Political support in an ethnically divided society: a case study of Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Many studies have identified ethnic divisions as an obstacle to successful democratization. The present study examines political attitudes among ethnic majority Malays and two minority communities, Chinese and Indians, in Malaysia, a country which took a step toward democratization with a change of national government in 2018, yet seems to have reverted to single-party dominance. Utilizing survey data from 2006 to 2019, we compare attitudes at four levels of political support among the three ethnic communities: rejection of authoritarian regimes, confidence in public institutions, engagement in channels of political participation, and national pride. The availability of data collected after 2018 allows us to detect changes following the country’s first national-level power alternation. Empirical analysis reveals that in recent years the Chinese are significantly more likely to reject non-democratic regime alternatives to democracy compared with the ethnic majority Malays. Moreover, the Chinese community's long-held distrust in the government, parliament, judiciary and civil service has faded by 2019, suggesting a change of attitude brought by the 2018 election. On the other hand, while all three ethnic groups express some degree of national pride in the surveys, ethnic minorities are less likely to be very proud of being Malaysian compared with ethnic Malays.

KEYWORDS:

• Political Support
• Political Trust
• Ethnic Minorities
• National Pride
• Public Opinion
• Malaysia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This refers to the strip of land extending from southern Thailand up to Singapore.

2 This refers to Malaysian territory on the island of Borneo, where around half of the population consist of aboriginal Orang Asal who are classified as Bumiputera. Given this numerical strength in Sabah and Sarawak, they have sometimes exerted significant influence on government composition at the national level.

3 According to a Merdeka Centre study (cited in Ufen, 2020)., 95% of Chinese and 70–75% of Indian voted for Pakatan Harapan, but only 25–30% of Malay voters did so.

4 For instance, Chinese participation in the Reformasi street protests of the late 1990s was significantly lower than Malays.

5 Data from the World Values Survey can be downloaded from http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/. Information on Asian Barometer data can be found at http://www.asianbarometer.org. The authors gratefully acknowledge the investigators of these projects for making the surveys available. Unfortunately ethnicity was not asked in Malaysia in the 2007 and 2011 modules of Asian Barometer.

6 Respondents identifying as Kadazan, Iban, Bidayuh and Melanau, who are indigenous to the states of Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia, are excluded since they do not belong to the three main ethnic groups examined here.

7 For example, Richard Malanjum as chief justice and Tommy Thomas as the attorney general. Both are non-Malay and non-Muslim.

8 The WVS question contains several response categories on the population of respondents’ place of residence, while the ABS simply distinguishes between rural and urban residency.

9 The Perikatan Nasional (National Alliance), composed of UMNO, the Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and Bersatu (PPBM), came to power in March 2020 after attracting defectors from the previous Pakatan Harapan government. They were backed by Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), which was not part of the coalition but included in the cabinet. However, the Perikatan Nasional administration collapsed in August 2021 as a result of UMNO’s withdrawal of support.

10 This can be illustrated by the August 2020 Slim state by-election. Since Malays comprise nearly 75 percent of the electorate, it would make no difference for the Chinese and Indian minorities to vote against the candidate preferred by the Malay majority, so the latter groups tend to ‘go with the flow.’ We are grateful to a reviewer for drawing our attention to this point. Unfortunately no data is available on which constituencies respondents lived in, so we are unable to empirically test this proposition.

11 For example, see https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2010/04/01/muhyiddin-i-am-amalay-first-and-malaysian-at-heart/ and https://thediplomat.com/2020/03/malaysias-malay-first-malaise/. We thank one of the reviewers for kindly bringing this issue to our attention.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Willy Jou

Willy Jou is an associate professor at the School of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University.

Kok Hin Ooi

Kok Hin Ooi is a doctoral student at the Department of Political Science, State University of New York at Albany.