The State in Myanmar is a totally revised and expanded and updated version of The State in Burma (1987), with additional chapters covering the last twenty years of Myanmar's political history. It attempts to explain the country's current politics in the light of the historical evolution of state-society relations in Myanmar since the pre-colonial kings, through the colonial era to the current, and third, post-colonial regime in this strategically important and little studied South East Asian nation. The book explains the dramatic and unpredicted collapse of the previous socialist regime and the attempts by new and old political forces to wrest control of the state from a revitalised and increasingly confident military government. Myanmar's state builders have applied varying ideas in their attempts to fashion a stable political order in an often fractious and far from unified nation and The State in Myanmar places those experiences in comparative perspective.