Saw Myat Sandy s study deals with theoretical and empirical analysis of the political
transitions in former Yugoslavia and Burma the present day Myanmar. It covers the transition
period of both states from the late 1980s until present. The author examines the democratic
transition in both states where the process has been unsuccessfully accomplished i.e. after
a very promising beginning sooner or later undermined by the challenges of the transition
which threatened to reverse what was gained by democratisation. In this dissertation Saw Myat
Sandy argues that the democratic transition in both states became an extended process of
transition because of its multi-ethnic societies. The democratisation in former Yugoslavia led
to disintegration and in Myanmar it is proving to be an intractable one and has become almost
un-resolvable to anyone s satisfaction. Myanmar today suffers from on-going political
instabilities that cause political and social fragmentations but does not demonstrate that it
will fall into conventional Balkan scenarios. This dissertation analyses if Myanmar s political
transition will follow the former Yugoslavian fate by using the transition theoretical
framework and highlighting the empirical facts on the problems of ethnicity and other political
factors that relate to these democratisation processes. The theoretical approaches are based on
the democratic transition and consolidation theories argued by Juan J. Linz Alfred Stepan and
Samuel Huntington. As opposed to many quantitative studies relevant dimensions will gradually
appear in this qualitative case study. The theoretical perspectives that apply are equally
significant and supplement each other and relate to its national experience. The study
contributes to the conventional theoretical debate and aims to offer the understanding for the
need to expand the link between ethnicity and political transitions in transition theories. It
proposes a heuristic method to integrate the dynamic of ethnicity in political transition
theories.
