Territory, Politics, Governance, 9(4), 533–552.
This article by Annika Pohl Harrisson explores how state authority is made in a contested borderland where several political actors claim the right to govern. Focusing on south-east Myanmar, it examines the New Mon State Party (NMSP), an ethnic armed organisation that has long claimed to represent the Mon people and pursued self-representation in relation to the Myanmar state. The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in an area shaped by three overlapping state-making projects: the NMSP, the official Myanmar state and the Karen National Union (KNU). It argues that NMSP state-making does not take place in isolation from these other authorities. Instead, it emerges through what the article calls encompassed state-making: a process in which the NMSP both mimics and opposes other forms of state authority while attempting to establish its own legitimacy.