"In the wake of the Cold War authoritarian regimes around the world adapted to the new political climate by embracing the form – though not necessarily the substance – of democracy. The outcome has been an increase in electoral authoritarian regimes, in which political positions are filled through multiparty elections. The defining feature of these regimes is that they hold regular elections that are not entirely free, fair, and competitive. On the contrary, the playing field under these regime is often tilted in favor of the ruling party (Schedler 2002b:3). These “hybrid regimes” defy simple classifications, challenge existing theories of democratization, and call into doubt some of the basic premises of the classic transition paradigm, which primarily revolves around elite-level bargaining (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986). The global rise of these regimes has triggered a wave of scholarship interested in explaining how such regimes fully democratize, how ruling parties are defeated at the ballot box (Levitsky and Way 2002; Bunce and Wolchik 2010), and whether the repeated holding of elections leads to further democratization (Staffan 2006; 2009). The central puzzle revolves around the following key questions: Why do elections serve to stabilize certain electoral authoritarian regimes yet undermine others? How do they matter? And how do elections stabilize or liberalize political regimes? This article contributes to this ongoing debate by exploring the case of Myanmar. As a case study, Myanmar helps us to identify further contextual factors and broaden our existing knowledge on electoral authoritarianism. Up till now, the fate of electoral authoritarian regimes has primarily been discussed with the help of statistical analysis and probability tests. Additionally, certain paradigmatic cases such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Mexico have been highlighted. By using the case of Myanmar, I am following Morse's lead of employing case studies to add more analytical leverage for theory building (Morse 2012). Myanmar’s long- standing military regime has seen impressive political changes since it held its first elections in 2010 after 22 years of direct military rule..."