Part 1

• Citizens without a sovereign? Service provision and political recognition in revolutionary Myanmar Nick Cheesman Australian National University

  How do people in revolutionary situations recognise one another civilly? How do they practice recognition through relations of reciprocity and obligation? Can these practices lead to new, more inclusive and equitable notions of citizenship? What implications are there for delivery of public services in these conditions? While these questions are relevant to all revolutionary situations, this paper asks them of post-2021 Myanmar. It does that for a number of reasons. First, the concept of sovereign power has historically dominated theories of citizenship in Myanmar. Second, those theories have been weaponised to destroy or obstruct mutuality among people inhabiting the same territory, and justify military atrocity, including genocide of the Rohingya minority. Third, people in Myanmar who until recently acted on or acquiesced to these theories have since the coup demonstrated new forms of solidarity. Though conflict has had disastrous consequences for people’s lives and livelihoods, one reason that state military attacks on civilian targets have been severe and sustained, the paper posits, is that evolving practices of reciprocity and obligation to meet essential needs for public services pose a genuine threat to military dictatorship. It is through these practices that people in Myanmar can imagine forms of citizenship independent of sovereign power of a sort upon which the military state depends.

• Negotiating solidarity: Political imaginaries and collective struggle in revolutionary Myanmar Cécile Medail University Palacky Olomouc

  The post-coup revolution in Myanmar has evolved into a self-sustaining struggle, continually renewed through the participation of diverse actors across social, ethnic, and generational lines. Rather than a unified movement, it is shaped by a multiplicity of experiences, positionalities, and political imaginaries, raising questions about how collective action is forged and maintained under conditions of repression and violence.
  Drawing on a participatory research approach, this paper offers a snapshot of an ongoing process of meaning-making that explores how solidarity operates within and across groups in revolutionary Myanmar. It examines how activists and grassroots communities build, negotiate and contest solidarities and how actors across ethnic, gender, and generational lines imagine relations of mutual obligation and collective struggle. In doing so, it considers how these practices reshape power, belonging, and exclusion and reflects on what these dynamics reveal about the social foundations of Myanmar’s revolutionary movement and the possibilities for a more inclusive and equitable future.

• Reconfiguring Youth Agency in Myanmar: From Peaceful Protest to Revolutionary and Diaspora-Driven Mobilization Makiko Takeda Aichi Gakuin University Sabe Amthor Soe Burma Centre in Prague

  This study examines the role of youth, particularly Generation Z, in Myanmar’s ongoing struggle for democracy following the 2021 military coup. It focuses on how young people have emerged as central actors in a renewed people power movement, demonstrating resilience, political agency, and innovative forms of resistance against authoritarian rule. Unlike previous generations, Gen Z has mobilized both online and offline spaces to challenge the legitimacy of the military regime, forging new alliances with Ethnic Resistance Organizations (EROs), civil society actors, and the Myanmar diaspora.
  The analysis situates these developments within Myanmar’s longer history of military dominance since 1962, interrupted only by a brief democratic transition (2016–2021) under the National League for Democracy (NLD). It argues that the current movement represents a significant transformation in both the scale and nature of resistance, characterized by decentralized leadership, intersectional demands, and a strong commitment to inclusive federal democracy.
  The findings suggest that Myanmar’s Gen Z is not only resisting authoritarianism but also redefining the contours of political participation and nation-building. Their engagement reflects a broader shift toward more inclusive, participatory visions of democracy, offering critical insights into the dynamics of contemporary resistance movements under conditions of protracted crisis.

• Women, Governance and Spring Revolution Jenny Hedström Swedish Defence Univeristy

  In this paper, we explore how women’s rights are mobilized and interpreted in the context of emerging new alliances and governance structures in the context of ongoing Spring Revolution. Amid ongoing war, significant time is spent on consultative processes related to gender issues. Despite widespread destruction and displacement, a range of actors from armed groups to the new political institutions are developing gender equality policies and new organizational structures and units dedicated to the promotion of gender equality. This contrasts sharply with how in many liberation struggles and revolutions, women have seen their demands for rights and equality deferred, treated as issues of secondary importance to be dealt with later - when the war is won, or the goals of the revolution achieved (Enloe 2004). Why has gender equality received such heightened political salience in the current context of war, resistance and revolution in Myanmar, and how is this shaping the emerging political order?

• Borderland Solidarity and Activism Above and Below the Ground Emily Hong Haverford College

  The 2021 military coup in Myanmar was as much continuation as rupture in Kachinland. For Kachin activists, it marked less a break than an intensification of decades-long struggles for self-determination—drawing on what I call borderland solidarity, the concept at the heart of my new book Borderland Solidarity: Indigenous Law, Media, and Environmental Activism in Kachinland (2026).
  In this presentation, I outline borderland solidarity as an analytical lens for understanding how shared political affects—the renewed hope, fervor, or resilience that emerges from a small community ceremony to a mass march—sustain activism for the long haul. Central to this framework is the Kachin concept of zin lum, a social affect that recursively links community feeling with collective action. I argue that the underground, aboveground, and cross-border activist infrastructures cultivated over decades of military rule have shaped the texture of resistance after the coup in ways that are only visible from the borderlands.
  I examine two practices through which activists pursue self-determination and exercise de facto governance: the drafting of semi-autonomous Indigenous land law, and the production of karaoke music videos. While lawmaking requires a provisional settling of ideological differences—e.g. between federalism and independence—the production of music videos uniquely holds open a wider spectrum of political visions without resolving tensions between them.
  Drawing on clips from my documentary Above and Below the Ground (2023), I show how prior movement foundations intersect with and animate coup resistance in Kachinland—illuminating longer histories of struggle that have shaped, and continue to shape, the possibilities for Indigenous self-governance.

Part 2

• Any Risks of Myanmar’s (Potential) Balkanization? Chosein Yamahata Aichi Gakuin University Ma Thida PEN Germany

  As ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and ethnic revolutionary organisations (EROs) consolidate control over different parts of the country, central authority in Myanmar has become increasingly fragmented. These changing territorial dynamics also carry implications beyond Myanmar’s borders, particularly for regional strategic competition between China and India. With no clear outcome yet in the Myanmar Spring Revolution, this paper argues that the country could face a gradual process of fragmentation resembling slow-moving balkanisation. The weakening of authority under the State Administration Council (SAC) risks producing a patchwork of competing political and security zones in which external powers may seek to develop economic and security ties with different local actors. While both China and India may have concerns about instability along their borders, these conditions may also create opportunities to expand influence in contested areas. At the same time, the longer-term consequences for the people of Myanmar remain uncertain, particularly if territorial fragmentation becomes further entrenched in the aftermath of the coup. Recognising these risks is important for ensuring that discussions of the ongoing revolution also consider its potential long-term political and societal effects.

• Revolution and Humanitarianism Towards a Pluralistic State Dustin Barter Overseas Development Institute Hkaung Stella Naw University of Guelph

  Myanmar’s ongoing pluralistic state-building project is driven by a wide array of resistance actors, such as the Kachin Independence Organisation and the Karenni Interim Executive Council. Far from being reducible to insurgent groups, these actors hold local legitimacy and perform core state functions—providing education, healthcare, security, and other essential services. Their ability to allocate resources for humanitarian response further demonstrates their capacity to govern. While international aid efforts remain largely confined to junta-controlled areas, Myanmar’s civil society actors deftly navigate such governance dynamics and have unparalleled access to contested and liberated areas. This work is critical and forms the backbone of humanitarian response across the country that forms an integral part of the broader revolutionary state-building process. Civil society and ethnic resistance organisations together constitute a pluralistic state. Civil society groups help shape policy and hold governing actors accountable, while service delivery, in this context, is not simply about meeting basic needs, it is a form of community justice, especially for Indigenous Peoples and ethnic minorities. For many within this emerging political order, the revolution is not only a struggle against military rule but also the pursuit of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. International actors must recognise and engage with this reality instead of deferring to ill-suited notions of neutrality that obscure the political landscape.

• How fiscal governance emerges despite the conflict: The case of Karenni State Aye Aye Htun Erfurt University

  Following the 2021 military coup attempt, the junta authority collapsed and lost control of financial resources and public administration in resistance-controlled areas. Accordingly, the ongoing civil war also created a patchwork of different public administrations in the territory, each with its own system of revenue generation and expenditure. However, little is known about how fiscal relations develop under resistance control. This article examines how fiscal relations have emerged and institutionalised in Karenni State, Myanmar. Combining document analysis with key informant interviews and fieldwork, findings show that fiscal governance in Karenni has emerged through a four-stage process of fiscal reallocation: state fiscal collapse, substitution of fiscal capacity via community financing, hybrid extraction by non-state actors, and the institutionalisation of fiscal structures under the Karenni State Interim Arrangement (KSIA). The findings contribute to debates on state formation, rebel governance, and federalism, and demonstrate how bottom-up fiscal federalism can emerge during civil war.

• Islamophobia and Majoritarian Nationalism in Myanmar, Colonial Legacies and the Politics of Reconstruction (Working Title) by Minn Tent Bo Minn Tent Bo Burma Campaign UK

  A few years after the coup, there has been a resurgence in the spread of hate speech on social media, as well as in local media outlets, describing the Rohingya, as well as all Muslims, as a threat to national security. Consequently, the harassment and loss of property and the restrictions of freedom of movement continue to plague these communities to this day. This research examines the impact of on-going religious tensions, especially the still strong Islamophobia and sentiments, the social media racial impact of Burmese Muslims both in countries and abroad. The utilised explanatory framework combines analysis of Bamar Buddhist majoritarian and violent nationalism, colonial legacies and patriarchal oppression to understand the function and causes of these abuses while situating them in their historical context. Looking to the future, the communities that could be created from the legacy of these racial abuses is explored - that the legacy of these harms could be used as a political resource for rebuilding the society through a focus on reconciliation together with the justice, or the Muslim minority can be part of the centrepiece in reconstruction.

Abstract

Keywords

• Balkanisation
• China–India competition
• Islamophobia
• Karenni State
• Myanmar
• Myanmar youth
• citizenship
• colonial legacies
• diaspora empowerment
• emerging governance
• fiscal governance
• fiscal relations
• governing
• illicit economy
• justice
• military coup
• nationalism
• patriarchal oppression
• people power revolution
• post-coup Myanmar
• public services
• reconciliation
• revolution
• sovereignty
• state fragmentation
• youth agency