Articles by: Nick Cheesman

Author Biography:

Nick Cheesman is a fellow in the Department of Political and Social Change, Australian National University. He is the author of Opposing the Rule of Law: How Myanmar’s Courts Make Law and Order (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is working on a political lexicon of Myanmar, for publication in 2022.

Where the People Are: Myanmar’s armed resistance and rehabilitation of ‘the People’ as revolutionary actor

All seizures of government have unanticipated consequences. The 2021 coup in Myanmar has had many. One of the most remarkable is that the military has inadvertently rehabilitated ‘the People’ as a primary category for political action.

Revolution in Myanmar

Whereas the military junta sanctions its violence through a conception of state sovereignty as commandment, its opponents upend this repressive notion of power by investing the popular will, the power to constitute political order anew, in theirs.