience from 1948 to 1962, military years from 1962 to 2011, and attempts since 2011 to make a sustainable transition. Any democracy is an evolving political culture. Once limited to antecedents in ancient Greece, where it was widely seen as an undesirable political model, democracy has become a worldwide phenomenon shaped by diverse cultures and experiences on five continents. In Myanmar, the process of transforming individuals from passive subjects to engaged citizens was intimately linked to British colonization through invasions launched in 1824, 1852 and 1885. In September 1988 military forces regrouped to form a junta under General Saw Maung and crush the democracy movement. While it evidently has a lengthy and complex pre-history, Myanmar's democratic transition is held by most analysts to date from the end of March 2011.
