Winning Hearts and Minds: Street-level Bureaucracy and Attachment to the State in Myanmar
Open AccessWhat determines ethnic minorities’ attachment to the state? This phenomenon attachment to the state is perceived in this dissertation as individuals’ identification with, affirmation of and loyalty to the state. Existing literature largely suggests macro-level factors to understand minority-state relations. In contrast, I propose a novel theory that highlights the role of everyday encounters with the state (i.e., interpersonal interactions between citizens and agents of the state in the street-level bureaucracy) in shaping ethnic minorities’ attachment to the state. I also argue that these bureaucratic encounters improve when the bureaucrats themselves are members of the same ethnic group as their ethnic minority clients. To evaluate the implications of these claims, I employ a mixed-methods approach and empirically study the ethnic politics of Myanmar. During 13 months of fieldwork, I conducted focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with over 100 ordinary citizens, civil servants and local experts, implemented an original survey in five local languages across 35 townships, and fielded a survey experiment. I find that ethnic minorities who have had positive encounters with street-level bureaucrats express more pride in their citizenship and stronger attachment to the state. This is the case even when their ethnicgroup is in direct conflict with the state.The dissertation consists of seven chapters: an introductory chapter, an integrated theory chapter, a chapter contextualizing the case of Myanmar, three empirical chapters that evaluate the observable implications of my theory, and a concluding chapter.
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