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ABSTRACT
One decade after Myanmar’s military regime organized non-competitive elections that unexpectedly commenced a period of political reforms, the military leadership upended this transitional period with a coup based on a narrative of electoral fraud. Cancelling the November 2020 election results which had confirmed the voters’ preferences for civilian rule, the military has begun organizing fresh elections while concurrently leading a war against the population. Building on Schedler (2002) and the debate on authoritarian elections, this article analyses the military’s contemporary menu of electoral manipulation as a comprehensive set of intertwined strategies. It integrates the analysis of various technical elements of the authoritarian electoral process that are often only looked at in isolation. The article deconstructs the military’s election-related narratives as self-legitimation in a region where authoritarian elections are the norm. Despite considerable efforts to forge conditions in their favor and create an aura of legitimacy, however, Myanmar’s military does not appear very imaginative in this undertaking, but employs a retrograde toolbox in a brutal manner. Whether this strategy is successful will not depend on the authoritarian leaders’ skills alone, but also on recognition from domestic, regional and international audiences which the junta’s performance seeks to achieve.
Acknowledgements
Parts of this article are based on a policy paper for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance I co-authored with Gilles Saphy, “Elections at a Crossing Point: Considerations for Electoral Design in Myanmar” (Saphy and Lidauer Citation2022). I thank them for permission to use this paper further and am grateful to colleagues at International IDEA, one anonymous reviewer, reviewers at Critical Asian Studies as well as Petra Alderman and Ardeth Thawnghmung for their useful comments.
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Boese et al Citation2022.
2 Nichols Citation2021.
3 Cheeseman and Klaas Citation2018.
4 Schedler Citation2006a, 18 following Case Citation2006.
5 Schedler Citation2002a, also Schedler Citation2006b, Citation2013.
6 Englehart Citation2013.
7 Faulder, Robinson and Macan-Markar Citation2021; FORSEA 2023.
8 Cf. Callahan Citation2005 and Selth Citation2021.
9 Barker Citation2004, 22; see also Kailitz and Wurster Citation2017.
10 Barker Citation2004, 14 and 24.
11 Ibid., 51f and 54.
12 Cf. Collier and Levitsky Citation1997; Merkel Citation2004.
13 Diamond Citation2002.
14 Carothers Citation2002.
15 Schedler Citation2006a, 4.
16 Schedler 2002.
17 Knutsen, Nygård and Wig Citation2017; see also Schedler Citation2009a, 296: “(E)lections under a dictatorship serve one main purpose; the political survival of the dictator.”
18 Malesky and Schuler Citation2011. For other functions see Morgenbesser Citation2016, 17ff.
19 Schedler Citation2009b, 323f.
20 Schedler Citation2013, 12.
21 According to Schedler, “Depending on their theoretical frames and analytical concerns, students of elections and regime change choose different levels of conceptual differentiation” (Citation2009a, 295). A common distinction is provided by the Regimes of the World (RoW) data published by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project. See https://ourworldindata.org/regimes-of-the-world-data (accessed 1 May 2023).
22 For ease of reference, these five regime types can be clustered as closed dictatorships (a-b), electoral regimes (b-e), authoritarian elections (b-d), multiparty elections (c-e), and electoral authoritarianism (c-d). See Schedler Citation2009a, 294; see also Croissant Citation2016, 14.
23 Demmelhuber Citation2023, 6; see also von Soest and Grauvogel Citation2017.
24 Interested in the micro-level analysis of authoritarian elections, Gandhi (Citation2015) and Gandhi and Lust-Okar (Citation2009) propose analyzing elections in dictatorships, and differences among them, by looking less at regime classifications and more at actual elections and at the electoral behavior of voters, candidates, and incumbents.
25 Thompson Citation2019.
26 Case Citation2006, 111.
27 Case Citation2006, 112.
28 Schedler Citation2006a; Case Citation2006.
29 Morgenbesser and Pepinsky Citation2019, 13f.
30 Morgenbesser and Pepinsky Citation2019, 24.
31 Case Citation2006, 98. He has described these as “skillful” or “clumsy,” with the latter term referring to strategic miscalculations.
32 Morgenbesser Citation2020, 48.
33 Morgenbesser Citation2015.
34 Tonkin Citation2007.
35 General elections, which take place every five years, comprise elections for a bi-cameral national legislature as well as sub-national chambers in seven states and seven regions. The president is chosen by an electoral college. In clear contradiction of democratic norms, the military retains twenty-five per cent of reserved seats in each legislative chamber.
36 Lidauer Citation2012.
37 For example, ANFREL Citation2016; EU EOM Citation2015; PACE Citation2016; TCC Citation2017.
38 NLD won 887, USDP 117, and other parties 46 of all seats available in the legislatures.
39 The Citation2017 by-elections were held to fill nineteen seats in the legislatures (twelve that were won by NLD, two by USDP, five by other parties) and the 2018 by-elections were held to fill another thirteen vacant seats (seven of which were won by NLD, three by USDP, and three by other parties).
40 Lidauer and Saphy Citation2021.
41 ANFREL Citation2021.
42 NLD won 920, USDP 71, and other parties 126 of the available seats.
43 Croissant and Kamerling Citation2013.
44 Marston Citation2021; Thawnghmung Citation2021.
45 Selth Citation2021.
46 Chapter IV, Article 445.
47 Morgenbesser Citation2016, 188.
48 ICG Citation2023, 2 and 8f.
49 MNA Citation2023.
50 ICG Citation2023, 4.
51 Schedler Citation2002a, 41f.
52 Harvey Citation2016.
53 Masunungure Citation2014.
54 Ó Beacháin and Kevlihan Citation2017.
55 Harvey Citation2016.
56 Eichhorn Citation2022.
57 For example, see Lynge-Mangueira Citation2018 and Van Ham and Lindberg Citation2016.
58 Schedler postulates that the normative premises of democratic choice delineate electoral authoritarian regimes from electoral democracies and appear in a clear logical sequence whereas the strategies of manipulation demarcate electoral from closed authoritarian regimes and are much more varied (Citation2013, 87). The original menu comprised seven categories of electoral manipulation: 1) the use of reserved positions and domains, 2) the exclusion and/or fragmentation of competitors, 3) repression and unfairness, 4) formal and informal disenfranchisement, 5) voter intimidation and corruption, 6) electoral fraud and institutional bias, and finally, 7) tutelage and reversal (Schedler Citation2002a, 39).
59 In another essay published during the same year, Schedler used slightly different categories, and sequenced them differently (Citation2002b). Later, he distinguished between repression and manipulation while using the notion of authoritarian control “as the overarching category encompassing both” (2006, 4). A similar list is provided in Schedler Citation2013, 84.
60 Morgenbesser Citation2020, 70.
61 Frontier Citation2021.
62 Cf. Noel Citation2022.
63 Deutsche Welle Citation2022.
64 ICG Citation2023, 4.
65 Lidauer and Saphy Citation2014, 210.
66 Renshaw and Lidauer (Citation2021) showed that the personality of the chairperson is a contributing factor.
67 Morgenbesser Citation2016, 104.
68 Lidauer Citation2012, 92.
69 MNA Citation2021a.
70 17th SAC Press Conference, July 1, 2022.
71 AAPP Citation2021.
72 Myanmar Now Citation2021a.
73 MNA Citation2021b.
74 13th SAC Press Conference, April 27, 2022.
75 21th SAC Press Conference, November 18, 2022.
76 ICG Citation2023, 10.
77 Cf. Schedler Citation2013, 97.
78 EU EOM 2016; TCC Citation2017.
79 This provision was aimed primarily at Muslim Rohingya in Rakhine State, whose citizenship rights were denied.
80 Lidauer Citation2021a.
81 EU EOM 2016; TCC Citation2017; ANFREL Citation2021.
82 Myanmar Times Citation2020.
83 Tatmadaw Information Team, January 31, 2021.
84 PACE Citation2021.
85 The Insights Citation2021.
86 ANFREL Citation2021.
87 Eighteenth SAC Press Conference, July 26, 2022.
88 Frontier Citation2023.
89 For the region/state assemblies, FPTP was used to elect two seats per township. One additional seat was allocated to each ethnic minority group representing at least 0.1 per cent of the population of the Union, apart from the groups that had already obtained a state or a self-administered area.
90 Reynolds, Reilly, and Ellis Citation2005.
91 Gandhi and Heller Citation2018, 5.
92 Negretto Citation2015, 130.
93 Gandhi, Heller, and Reuter Citation2022.
94 Electoral system change in Myanmar has been discussed by academics and policy analysts. See Lidauer and Saphy Citation2014; Lemargie et al Citation2014; Marston Citation2014; Selway Citation2015; Dukalskis and Raymond Citation2018; Oswald and Courtin Citation2020; Tan and Preece Citation2020; Nu Tsen Mun Citation2020 and Citation2022. For a discussion of these arguments see Saphy and Lidauer Citation2022, 24-25.
95 Lidauer and Saphy Citation2014, 217f.
96 Myanmar Now Citation2021b.
97 Dunant and Frontier Citation2022.
98 The Irrawaddy Citation2021.
99 FPTP is retained for the election of upper house representatives from six self-administered areas as well as for ethnic affairs ministers in State/Region hluttaws.
100 Brenner Citation2014.
101 Schedler Citation2006a, 14f.
102 Frontier Citation2022b; The Irrawaddy Citation2022.
103 Nyein Nyein Citation2020.
104 Thawnghmung Citation2021.
105 Nachemson, Citation2022.
106 Seventeenth SAC Press Conference, July 1, 2022.
107 RFA Citation2023.
108 Wee and Paddock Citation2021.
109 NLD Proclamation 4/2023, March 29, 2023.
110 Nachemson, Citation2022.
111 Sixteenth SAC Press Conference, June 16, 2022.
112 Eighteenth SAC Press Conference, July 26, 2022.
113 NLD News Release No 7/2022, July 9, 2022.
114 GNLM Citation2023a, 5.
115 NLD Proclamation 4/2023, 29 March 2023.
116 UEC Notification No.5/2023, GNLM, March 29, 2023.
117 Seventeenth SAC Press Conference, July 1, 2022.
118 NMF Citation2020, cf. Callahan Citation2019.
119 Loong Citation2022.
120 UN SC Citation2022.
121 This is a group of former United Nations officials. See SAC-M Citation2022.
122 FORSEA Citation2023.
123 Han Thit Citation2023.
124 ICG Citation2023, 10f.
125 ICG Citation2023, 13.
126 Lidauer Citation2021a.
127 Lidauer Citation2021b.
128 Rio Citation2020.
129 Frontier Citation2022a following RSF Citation2022.
130 Nwet Kay Khine Citation2021.
131 Frontier Citation2022a.
132 Berlinski et al Citation2021. The timing of the 2020 elections and of the peak escalation of voter fraud claims in Myanmar and the US bear a striking resemblance. The polls took place on November 3 (US) and November 8 (Myanmar); the violent insurrection at the US Capitol which occurred on January 6, 2021 sought to disrupt the certification of President-elect Biden’s victory, while the military coup in Myanmar on February 1, 2021 prevented the new legislature from convening and the elected government from taking office.
133 Sixteenth SAC Press Conference, June 16, 2022.
134 Eleven Media Group, April 27, Citation2022.
135 MNA Citation2022.
136 Debre and Morgenbesser Citation2017.
137 AFP Citation2022.
138 ICG Citation2023, 13f.
139 Minn Tent Bo Citation2022; Hutt Citation2023.
140 Oo and Chau Citation2023. The Thai government’s position may change elections in May 2023.
141 UEC, August 11, 2022.
142 For further explorations on military tutelage, see Bünte Citation2021.
143 According to Schedler, “reversing electoral outcomes by aborting the electoral game leads not to electoral authoritarianism, but to plain (non-electoral) authoritarianism.” Schedler Citation2002a, 45.
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Michael Lidauer
Michael Lidauer is an independent researcher and practitioner with experience working on Myanmar since 2010 as well as a PhD researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt.