Myanmar’s first general election since the 2021 military coup has ended almost exactly as expected. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) has won an overwhelming parliamentary majority after voting was conducted in three phases between 28 December and 25 January. It secured 232 of the 263 contested seats in the lower house and 109 of the first 157 upper-house seats declared, while another quarter of parliamentary seats are constitutionally reserved directly for the armed forces. The military says the election begins a transition back towards civilian constitutional government. Its critics describe essentially the opposite process: Aung San Suu Kyi remains imprisoned, her National League for Democracy was dissolved, important opposition forces were excluded, voting could not occur across substantial conflict-affected territory, and the election took place while a civil war continued. The central issue is therefore not whether ballots were physically cast. It is what elections actually contribute to political legitimacy when those controlling the state have already determined much of the political field on which citizens are permitted to choose.
This distinction between electoral procedure and democratic competition matters. Democracy cannot sensibly mean only that citizens place pieces of paper into ballot boxes. Elections acquire democratic value because political authority is genuinely contestable: incumbents can lose, opposition parties can organise, citizens can criticise the government without coercion, and the losing side has reason to believe it can compete again later. Myanmar’s election satisfies the procedural act of voting while several of these deeper conditions remain severely constrained. Turnout during the first two phases was around 55%, compared with roughly 70% in the 2015 and 2020 elections, while the vote could not be held across many areas because the military does not control them securely. An election therefore can produce a mathematically precise result without resolving the prior philosophical question of whether citizens possessed a meaningful opportunity to withdraw consent from those already exercising power.
The military’s objective nevertheless is understandable politically. Since overthrowing Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021, the armed forces have faced a profound legitimacy deficit. The coup generated mass protests, armed resistance and eventually a civil war in which ethnic armed organisations and newer People’s Defence Forces have challenged military control across large parts of the country. Elections provide the junta with an institutional language different from permanent emergency rule. Generals can move into civilian offices, parliament can reopen and foreign governments can be told that constitutional politics has resumed. This is institutional conversion: coercive power acquired outside democratic rules is translated gradually into offices that resemble ordinary civilian government. The uniforms may disappear from the cabinet while the distribution of underlying power changes far less.
This is why the election should not be dismissed as meaningless theatre. If it were genuinely meaningless, the military would have little reason to organise it. Political institutions matter even to authoritarian governments because legitimacy reduces the cost of ruling. A government accepted voluntarily does not need to monitor and coerce every citizen continuously. Elections, legislatures and constitutions can therefore provide authoritarian systems with a degree of procedural legitimacy, especially among citizens who value stability more urgently than political competition after years of conflict. Min Aung Hlaing has dismissed foreign criticism by arguing that recognition from Myanmar’s own population matters more. The problem is that a government cannot convincingly use popular consent as its source of authority while simultaneously restricting the political alternatives through which that consent could be withheld.
Myanmar also demonstrates why order and legitimacy are separate political goods. Hobbes’s argument that political authority becomes valuable because it protects society from violent disorder has obvious relevance to a country experiencing civil war. Many ordinary citizens may rationally prefer almost any stable political settlement to continued air strikes, displacement and economic collapse. The military will therefore present its new political system as the route back towards order. Yet Hobbesian security becomes a weaker justification when the institution claiming to restore order is itself one of the principal belligerents producing the violence. A state cannot indefinitely justify extraordinary political authority through a disorder in which its own actions remain a major causal component.
The territorial limits of the election make this particularly obvious. Voting occurred in 263 of Myanmar’s 330 townships, with numerous areas excluded because of conflict and resistance control. This produces a striking contradiction: the government is holding an election to demonstrate national political authority while being physically incapable of administering the election across the entire nation. Sovereignty therefore exists in two senses. Myanmar remains internationally one state, but effective sovereignty is fragmented among the military, ethnic armed organisations and resistance forces. A parliamentary majority in Naypyidaw cannot by itself restore political authority in territories where the state cannot safely operate polling stations.
This is why the civil war remains more important than the seat count. The USDP can possess an overwhelming parliamentary majority and still govern a country whose political settlement remains unresolved. Military victory could theoretically solve that problem through coercive reunification, but years of fighting have demonstrated the enormous human and economic cost involved. Resistance forces face the inverse problem: weakening the junta militarily is not the same thing as constructing a single alternative state capable of governing Myanmar’s extraordinary ethnic diversity. The opposition contains the National Unity Government, People’s Defence Forces and numerous ethnic armed organisations with different histories and objectives. Agreement that military rule should end does not automatically create agreement over what constitutional order should replace it.
Federalism therefore may ultimately matter more than elections. Myanmar’s central political conflict predates the 2021 coup and extends back to independence: how much authority should the central state possess over ethnically diverse regions that have repeatedly resisted domination from the centre? A future democratic settlement that simply restores majority electoral rule without resolving ethnic autonomy could reproduce older conflicts. The strongest alternative to military centralisation would need to combine democratic competition with a credible federal bargain, allowing minorities enough self-government that participation in Myanmar becomes preferable to permanent armed resistance.
Foreign governments consequently face an awkward choice. Treating the election as fully legitimate could help the military convert coercive rule into international acceptance without making meaningful political concessions. Refusing every form of engagement can also become ineffective because the military continues controlling central institutions and millions of civilians live under its authority. ASEAN has indicated it will not certify or endorse the election, while Western governments and rights organisations have strongly criticised the process. The sensible distinction is between engagement and recognition. Governments can negotiate humanitarian access, refugees, ceasefires and regional security with Myanmar’s authorities without pretending the election resolved the legitimacy crisis created by the coup.
China and Russia are likely to remain more willing to work with the resulting government because their priorities emphasise stability, strategic access and non-interference. China in particular needs stability along its border and around infrastructure projects while maintaining relationships with both the central authorities and some ethnic organisations. India faces a similarly pragmatic problem along its northeastern frontier: instability in Myanmar affects refugees, insurgencies, connectivity projects and India’s attempt to reach Southeast Asia through its Act East policy. Neighbouring states cannot conduct foreign policy as though Myanmar’s authorities do not exist simply because they dispute their legitimacy. Geography imposes relationships that ideology cannot erase.
The election therefore has changed Myanmar’s institutional appearance much more clearly than it has changed its underlying political reality. Parliament will reconvene, the USDP will dominate it and the military can claim movement towards civilian government. Yet the decisive questions remain unanswered: can opposition exist without repression, can ethnic regions receive a political settlement they consider legitimate, can citizens genuinely remove rulers through elections, and can the state regain territorial authority without destroying the communities it claims to govern?
Those questions reveal the difference between an election and democracy. Voting is a mechanism for expressing political consent only when refusing consent can plausibly change who holds power. Myanmar has now held an election. Whether it has moved meaningfully towards a political system in which the governed can withdraw their consent remains much less clear.
