Crafting Parliament in Myanmar's Disciplined Democracy (20112021). By Renaud Egreteau.

• Date: 01 August 2023
• Author: Bertrand, Jacques

Crafting Parliament in Myanmar's Disciplined Democracy (20112021). By Renaud Egreteau. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023. Hardcover: 320pp.

Because of the post-coup crisis in Myanmar, in which there appears to be very little prospect of the military junta withdrawing from power anytime soon, one might query the timeliness of a book that takes a relatively optimistic stance on the country's recent experiment with parliamentary democracy. But Renaud Egreteau reminds us that every iteration of a parliament in Myanmar reproduces certain trends from the past while opening up new forms of representation. Crafting Parliament in Myanmar's Disciplined Democracy closely scrutinizes the country's latest (and most interesting) experiment at representative parliamentary democracy, the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (Assembly of the Union), as it existed between its formation in 2011 and its dissolution in 2021.

It can be difficult to understand the form and trajectory of Myanmar's historical parliaments through a comparative lens, and to some extent this book struggles to find the right theoretical hook. Instead, Egreteau chooses an eclectic approach. Engaging relatively older literature from the 1970s onwards, he situates the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw within the wider typological literature on parliaments of similar countries as well as Myanmar's past legislatures. By doing so, the book draws on a vast array of studies on representation and parliamentary functions as well as the challenges of creating legislatures in post-authoritarian settings. Although these are a useful set of conceptual tools, they do not completely allow the book to make a broad theoretical claim as to what made Myanmar's most recent...