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Why are there so few advocates for state-mediated economic redistribution and social welfare in contemporary Myanmar (Burma)? Moving beyond a focus on the regime-led political transition since 2011, this seminar explores how informal institutions generated during following the collapse of socialism in 1988 shape contemporary distributive politics. Based on 16 months of ethnographic, survey and archival fieldwork in provincial Myanmar in 2015 and 2016, it explores how the transition to mediated capitalism in the 1990s and 2000s saw the military regime off-put welfare obligations to emergent entrepreneurs and a non-state charitable sector in a form of rule best conceived as ‘authoritarian welfare capitalism’. As Myanmar’s civilian state now expands in spheres of welfare provision and development action, the seminar then explores how an ideology of individual and community responsibility popularised through charitable and self-reliance projects during military rule now erodes expectations of, and entitlement from, the democratically-elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. The research challenges extant literature on welfare regimes and democratization, demonstrating how informal institutions shape distributive politics in political transition.
