How Legislators Frame Contentious Megaprojects

Insights from Parliamentary Debates on Letpadaung Mines and Myitsone Dam in Myanmar

Bibliographic Data

ID12349698
AuthorsRenaud Egreteau (0000-0002-8222-6737, City University of Hong Kong, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume48
Issue2
Pages331-351
Publication date2023-06-19
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-7823 • E-ISSN: 1467-8403
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10357823.2023.2212124
OpenAlexW4381250376
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited44

Little is known about how legislative actors engage with social movements in framing contests over conflictual policy issues. This article investigates the case of Myanmar and enquires into how such framing activity can play out in a resurgent legislature. It focuses on two megaprojects that generated intense public debate during the country’s decade of liberalisation (2011–2021): the Letpadaung mines and the Myitsone dam. It builds on the analysis of the Union legislature’s plenary records across two legislatures to uncover how legislators contextualised and framed such large-scale infrastructure projects and the social conflicts they have caused. The findings reveal that legislators sought to position themselves as informed policy actors, eager to highlight the misconduct of past regimes, while deploying three major frames involving good governance, environmental damage, and injustice related to land expropriation. Yet legislators addressing such megaprojects largely avoided emotionally loaded narratives and nationalistic tropes that other social actors in Myanmar typically mobilised. The findings make a threefold contribution: they enhance our theoretical understanding of how public officials engage in competitive framing processes, advance knowledge of how issue framing was deployed in policymaking during Myanmar’s decade of democratisation, and provide evidence of how its political elites construed controversial megaprojects

Contentious politics · Democracy · Democratization · Framing (construction · Legislature · Liberalization · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Public Administration