Rights Consciousness in Malaysia: How an Electoral Reform Movement Fostered a Sense of Political Efficacy amongst Citizens

ABSTRACT

This article focusses on how Malaysia’s Bersih movement for clean and fair elections has played a role in fostering rights consciousness in society. We examine how the expectation that the Bersih movement would be successful in reaching its aims has been related to the development of a sense of individual political efficacy – the belief that people can influence the electoral process by exercising their political rights. We draw on findings from two longitudinal surveys conducted with a convenience sample of Malaysians before and after two critical events: the Bersih 5 protests in 2016, and the 14^th General Election (GE14) in 2018, which saw the fall of the Barisan Nasional regime after six decades of unbroken rule. Using this data, we argue that the expectation that Bersih would be successful has been important in shaping people’s perceptions of their own political efficacy. An increased sense of political efficacy was especially apparent among Chinese and Indian minorities, compared to the Malay majority, although all three groups reported higher levels of political efficacy after Bersih 5 and GE14. These findings reflect the rise in rights consciousness, and we discuss its importance in understanding Bersih’s role in shaping democratic transition, in Malaysia.

KEYWORDS:

• Bersih
• rights consciousness
• democratic transition
• political efficacy
• social movement
• Malaysia
• electoral reform

Acknowledgements

This article was first prepared for the “New Challenges for Rights Consciousness and Civil Society in Asia” workshop at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, 30–31 October 2018, organised by Ken Setiawan and Anthony Spires, and benefitted from the feedback of workshop participants.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by an internal grant from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Malaya under its Faculty Programme Grant (GPF005J-2019).