This chapter provides an account of the sudden rise in demand for intermediaries in Myanmar after the opening up of the country to foreign aid and influence. It focuses on the competitive ‘market’ for rule of law intermediaries, showing how individuals have reinvented themselves as consultants, NGO leaders, and employees for international organisations and then how central are personality and linguistic ability when it comes to getting selected by foreign actors, as well as the important difference between often reluctant governmental intermediaries and those operating non-governmentally. The chapter also adds structure to the picture; these questions are significant because they reveal structural aspects of development aid as it operates in the rule of law sphere: for example, who gets to be included, who gets to exert influence, and why. The chapter concludes that intermediaries emerge because foreign development actors need the assistance of individuals who understand their aims and objectives, to navigate unfamiliar systems, and to reach out to potential counterparts as intermediaries of the rule of law.

This chapter charts what we know about intermediaries across settings and times in history, to provide a comparative perspective on their being within fields of development that broadly relate to interventions of law, regulation, rule of law, justice, and institutions. It focuses on the concept of the intermediary as an analytical means of identifying the social nodes in transnational networks of relative positions and power. It highlights the role that intermediaries play and the challenges they face, at the interfaces of different knowledge and value systems that appear as the development industry intervenes across the globe. It uses an inductive approach, which was key for locating individuals who played an intermediary role in Myanmar’s rule of law assistance field across several institutional positions: local lawyers; local NGOs; locally employed staff of international organisations; government employees; and international consultants. Despite their different roles and assignments, they all had in common having to perform the delicate task of relating larger, globally oriented ideas to the Myanmar locale, in a key middle position between foreign, national and local actors.

This chapter concerns the translation of the rule of law by and through intermediaries. The intermediaries change and distort the messages from their global employers and funders in order to make them palatable to local and national actors – and also to build their own local career trajectories. The chapter highlights the main translation challenges that rule of law practitioners experience and presents intermediaries’ insider perspectives on how they translate rule of law. By analysing the strategies that intermediaries use, the chapter concludes that intermediaries become influential in their role as translators. While Myanmar’s political history and reality have produced a semi-authoritarian form of rule of law, associations with formal aspects of the concept were initially enhanced by foreign promoters who brought in their versions of a concept they deemed modelled on international standards that were universal and non-negotiable.

The final chapter summarises the findings on the importance of understanding the role of intermediaries in rule of law assistance. As Myanmar struggled for foreign credibility and investment, the findings are also consistent with the global version – foreign actors’ influence and local dependence in societies where donors become an established but delicate feature of social, political, and economic life that people encounter on a daily basis. In this new landscape, intermediaries become responsible for navigating local and national institutions, values, and people. This book keeps both sides in view while focusing on the intermediaries. It also considers the extent to which the findings could be generalised beyond Myanmar and their practical implications for helping to advance enquiry into the field of rule of law assistance globally.

This chapter answers a set of central questions that concern intermediaries’ backgrounds, profiles, networks, and self-perceptions. It suggests that intermediaries’ backgrounds are important as they give an indication of whom they respond to as well as what their strategies and interests are. The chapter also analyses intermediaries’ capital (social and foreign) to show how the political capital that gave intermediaries local clout came in part from the risks that they took in favour of democratic ideals during the authoritarian period. The chapter shows that while rule of law intermediaries’ access to international capital ‘amplifies’ their work on rights-related issues at home, the use of foreign capital is not solely to intermediaries’ benefit because distrust of foreign interests affects the value of their capital. This ambivalence led intermediaries to apply different strategies to hide their connections to foreign actors. Still, they needed to be in a position where they could use their networked resources to channel aid money or development activities to local levels, in order to gain political influence.

I had travelled to Hpa-an, the capital of Myanmar’s eastern Karen state, for a chance to meet with a local lawyer who worked for several of the foreign-funded initiatives of rule of law assistance – defined here as foreign actors’ transnational ‘project’ of supporting legal systems in fragile settings – that were initiated in the country after its political opening in 2011. While usually based in Yangon, the lawyer was in Hpa-an for one of his regular training sessions with local activists and lawyers. On my way to our meeting, I walked through the pitch-black streets of the small town in a country I still did not know much about to meet a person whom I imagined would have little patience with a foreign researcher asking questions about his work. As I walked into the tiny shed of a restaurant where we were meeting, I saw Zaw Win Thein’s dazzling smile, and I felt a sense of instant relief. His personality was inviting and friendly.

This chapter presents the field of rule of law assistance as it became established in Myanmar after 2011. It introduces common rule of law actors and their technologies and provides a brief background to the political and legal features of the case study. While doing this, the chapter hints at the frictions of foreign-funded rule of law assistance that emerge because international, national, and local understandings and approaches to rule of law development differ and are challenging to align. It shows how intermediaries emerged to mediate between counterparts regarding issues such as monetary compensation; applications for funding; the best approach to achieve rule of law development; donor involvement in local affairs; and institutional constraints.

The initial period of democratization produced little change in levels of violence, because it had been mostly sporadic, localized, and of low intensity. Aside from occasional larger-scale operations under authoritarian rule, most state violence involved few soldiers in isolated areas, or violent crackdowns on demonstrators in main cities. On the Papuan side, the Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM) occasionally attacked military outposts or isolated soldiers. The main change, therefore, was a reduction in large-scale operations, except in border areas.

he absence of large-scale violence can be explained in large part by insurgent groups’ weak organizational capacity and lack of weapons. Furthermore, along with Papuan organizations more broadly, insurgent groups have been strongly divided. The OPM remained composed of divided factions under competing leadership.