A House Divided
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“The Myanmar case is very fascinating, and specific in the literature of political science and social sciences,” says Dulyapak Preecharush, an associate professor of Southeast Asian studies and a comparative political scientist specializing in Myanmar. In this interview, he further argues that Myanmar’s political trajectory since independence, and especially since 2011, is best understood not as a failed democratic transition but as a deliberately managed “hybrid system.” He explains his analysis through the lenses of capital relocation, federalism, regime type, and regional geopolitics. Drawing on decades of academic research and direct engagement with Myanmar’s political evolution, he situates contemporary conflict within historical patterns of state-building, military strategy, and elite–mass relations. In the end, he argues that Myanmar’s hybrid political system can manage conflict and reform indefinitely, but cannot deliver genuine federal democracy, implying that only a decisive rupture in military political power—rather than continued reform within the system—would make a fundamentally new political order possible.
This idea of a hybrid political regime situates Myanmar alongside other systems where authoritarian control coexists with electoral institutions, such as Singapore and Cambodia. He notes that these regimes persist by managing political openings without relinquishing core power. Myanmar’s own political trajectory under the 2008 Constitution, which provides for political parties and elections while the military holds reserved parliamentary seats and veto power, exemplifies this model. The idea of “disciplined democracy,” articulated by past military leaders, captures this hybrid logic: limited participation under strict military guardianship.
Yet hybrid regimes, he argues, are inherently unstable when popular demands exceed elite-controlled reform. Genuine democratic transformation, in his view, often requires revolutionary rupture rather than incremental reform. While elite-driven reforms may open space, they are insufficient to dismantle entrenched military power. This tension between reform and revolution recurs throughout his analysis, highlighting the unresolved struggle over Myanmar’s political future.
In Dulyapak’s view, the decision to relocate Myanmar’s capital to Naypyidaw from Yangon in 2006 is an illustrative exemplar of his overall thesis. He describes the move as tying together strategic, developmental, and symbolic considerations. From a security standpoint, he explains that Yangon’s coastal location and history as a center of popular uprisings made it vulnerable both to foreign intervention and domestic mobilization; moving the capital inland, into a mountainous and forested hinterland, offered defensive advantages. At the same time, the capital shift served economic and logistical purposes. Located in the Burman heartland, Naypyidaw sits at a crossroads linking Myanmar’s regions and agricultural zones, facilitating centralized administration and national integration. Beyond strategy and logistics, he also emphasizes socio-cultural motivations. Military leaders sought to inscribe themselves into Myanmar’s historical narrative by emulating precolonial monarchs who established new capitals to mark new reigns. The construction of pagodas, ceremonial spaces, and the ritual raising of white elephants—a traditional, Buddhist-inspired marker of legitimate kingship in precolonial Burma—reflects an attempt to fuse Buddhist nationalism, monarchic legacy, and military authority into a new national iconography.
He further stresses the carefully orchestrated configuration of Naypyidaw, which highlights the political dimension of the move. Naypyidaw is described as an “island fortification,” deliberately separated into zones of population, administration, and military command. The new capital’s design enables the military to better withstand political shocks as well as natural disasters and foreign incursions, reinforcing centralized control even amid widespread conflict. In sum, the move to Naypyidaw physically demonstrated the military’s thinking: it designed the physical and institutional conditions that allow political opening without political vulnerability, and thus the blueprint for hybrid rule, which makes limited reform possible but genuine transformation structurally unlikely.
Dulyapak then turns to the bumpy history of federalism in Myanmar. He situates debates over federal design as early as the 1947 Panglong negotiations, which laid the foundation for a federal vision in the country’s first post-independence constitution. That trajectory was abruptly halted in 1962, when the military seized power under General Ne Win, imposed centralized military rule, and forcibly closed off constitutional and political debate over federalism in the name of national unity and security; this repressive military rule inhibited public debate and political evolution for decades.
Then in 2011, under the military backed but quasi-civilian Thein Sein administration, federalism re-entered the country’s political discourse, but in the context of a hybrid regime: a government based on the 2008 Constitution that, while allowing for limited political engagement after years of oppressive military rule, enabled the military to keep its thumb on the political scale. So that political window was operationalized with the development of political parties, elections and parliamentary debate, but the inherent limits of that opening under this hybrid system were brutally demonstrated by the 2021 coup.
This was also a period of what Dulyapak calls “conflict management.” Even though the military was still confronting ethnic minorities in direct conflict, Thein Sein’s political government was engaging them in peace negotiations with an eye towards an eventual democratic federal union; the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) of 2015, though partial, explicitly framed peace as a pathway towards that end. This dual track of engagement persisted under the NLD government, which kept advancing a federal agenda, yet the dynamics involved meant that progress was fragile: while peace negotiations did provide institutional space for federal ideas, ongoing military confrontations simultaneously pushed ethnic armed organizations to assert territorial governance. This dual dynamic produced uneven and contested forms of authority across Myanmar’s regions.
The coup blocked federalization institutionally, but it did not disappear politically. Opposition forces, including the National Unity Government and multiple ethnic organizations, continued to articulate federal democracy as a core objective, even as war intensified. However, Dulyapak argues that Myanmar’s current political reality no longer fits a single federal model. Instead, the country now exhibits multiple governance forms simultaneously. In the Burman heartland, the military has reinforced centralized unitarian control. In some frontier regions, particularly where groups like the Arakan Army or Wa authorities dominate, de facto confederal or autonomous systems have emerged. Elsewhere, especially among Chin, Karen, and related movements, actors continue to pursue democratic federalism. Myanmar thus exists as a composite of unitarianism, federalism, and what he describes as a form of de facto confederalism, in this case meaning near-complete autonomy without subordination to the central military state. This dynamic complicates any single constitutional solution. He suggests that resolving conflict may require conceptual frameworks beyond classic federalism, including highland autonomy and negotiated sovereignty arrangements.
This complexity shapes his assessment of peace processes and their inherent limits. He notes that earlier negotiations, particularly under the Thein Sein administration, produced genuine breakthroughs by creating a forum in which diverse political and armed actors could engage one another. However, the collapse of these arrangements after the coup reveals how heavily the entire process depended on the commitment of political elites and individuals rather than durable, institutional guarantees. In the aftermath of this breakdown, he observes a period of stagnation at the national level, even as some ethnic armed organizations continue to experiment with new forms of coordination outside the military state and beyond formal electoral frameworks.
Next, Dulyapak turns to the military’s elections. While he refrains from characterizing them as fraudulent, he does view them as deeply constrained, military-engineered, and incapable of producing genuine democracy; at the same time, however, he sees them as consequential in that they can still potentially shape Myanmar’s political trajectory, that they are the epitome of a hybrid system. Two scenarios dominate his assessment. In one, elections in a sufficient number of townships allow the military-backed party to form a government, potentially ushering in a hybrid regime in which civilian institutions coexist with continued military dominance. In another, intensified resistance undermines this roadmap, leading to parallel centers of power and prolonged polarization. While he views the latter as less likely, largely due to the NUG’s inability to establish such a parallel center, he stresses that both scenarios reflect ongoing contestation rather than political resolution.
Dulyapak further elaborates on his thesis by examining elite–mass relations within this hybrid system. He observes that earlier political openings relied heavily on a small number of elite figures capable of negotiating simultaneously with the military and ethnic organizations. In the current conflict, however, authority has fragmented dramatically. The opposition landscape is now composed of multiple armed groups, local leaders, and civic actors exercising substantial autonomy on the ground. While the National Unity Government offers a symbolic center of coordination, many actors prioritize immediate survival, local governance, and humanitarian response over centralized political strategy. For Dulyapak, this fragmentation reflects resilience but exposes a structural weakness: hybrid regimes erode unified leadership while preventing the emergence of an alternative national authority capable of replacing the military state.
He then situates Myanmar’s hybrid political system within a shifting international environment that further reinforces the country’s internal stalemate. While often simplistically portrayed as being solely aligned with China, Dulyapak explains that Myanmar has also navigated intermittent engagement from the United States, alongside military ties to Russia and involvement from another neighboring giant, India. However, China’s strategic interest in access to the Indian Ocean and infrastructure corridors through Myanmar remains decisive, while Russia’s role has deepened through long-standing military cooperation, weapons procurement, and training that predates the current conflict. So rather than helping resolve Myanmar’s crisis, the external environment, he argues, it sustains the hybrid system by supplying the military with diplomatic cover, and economic and military support.
Dulyapak turns his attention to broader regional engagement. He characterizes Thailand’s position vis-à-vis Myanmar as pragmatic and ambivalent, and shaped by security concerns, economic ties, and humanitarian imperatives rather than ideological alignment. Although historical hostility between the two countries once helped define Thai nationalism, Bangkok now must manage the daily spillover effects of Myanmar’s war, including displacement, illicit trade, and border insecurity. He highlights Thailand’s potential role in facilitating humanitarian corridors and localized dialogue along the border, while noting that competing regional crises and domestic priorities constrain how far the Thai government can go in helping shape Myanmar’s political trajectory.
He also examines the role of ASEAN, which he sees as having a similarly constrained role because of its consensus-based structure and internal divisions. The yearly transition of the chair in 2026 to the Philippines, he believes, will introduce additional challenges, given Manila’s distance from mainland Southeast Asian conflicts; proximity matters, according to Dulyapak, because Myanmar’s conflict is governed by territorial and logistical realities, not just diplomatic ones. At best, he thinks ASEAN can reaffirm principles such as the Five-Point Consensus to reduce violence and coordinate humanitarian assistance; however, any comprehensive resolution, he suggests, would require coordination well beyond ASEAN’s capacity, involving neighboring states and major powers whose interests currently reinforce, rather than dismantle, Myanmar’s hybrid political order.
In closing, Dulyapak underscores Myanmar as a critical case for understanding how hybrid regimes function, how state-building interacts with prolonged warfare, and why partial reform so often fails to resolve foundational political conflicts. Myanmar’s experience, he argues, is instructive precisely because its contradictions remain unresolved. Rather than offering simple solutions, he calls for sustained attention to the structural forces shaping the country’s trajectory. “When we talk about hybrid political regimes, when we discussed about federalism building, state building project, or the relationship between warfare and state building, the relationship between democracy and federalization,” he says, “all of this significance appear in Myanmar case.”