自從1962年便落入軍事威權統治的緬甸，在2010年11月7日舉行自1990年以來首次的聯邦與地方議會大選，並在2011年3月30日隨著新總統登盛的宣誓就職，而從軍政府正式轉型至文人政府。此後登盛政府進行了一系列改革措施，頗令人耳目一新。本文主旨在解讀緬甸自1948年獨立以來的政治發展，並將2011年以降的政治改革放在威權政體尋求政治正當性的歷史脈絡中來觀察，而認為當軍政府的國內正當性鞏固工程在本世紀初面臨因經濟困境所產生的瓶頸，而需要國際正當性的加持之時，政治改革作為其獲得國際正當性的最重要來源，便勢在必行。然而，不論從其新憲法內容、軍方勢力、國內族群衝突、與政黨政治情勢來看，緬甸在短期內似乎並不會朝向西方世界理想中的實質民主化，而比較可能是藉由諸項程序性民主制度的建立與運行，鞏固以軍方為支持後盾（或制衡底線）的「民選政府」的執政正當性。

The Burmese military has been successful in maintaining its authoritarian rule in the past decades. In 2011, however, the junta shifted its power to the civilian government despite the absence of inside or outside political pressure. Since then, the new government has introduced many reforms that allow greater political liberty in Burma. This paper locates the junta’s power shift as part of a wider process of the military consolidating political legitimacy. It argues that as the junta’s power consolidation reached its bottleneck in the 2000s, political reforms were imperative prerequisites for international legitimacy and economic development. Yet, regarding aspects of the new constitution, military-civilian power relationships, and ethnic minority-central government relations, it remains to be seen whether Burma will move toward actual democratization, or continue to be a hybrid regime in which democratic institutions such as elections are merely the military’s tools of legitimation.