CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Thiha Wint Aung |
|---|---|
| Title | Political Violence in Social Movements: Finding 'A Way Out' in the '8888 Uprising' & 'Spring Revolution' in Burma/Myanmar |
| Summary | I argue that the two largest social movements in Myanmar’s history - the ‘8888 Uprising’ and the ‘Spring Revolution’ chose different repertories of actions because of different shifts in ‘political opportunity structure’, using Tarrow (2011)’s framework. In 1988, with the military’s framing the ‘8888 Uprising’ as ‘anarchic riots’ and itself as ‘provider of law-and-order’, I contend that the movement tried to ‘harness the hegemony’ rather than ‘oppose the hegemony’. The democracy movement framed the contention as a choice between “bad rulers” and “good rulers” without needing to violently confront the military as a whole. Meanwhile, the ‘political opportunity structure’ had shifted in favor of more contained form of collective actions, leading people to take ‘a way out’ with non-violent democratic struggle. In 2021, the military lost its claim over state amid the ‘revolutionary situation’ and the shift in people’s understanding of ‘state legitimacy’. With the escalation of violence by the military, the ‘political opportunity structure’ shifted in favor of violent repertoires of actions as people perceived that there was ‘no other way out’. As such, I argue that the ‘liberation frames’ emerged, indicating the radicalization of people and their desire for liberation. While the ‘Spring Revolution’ justified ‘violence’ through “anti-terrorist’ frames for the international audience, I argue that, it was not necessary to justify it locally because the winners would be able to claim the use of violence in the name of ‘state authority’ once the ‘revolutionary situation’ was resolved. |
| Supervisor | Greskovits, Bela |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/wint-aung_thiha.pdf |
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