May 18, 2026

Democracy in the Twenty-first Century

Teresa Almeida Cravo

This thesis contributes to the study of political authority by coining and developing the original concept of the ritual state. The ritual state is defined as a model of political formation in which legitimacy is produced and sustained through the management of cosmological order, ritualized practices, and spatial transformation. The thesis addresses the overarching question of how political authority is constructed, sustained, and contested in contexts of authoritarian governance and political transitions. Situated within debates on political authority, it draws on ritual theory, religious studies, and spatial theory to explain how the ritual state operates as a distinctive form of authoritarian governance, particularly in settings where formal legal-rational legitimacy remains unstable. Within this broader inquiry, the thesis examines how the ritual state functions as a mechanism of political authority in authoritarian contexts, and how its ritual and cosmological foundations have been reconfigured in Myanmar from the socialist period to the immediate aftermath of the 2021 coup. It argues that political legitimacy within the ritual state is not solely a product of institutional design, coercion, or ideology, but is enacted through culturally embedded practices that organize space, regulate bodies, and produce moral order. Drawing on a practice-centered understanding of ritualization, the study conceptualizes ritual as a strategic mode of action through which political actors differentiate sacred and profane, center and margin, and legitimate and illegitimate. Methodologically, the analysis adopts an interpretive qualitative approach. It draws on extended fieldwork conducted between 2021 and 2023, including interviews with monks, astrologers, ritual specialists, political intermediaries, and military-affiliated actors, alongside participant observation and documentary analysis of ritual texts and state-linked religious practices. Empirically, the thesis traces the mobilization of ritualized space across four political phases: the late socialist period, military rule, hybrid governance, and the post-2021 coup landscape. It shows how successive regimes employed merit-making and pagoda construction to cultivate recognition and stabilize rule. It also documents how opposition actors appropriated these practices to challenge dominant claims, contributing to the fragmentation of ritual authority into decentralized forms of spiritual resistance following the 2021 coup. The thesis contributes to debates on authoritarianism by reconceptualizing legitimacy as a spatially enacted process sustained through routinized participation rather than internal belief. While grounded in Myanmar's political and religious context, it advances an analytically generalizable framework for examining the mechanisms through which ritual states enact, contest, and territorialize political authority.

Keywords: Authoritarianism, Buddhism, Democratization, Myanmar, Rituals