Myanmar (also known as Burma) stands today as having had the world’s longest civil war, which was followed by a nominal political transition from military authoritarianism to democracy. However, whether Myanmar actually becomes a more democratic polity and society will depend on peacebuilding processes among diverse ethnic groups. In some ways, Myanmar's path to Hobbesian peace under Leviathan can be seen as the longest struggle to consolidate state power in Southeast Asia. Myanmar is ethnically and culturally the second most diverse country in Southeast Asia, with 135 ethnic groups, following Indonesia. Myanmar now openly faces enduring ethnic conflicts and wars, as well as ethno-religious conflicts between Arakan nationalist Buddhist communities and Muslim communities in Rakhine State. Numerous international observers have described the brutal crackdown on Rohingya Muslims by the Burmese quasi-military government composed of Buddhist Burmese and ethnic leaders, including 1991 Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing. Myanmar also faces land-grab conflicts, and conflict within Buddhist communities with the rise of nationalist groups. Under these social and political conditions, Myanmar’s uncertain transition from military authoritarianism toward democracy has drawn much-needed scholarly attention.

Against this backdrop, Matthew J. Walton’s Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar attempts to unravel the critical and contentious role of Theravada Buddhism in Burmese politics and political thought. Walton does this through the lenses of elites in both the Buddhist community, or Sangha, and political establishments within power politics. His main argument is “that, in order to understand the political dynamics of contemporary Myanmar, it is necessary to understand the interpretations of Buddhist concepts that underlay much of modern Burmese political thought” (p. 3). Walton also adds that perhaps this discourse and argument might help delineate the framework of Burmese Buddhism (p. 9). He describes his intended audience as “individuals situated outside that tradition and its specific moral tradition” (p. 21). By specifying his audience in this way, he makes clear that one of his purposes in writing the book is “to insist that there is such a thing as Burmese political thinking and that often it does not neatly overlap with common Western political concepts” (pp. 129–30).

The author then lays out the conceptual framework of his argument through analysis of: 1) the Burmese notion of the moral universe based on Theravada Buddhism and Burmese cosmology (Chaps. 1 and 2); 2) Burmese notions of human nature and how it relates to the Burmese moral universe based on two classical Buddhist texts, the Agganna sutta and Cakkavatti sutta, which are sermons or discourses of the Buddha (Chap. 3); 3) Burmese notions of political freedom and order based on the moral universe and human nature by way of political elites’ discourse on freedom and order during the British colonial era and the postcolonial era (Chap. 4); 4) how the contemporary meaning and actions of politics are intricately tied to the “building blocks” of the Burmese moral universe, human nature, politics, political freedom, and order (Chaps. 5 and 6); and finally 5) how democracy and the politics of democratic transition cannot avoid their “roots in Buddhist concepts” as underlying forces in the polity (Chap. 6 and Conclusion).

Walton shows how the Burmese moral universe is largely defined through the Buddhist concepts of self and nonself, kan or kamma (the framework of action and outcomes), lawki (the worldly realm, or the realm pertaining to the present world), and lawkouttara (the realm free from being subject to kan, or a realm free from worldly desires and attachments). The dynamic relationship between lawki realm activities and lawkouttara realm aspirations in life regulate the nature and dynamics of kan. A Buddhist Burmese person, therefore, ought to take both of these concepts into consideration when facing moral choices to act in this life. This struggle in the Buddhist Burmese mind ultimately should influence how Buddhists engage or disengage in politics, or take part in perceptively good and bad deeds that define the essence of one’s kan (Chap. 3). For example, one of the reasons why military dictators claimed to discontinue their authoritarian exercise of power over the population, or why former President U Thein Sein ordained himself as a monk after his party lost the election in 2015, can be explained through such an analytical lens. Walton thus posits the characteristics of the Burmese Buddhist moral universe as the foundational landscape of Burmese political thought. He argues that this moral universe plays a fundamental role in the definition of politics, political participation, political freedom, political order, and eventually in the conception of “democracy” in Myanmar, itself. He also proposes that all of these concepts do not neatly overlap with Western concepts.

Walton’s argument has three important implications. The first is that the existence of the individual in Burmese political and social life is simultaneously driven by both self and surrounding others through the Theravadan Buddhist concept of kamma (in Sanskrit) or the Burmese concept of kan, which ought to define the framework of an individual’s action and inaction. The second important implication of Walton’s study is to separate politics as a moral practice from politics as a rational practice, and posit that, ideally, Burmese political thought treats politics within what the author calls a “moral universe” framed under Buddhist concepts. The third implication is that to study and understand Burmese political thought and life (and to understand other distinct forms of political life in the world), it is critical for scholars to be aware of not only the usefulness but also the limitations of Western theoretical and philosophical concepts, because often there are not overlapping concepts that can neatly be translated and applied in non-Western contexts.

Having said that, Walton (or his publisher) was a little too eager to claim this as “the first book to provide a broad overview of the ways in which Buddhist ideas influenced political thinking and politics in Myanmar” (on the first unnumbered page and the back cover of the book). There have been several historical works, as well as a number of recent scholarly analyses of Burmese society since the early 1700s that offer more comprehensive and in-depth interpretations of Buddhism’s influence on Burmese political and social life. These include the authors of several notable books cited by Walton, such as Melford E. Spiro’s Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes (1970), and Emanuel Sarkisyanz’s Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution (1965). These earlier scholarly works explore how Buddhist ideas and Burmese cosmology continue to influence politics in Myanmar (see also Mya Maung, “Cultural Value and Economic Change in Burma,” 1964; Tun Myint, “Roots of Democracy in Burma,” in Aurelian Craiutu and Sheldon Geller, eds., Tocqueville and Global Democratic Revolution in 21st Century, 2009, and “Buddhist Political Thought,” in Michael T. Gibbons et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of Political Thought, 2014). Scholars who are interested in more insight on the notion of power in Myanmar will also benefit from reading Guillaume Rozenberg’s two books, Renunciation of Power: The Quest for Sainthood in Contemporary Burma (2010) and The Immortal: Faces of the Incredible in Buddhist Burma (2015). Lastly, scholars who are interested in Buddhist political theory will benefit from reading Matthew J. Moore’s more accessible broad overview on the topic in Buddhism and Political Theory (2016).

In short, Walton’s book is a bit thin in its literature review on Myanmar and Buddhism, in that Walton omits or ignores several important books and articles that directly address the tenets of the Burmese Buddhist moral universe, such as the concepts of intention, action, karma (kan), Burmese cosmology, tradition, and the day-to-day thinking of people in contemporary Myanmar.

All books attempting to be comprehensive and to provide a broad overview of political phenomena suffer weaknesses in critical and in-depth analysis of theoretical foundations. Buddhism, Politics and Political Thought in Myanmar is mainly interpretative and descriptive. The book is theoretically less rigorous in its critical interpretation of why and how contemporary Burmese notions of human nature are distinctly similar to, yet different from, important Buddhist teachings. For example, a major weakness of the book is its omission of the way in which power is perceived in Burmese political thought, and how it can be interpreted using Buddhist concepts in Myanmar, sometimes in ways that contort and transmogrify Buddhism’s basic teachings. Nevertheless, this work is valuable in that Walton amplifies points made by earlier scholars of Myanmar that Burmese politics and political thought have distinct roots in Buddhist concepts of the moral universe, cosmology, and experience. It also inevitably raises the question of how any Burmese Buddhist concepts could ever be used to justify the actions of successive military governments, which cracked down violently on people’s protests in 1988, Buddhist monks’ protests in 2007, and the crimes against Rohingya people in Rakhine State.