This new edition of Myanmar: Politics, Economy and Society provides a sophisticated yet accessible overview of the key political, economic and social challenges facing contemporary Myanmar and explains the complex historical and ethnic dynamics that have shaped the country.
Thoroughly revised, the book analyses the context and tragic consequences of the military coup in February 2021 and the COVID-19 pandemic. With clear and incisive contributions from the world's leading Myanmar scholars, this book assesses the policies and political reforms that have provoked contestation in Myanmar's recent history and driven both economic and social change. In this context, questions of economic ownership and control and the distribution of natural resources are shown to be deeply informed by long-standing fractures among ethnic and civil-military relations. The chapters analyse the key issues that constrain or expedite societal development in Myanmar and place recent events of national and international significance in the context of its complex history and social relations. The book provides detailed analysis of the coup, which overturned a decade of political and economic reforms and threw the country into chaos. It explains the drivers for the coup, how it has impacted on the country and the future prospects for accountability and justice.
Filling a gap in the market, this research textbook and primer will be of interest to upper undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars of Southeast Asian politics, economics and society and to journalists and professionals working within governments, companies and other organisations.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Industry Reviews
Praise for the first edition:
"[...] a must-read for scholars on contemporary Myanmar and fascinating for anyone interested in broader processes of political and economic transformations. [...] the book is a welcome addition to studies of contemporary Myanmar and deserves to be read widely."
--Marco Buente, European Journal of East Asian Studies
"This excellent survey of Myanmar politics, economy, and society over 17 short chapters is obviously marred by the coup d'etat of 1 February 2021. As an edited volume, the editors introduce and conclude the volume while assigning the 'meat' of the book to various experts on salient issues related to Myanmar's politics, economy, and society. [...] this book is a valuable survey of the issues and challenges facing contemporary Myanmar. While presenting the proximate causes of post-Thein Sein disappointment, it also touches upon and articulately explains the underlying forces, perceptions and prejudices that make achieving peace, let alone democracy, unlikely in this 'fiendish brew' of a country."
--Adam McCarty and Callum Furness, Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, 2022.