It must be time to dust off elite theory and use it to structure analysis of Myanmar politics. Parallel exercises have already been undertaken in many other East Asian states, and there’s no reason whatsoever for this part of the region to be left out of the picture. At Murdoch University at the end of May, I participated in a workshop with Dr Htwe Htwe Thein from Curtin University, and discovered that she’s doing great research on Myanmar’s 11 major crony families. However, I don’t know whether elite theory frames her study.

The classic statement was made by C Wright Mills in The Power Elite, published in 1956. This passage is from the opening two pages of his book: “The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences… They rule the big corporations. They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives. They direct the military establishment. They occupy the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective means of the power and the wealth and the celebrity which they enjoy.”

Mills was describing America in the mid-1950s. It takes zero imagination to see that his work is directly relevant to Myanmar in the mid-2010s.