United States democracy assistance in Malaysia: the nature and impact of concurrent strategy

Abstract

This exploratory article seeks to analyze the nature and impact of one of the main democracy promoters in Malaysia i.e. the United States (US). The US is a promoter that is often being alleged with interfering with Malaysian domestic affairs, especially since the sacking of former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim in 1998. This article argues that the US democracy promotion in Malaysia can be conceptualized under the framework of a concurrent democracy assistance strategy. This is due to the fact that while the US is supporting the non-regime compatible program, it is also concurrently channeling bigger aid for regime-compatible program to Malaysia from 1999–2015. The improvement of diplomatic ties between both countries since post-Mahathir era and the prioritization of security issues have led to a more engaging conduct of democracy promotion. Despite the US continuous funding of non-regime-compatible programs through non-state actors, this approach was nevertheless balanced by cordial relations at the state level. Nevertheless, the effect of US democracy assistance and promotion on Malaysia’s democratic development has been minimal, reinforcing the views on the difficulty to promote democracy in a semi-authoritarian regime.

Keywords:

• Democracy assistance
• democracy promotion
• civil society
• regime change
• Malaysia and the United States bilateral relations

Acknowledgements

Both authors thank UKM; all informants involved for their input and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments which helped us to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This data is obtained from the Civil society and government (Sector 151) and conflict, peace and security (Sector 152).

2 Semi-authoritarian is a system that retains democratic features while at the same time preserves authoritarianism (see Ottaway, 2003).

3 Data collected from ‘Supporting human rights and democracy’: the US record (hereafter referred to as the Supporting Human Rights report) published by the State Department between 2003 and 2006 as well as data from the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur’s official website.

4 ‘Projek Warga’ was allocated USD 633,000, while ‘Islam Hadhari’ received USD 485,000.

5 From various sources, the total amount channeled by the Department of defence to Malaysia for both the IMET and NADR programs from 2000 to 2015 was estimated to be USD 35 million. The OECD data indicate that the second line of defence mega ports involved assistance with a cumulative amount of USD 22 million.

6 As opposed to the NED, which consistently publicizes its annual report in detail, TAF only publicizes detailed annual financing from 2005 to 2011.

7 The preparation of this article does not take into account the regime change that took place in Malaysia’s 14th General Election, held on May 9 2018. We did not include these developments as not to disturb the nature and scope of the original discussion.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by UKM via Research University Grant code GUP 2014-045.