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Ne Win's Tatmadaw dictatorship

University of British Columbia

This thesis examines the nature of Burma's military regime which came to power in March 1962, and which has portrayed itself, somewhat successfully until 1988, as a regime which has constructed a "Burmese" socialist political order in Burma. Though this self-image was more or less accepted by many observers, there nonetheless could be detected in writings on the regime some degree of scholarly unease regarding the nature of the regime stemming from its many glaring failures not only in economic management, but also in arresting political decay which has transformed Burma into a poverty-stricken, debt-ridden, and almost pre-modern authoritarian polity. This thesis is an attempt to provide a less particularistic explanation of the regime, to show that such a regime is not unique, and that the downward slide of Burma can be understood with reference to existing theories and concepts derived from the study of Third World politics and conditions. Accordingly, the anti-colonial "nationalist" movement in Burma, the Dobama Asiayone of the Thakins, and the various Dobama "armies" which became the national armed forces, the Tatmadaw, and the underlying historical and socio-economic and political conditions are re-examined and analysed within the theoretical framework of comparative Third World politics. The thesis argues that the leaders who led the Tatmadaw to the summit of power in 1962 were not modernizing military leaders, but were foremostly politicians in military garb whose agenda was shaped by parochial Burman ethnonationalism, a peculiar kind of anti-foreign "Burmese" socialism, and the myth of their triumph over powerful foreign opponents — the British and the Japanese. The thesis examines the military regime -- Ne Win's Tatmadaw dictatorship -- and endeavors to explain the paradoxical configuration, subsequent to the military seizure of power, of a strongly autonomous and highly coercive state in Burma, on the one hand, and the clear evidence of political and economic decay (stemming from the regime's poor performance and/or capacity), on the other hand, from the perspective of Third World politics. The explanation is framed in terms of Ne Win's personal rulership; the transformation of the Tatmadaw, on which the state and the regime is based, into a patrimonialized personal instrument of the patrimonial ruler, Ne Win; the subsequent general and widespread erosion of the integrity of various institutions; the undermining of legal-rational norms; and the increasing reliance of Ne Win and the regime on the use of terror to maintain power as its legitimacy waned over time, and the corresponding greater degree of disengagement of society from the control and perview of the state.

Text

2010-11-09

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/29886

Political Science

University of British Columbia

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