State Building and Authority in Karen State, Myanmar

The thesis “State-Building and authority in a legal plural setting in Karen State, Myanmar” focuses on the current transitional state-building process in Myanmar through a locally grounded perspective. It examines how authority and legitimacy is built locally in Karen State through the provision of rights and access to justice. Karen state is a legally plural setting where some areas are still fully or partly governed by the main ethnic armed organization (EAO), the Karen National Union (KNU) rather than the central Myanmar state. The KNU also has its own justice system. In the thesis the judicial system serves as a proxy for studying the state. The penetration of the state’s regulatory efficiency is examined through everyday dispute resolution. The thesis shows that local Karen people prefer to use informal justice institutions, like those of the village and the KNU, rather than the formal state institutions. This shows that informal institutions enjoy considerable legitimacy and authority. Conversely, the Myanmar state has not managed to build an institutional connection with local Karen residents due to the many years of conflictual relationship, lack of rights provision and low access to the formal judicial system.

The thesis is written by Marie Knakkergaard, Copenhagen University, who was an intern in the EverJust project from August 2016 to January 2017. Fieldwork was carried out in collaboration with other EverJust researchers, using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods.