Abstract
Myanmar has been perceived to be in a sociopolitical and economic transition since the semi-civilian government under President Thein Sein took office in 2011. Amongst other things, for a representative democracy to function, citizens have to have the freedom to express their opinions and deliberate them with fellow citizens. This requires the secure granting of fundamental civil liberties, as prescribed in the freedom of expression, association, and assembly. Hence, once in the process of democratization, a formerly authoritarian state has to make significant improvements in the granting and protection of these rights too. To empirically test whether Myanmar has made such improvements since 2011 is the goal of a greater research project I am working on. This research note introduces the project and summarizes first findings. By combining knowledge on legal reforms and protest data from the Myanmar Protest Event Dataset, it is suggested that, in Myanmar, the de jure exercisability and de facto exercise of fundamental civil liberties have significantly improved from 2011 to 2015. Informal methods of suppressing the right to protest, such as arbitrary violence, have increasingly descended while methods that are formally in accordance with the rule of law but still lack compliance with international human rights standards have ascended.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Auf der Suche nach Erkenntnis zwischen Asien und Europa: al-Ġazālī, Descartes und die moderne Forschungswissenschaft
- Unfertige Studien 3: Die Nihāyat al-marām des Ḍiyāʾaddīn ar-Rāzī
- Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »
- L’analyse sur la Négation Explétive en Chinois-Mandarin à Travers sa Comparaison avec le Français
- Sondersektion „Religionsbegriff“
- Concepts of Religion between Asia and Europe – Some Retrospective Preliminaries
- Religion and the Public Sphere in Premodern India
- ‘Religion’ and the Concept of the Buddha Way: Semantics of the Religious in Dōgen
- Übersetzungen – Translations – Traductions
- The Chronicle of Jōe – A Translation of the Second Part of the History of the Fujiwara House
- Bedeutungswandel der Zivilgesellschaft oder das Elend der Ideengeschichte: Eine kommentierte Übersetzung von Kiyoaki Hiratas Aufsatz zum Begriff shimin shakai bei Antonio Gramsci (Teil 2)
- The International Situation in East Asia and the Establishment of a Modern Army and Modern Warfare in Japan: The Memorandum of Takashima Shūhan
- Über die Idee und das Wirkliche (Teil III)
- Forschungsnotiz – Note de recherche – Research Note
- Protest und Demokratisierung in Myanmar: Erste Erkenntnisse aus dem „Myanmar Protest Event Dataset“
- Rezension – Compte rendu – Review
- Milburn, Olivia: The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Auf der Suche nach Erkenntnis zwischen Asien und Europa: al-Ġazālī, Descartes und die moderne Forschungswissenschaft
- Unfertige Studien 3: Die Nihāyat al-marām des Ḍiyāʾaddīn ar-Rāzī
- Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »
- L’analyse sur la Négation Explétive en Chinois-Mandarin à Travers sa Comparaison avec le Français
- Sondersektion „Religionsbegriff“
- Concepts of Religion between Asia and Europe – Some Retrospective Preliminaries
- Religion and the Public Sphere in Premodern India
- ‘Religion’ and the Concept of the Buddha Way: Semantics of the Religious in Dōgen
- Übersetzungen – Translations – Traductions
- The Chronicle of Jōe – A Translation of the Second Part of the History of the Fujiwara House
- Bedeutungswandel der Zivilgesellschaft oder das Elend der Ideengeschichte: Eine kommentierte Übersetzung von Kiyoaki Hiratas Aufsatz zum Begriff shimin shakai bei Antonio Gramsci (Teil 2)
- The International Situation in East Asia and the Establishment of a Modern Army and Modern Warfare in Japan: The Memorandum of Takashima Shūhan
- Über die Idee und das Wirkliche (Teil III)
- Forschungsnotiz – Note de recherche – Research Note
- Protest und Demokratisierung in Myanmar: Erste Erkenntnisse aus dem „Myanmar Protest Event Dataset“
- Rezension – Compte rendu – Review
- Milburn, Olivia: The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan