Category: Myanmar

Burma’s Constitution: Straitjacket or red-herring?

[re-posted from New Mandala] While Burma watchers continue to debate the extent of and motives behind Naypyitaw’s current reform process (see here for my take), there seems to be much wider agreement that the 2008 Constitution is a deeply flawed document.

2 March, 2012
Discipline-Flourishing Constitutionalism: An Update on Myanmar’s Quasi-Constitutionalized Politics

When Tom Ginsburg and Zachary Elkins first released their Comparative Constitutions Project data, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma)* was one of only two countries that lacked any sort of constitutional document (the other being the U.K.). Since 1962, the country had been ruled by a military regime.

20 May, 2011
Myanmar’s Constitution: Born to Fail?

In this interesting op-ed, Arnold Corso suggests that the answer to the question in the title is “yes.” The Myanmar constitution–17 years in the making–was produced in a behind-the-scences process with no public participation. It is fairly inflexible as well. Although it has a good deal of detail which we find to be associated with…

10 February, 2010

Burma’s Constitution: Straitjacket or red-herring?