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After the watershed 2008 election when the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition lost its customary two-thirds control of parliamentary seats, there was the not unreasonable expectation that BN would slip even further in the much-anticipated Thirteenth General Election of 2013, which is the subject of this book. In the event, the BN lost the popular vote to the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) but still retained the reins of government. In this book, prominent Malaysian specialists and experts will provide the reader with fresh insights into the evolving character of electoral politics by delving into its failing model of consociationalism, the extent of malapportionment in the electoral system and its effects on outcomes, how 'new politics' continue to meet the resistance of old modes of political behaviour, the path-dependence analysis of twin-coalition politics, the significance of the FELDA vote bank, the issues animating electoral politics in Sabah, Sarawak, Terengganu and Johor, why the PR continues to command urban support, the role of the biased mainstream media, and details of the campaign strategies of both coalitions. In this new study of Malaysia's electoral politics, it is evident that the ruling coalition has lost its first-mover advantage and is only able to hold on to power due to the first-past-the-post (FPTP) single member plurality electoral system. This sort of system has given rise, in the parlance of electoral studies, to 'manufactured majorities', that is, electoral outcomes that confer a majority of seats (simple or large) to a single party or a coalition of parties without commanding a majority of the popular vote. Malaysia's FPTP system, imbued as it is with a generous proportion of 'rural weightage', continues to favour the BN, oftentimes generating large manufactured parliamentary majorities. While some may argue that electoral politics have reached an impasse, after two general elections, Malaysia's twin-coalition system seems to have gained some traction and, thanks to its federalism, with the PR having considerable control of state governments in the Malay heartland and of the more urbanized states of Selangor and Penang.
Malaysia will hold its 14th general election before August 2018, bringing renewed focus on the nature of political competition in the country. This paper provides a systematic overview of the electoral process and an assessment of how it shapes the country's political environment. Political competition in Malaysia is extensively manipulated to provide the incumbent government substantial advantages in elections. Most of the manipulations are a result of institutional bias during the pre-election phase. They create a fundamentally uneven playing field that has entrenched the political dominance of the UMNO-led coalition. Electoral manipulations impose numerous costs. These include direct costs like the inefficient allocation of resources, as well as indirect costs like the exacerbating of ethnic divisions. Both channels hinder Malaysia's efforts to reach further developmental milestones. The high degree of electoral manipulation in Malaysia, juxtaposed against its successful developmental record and relative social stability, makes the country an important case for the growing body of research on electoral integrity and malpractice.
The results of Malaysia's 14th General Elections of May 2018 were unexpected and transformative. Against conventional wisdom, the newly reconfigured opposition grouping Pakatan Harapan (PH) decisively defeated the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN), ending six decades of uninterrupted dominant one-party rule. Despite a long-running financial scandal dogging the ruling coalition, pollsters and commentators predicted a solid BN victory or, at least, a narrow parliamentary majority. Yet, on the day, deeply rooted political dynamics and influential actors came together, sweeping aside many prevailing assumptions and reconfiguring the country's political reality in the process. In order to understand the elections and their implications, this edited volume brings together contributions from ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute researchers and a group of selected collaborators to examine the elections from three angles: campaign dynamics; important trends among major interest groups; and local-level dynamics and developments in key states. This analytical work is complemented by personal narratives from a selection of GE-14 participants.
Malaysia's 2018 election (GE14) brought down a ruling party in power since independence in 1957. This book tells the full story of this historic election, combining a sharp analysis of the voting data with consideration of the key issues, campaign strategies, and mobilization efforts that played out during the election period in April and May 2018. This analysis is then used to bring fresh perspectives to bear on the core debates about Malaysian political ideas, identities and behaviours, debates that continue to shape the country's destiny. However optimistic many Malaysians may be for the possibility of a more representative, accountable, participatory, and equitable polity, the authors do not see GE14 as a clear harbinger of full-on liberalization in Malaysia. While the political aftermath of the election continues to play out, the authors provide a clarion call for deeper, more critical, more comparative research on Malaysia's politics. They complicate well-known angles on and elevate too-little-studied dimensions of Malaysian politics, and suggest agendas for empirically interesting, theoretically relevant further research. They also point to the broader insights Malaysia's experience provides for the study of elections and political change in one-party dominant states around the world.
The Malaysian political system incorporates a mix of democratic and authoritarian characteristics. In this comprehensive account, Harold Crouch argues that, while they may appear contradictory, the responsive and the repressive features of the system combine in an integrated and coherent whole. Consistently dominated by the Malay party UMNO, which represents the largest ethnic group, the Malaysian government requires the support of its Chinese, Indian, and East Malaysian minorities to retain control. The need to appeal to a politically and ethnically divided electorate restrains the arbitrary exercise of power by the ruling coalition. As a result, the government responds to popular aspirations, particularly since a split in the dominant Malay party in the 1980s. Yet it also controls the electoral process, ensuring victory in all national elections. Communal, social, and economic factors have all contributed in rather ambiguous ways to shaping the Malaysian political system. Communal tensions, change in the class structure, and the consequences of economic growth have generated pressures in both democratic and authoritarian directions. The government has been remarkably stable despite sharp ethnic divisions and, Crouch suggests, it is unlikely to move swiftly toward full democracy in the near future.
How do discontented masses and opposition elites work together to engineer a change in electoral authoritarian regimes? Social movements and elections are often seen as operating in different terrains – outside and inside institutions, respectively. In this Element, I develop a theory to describe how a broad-based social movement that champions a grievance shared by a wide segment of the population can build alliances across society and opposition elites that, despite the rules of the game rigged against them, vote the incumbents out of power. The broad-based nature of the movement also contributes to the cohesion of the opposition alliance, and elite defection, which are often crucial for regime change. This Element examines the 2018 Malaysian election and a range of cases from other authoritarian regimes across Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa to illustrate these arguments.
In recent social research, ethnicity has mostly been used as an explanatory variable. It was only after it was agreed that ethnicity, in itself, is subject to change, were the questions of how and why it changes, possible to answer. This multiplicity of ethnic identities requires that we think of each society as one with multiple ethnic dimensions, of which any can become activated in the process of political competition - and sometimes several of them within a short period of time. Focusing on Malaysia and Indonesia, this book traces the variations of ethnic identity by looking at electoral strategies in two sub-national units. It shows that ethnic identities are subject to change - induced by calculated moves by political entrepreneurs who use identities as tools to maximize their chances of winning elections or expanding support base - and highlights how political institutions play an enormous role in shaping the modes and dynamics of these ethno-political manipulations. The book suggests that in societies where ethnic identities are activated in politics, instead of analysing politics with ethnic distribution as an independent variable, ethnic distribution can be taken as the dependent variable, with political institutions being the explanatory one. It examines the problems of voters’ behaviour, and parties’ and candidates’ strategy in a polity that is, to a significant extent, driven by ethnic relations. Pushing the boundaries of qualitative research on Southeast Asian politics by placing formal institutions at the centre of its analysis, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Politics, Race and Ethnic Studies, and International Relations.
Beginning in 2005 as a small electoral reform initiative, the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections, known as Bersih, became the most prominent social movement in Malaysia. Based on participant observation approach and first-hand interviews with key actors, this book examines how Bersih became a movement that aggregated the collective grievance of Malaysians and brought Malaysian sociopolitical activism to a new level. This book makes a major contribution to the scholarly work on social movement theories in the Southeast Asian context and to the growing literature on social movements and democratization.
Johor is a key battleground in Malaysia’s 14th General Elections. The state is economically vital to the country: it is the birthplace of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO); and it has a large number of parliamentary seats. Johor-specific dynamics that have worked to the advantage of the ruling coalition include: UMNO’s unique links with the state; the tight control over religion; and the phenomenal scale and success of the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) scheme. Despite these advantages, support for the ruling coalition has been slipping across the state. Furthermore, the emergence of new parties such as Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PPBM) will challenge Barisan Nasional’s control over Johor’s rural and Malay heartland. The redelineation of parliamentary and state constituencies now underway is however likely to benefit BN, and recent survey data indicate that Johoreans are yet to be attracted to the reconfigured opposition coalition, Pakatan Harapan. Thus, while BN may suffer a drop in support, it is likely to retain power in Johor.