Democracy in the news – Week 4 – Myanmar
This article wasn’t neccesarily reporting on any major event regarding democracy, it was more of a procedural piece commenting on the progress Myanmar, formerly Burma, is making towards democratic reform. The history of democracy and human rights in Myanmar is particularly appalling, but it seems the country is looking to increase its international reputation. In today’s liberal democratic dominated world (at least economically), it seems that a credible attempt to transition to democracy truly helps the cause of an authoritarian state. The regime right now is military, yet elected, something Levitsky and Collier might call, “military democracy”, definitely one of their diminished subtypes. Yet its release of political prisoners and pledge to hold free and fair elections, with several of these former prisoners as candidates, seems like a credible attempt at democratic reform. As a result the EU has lifted visa bans against Burmese officials, a positive step for international diplomacy, doubtless. The Myanmar government, however, says that a transition to free democracy will be “gradual and systematic” and will undoubtedly face some challenges. Chiefly among those countries looking to help Myanmar through this process is India. Its democratic neighbor, India has a lot to gain from positive relations with Myanmar. Firstly, democratic peace theory would state that they would never engage militarily, and secondly, warm relations would be better for controlling the extremely permeable border between the two countries, which is a locus for smuggling, narcotic, and other clandestine operations. The last line of the article however, situated it into a context which was completely absent from the rest of the text.
Energy-hungry India and China are competing for access to Myanmar’s large natural gas resources.
It is obvious the author threw this in because he thought it would be a key issue. It just goes to show that democracy isn’t being spread simply for its own sake. Surely, a democratic Myanmar would favour the world largest democracy over the world’s largest one party ‘democracy’ in doing business with. Democracy can be a political tool for pursuing other ends. It is not simply a humanitarian endeavor most of the time. The democratization efforts of the USA after WWII were simply to counter the spread of communism. The same pattern can be seen here. Democracy is seen as a normative ‘good thing’ and installing it can often mask any ulterior motives which a democratic government would offer.