Four arenas: Malaysia’s 2018 election, reform, and democratization

ABSTRACT

Malaysia’s 2018 election ended more than six decades of dominant party rule by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). Three questions are paramount. How did the opposition finally achieve victory? What did voters who rejected UMNO actually vote for? Finally, what do the answers imply for reform and democratization? We argue that Malaysia is comprised of four distinct identity-based polities, each with a unique electoral dynamic and vision for the country’s political future. Using this framework provides valuable insights into UMNO’s defeat, which was achieved by making inroads, largely through elite splits, into two arenas that were previously impenetrable for the opposition. One arena remains electorally pivotal and thus exerts a disproportionately large influence on the new government’s reform agenda, entrenching the primacy of identity politics and ensuring the continuity of many policies that address ethnic relations. The case illustrates the extensive impact of divided polities and regionalism on democratization.

KEYWORDS:

• Malaysia
• election
• ethnic politics
• identity
• democratization
• UMNO
• Pakatan Harapan
• reform
• regionalism

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We are also deeply grateful for discussant and audience feedback at the 2019 Association of Asian Studies, Western Political Science Association, and American Political Science Association conferences, as well as at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Nanyang Technological University, the National University of Malaysia (UKM), and GIGA Hamburg.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The coalition was known as “The Alliance” until 1973.

2 In the Malaysian context, these are the states and the essentialized Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Other (MCIO) ethnic categories.

3 For example, we would expect different voting behaviour from a middle-class Kuala Lumpur-based Malay, a rural Johor-based Malay, and a suburban Kelantan-based Malay. This within-group variation reduced the utility of the broader Malay category for understanding voting behaviour. Simultaneously, there is little need to distinguish between Kelantan and Terengganu, since voting behaviour is similar enough across the two states that the distinction only adds complexity without providing additional insight.

4 Gomez, “Resisting the Fall”; Brownlee, Authoritarianism; Slater, “Strong State Democratization”; Wong, Chin, and Othman, “Malaysia – towards a Topology.”

5 Cheah, Malaysia.

6 The Federation of Malaya expanded in 1963 to include the Bornean territories of Sabah and Sarawak as well as Singapore, after which it took the name Federation of Malaysia. Singapore left the federation in 1965, leaving the current 13 state arrangement.

7 Pepinsky, “Autocracy.”

8 Gomez, “Resisting the Fall”; Gomez, “Monetizing Politics.”

9 Gandhi and Ong, “Committed or Conditional Democrats?”

10 Ostwald, “Malaysia’s Electoral Process.”

11 Croissant and Lorenz, Comparative Politics, 154.

12 At present, Malays constitute approximately half of the population. The two largest minority groups (Chinese, 22%; Indians, 7%) are concentrated in the Peninsula. The remainder of the population is comprised of non-Malay indigenous groups found primarily in East Malaysia, as well as several other small groups.

13 Articles 152 and 153 of the Constitution respectively make Malay the official language and Islam the official religion. Moreover, the Constitution makes Islam the religion of all Malays and forbids apostacy. The term Bumiputera, however, never appears in the Constitution.

14 While the NEP formally expired in 1991, it was replaced by development plans that carried forward its essence. Gomez and Saravanamuttu, The New Economic Policy.

15 We use “tiered” citizenship to denote an informal ranking where the Malays and other Bumiputera enjoy a range of legally recognized privileges and advantages unavailable to other groups. See also Chin, “The Malaysian Chinese Dilemma.”

16 Puthucheary, “Malaysia’s ‘Social Contract’.”

17 Wong and Ooi, “Introduction”; Weiss, Protests and Possibilities; Noor, “Looking for Reformasi.”

18 Wong, “Constituency Delimitation”; Ostwald, “How to Win.”

19 Case, “Stress Testing Leadership.”

20 Nadzri, “The 14th General Election.”

21 See Ostwald, Schuler, and Chong, “Triple Duel,” for a set of counterfactual simulations that suggest the three-cornered fights had relatively little effect on the election outcome due to the territorial concentration of supporters.

22 Abdullah, “The Mahathir Effect”; Lemiere, “The Downfall”; Hutchinson, “Malaysia’s 14th General Elections.”

23 Slater, “Malaysia’s Modernization Tsunami”; Hutchinson, “Malaysia’s 14th General Elections”; Chan, “Democratic Breakthrough”; Saravanamuttu and Mohamad, “The Monetisation of Consent”; Dettman and Weiss, “Has Patronage Lost.”

24 Gomez and Mohamad Osman, Malaysia’s 14th General Election; Lemiere, Minorities Matter.

25 Hutchinson, “Malaysia’s 14th General Elections.”

26 We use a 50% Malay threshold for its simplicity, not because we suggest that it is a hard line after which a district’s political dynamic suddenly changes. We repeat the categorization using 60% and 67% Malay thresholds. Figures for these categorizations are available in the online supplementary material or from the authors upon request. While a small number of districts are categorized differently, the general conclusions remain unchanged. As such, we show only the 50% threshold.

27 While the arenas contain aspects of the urban/rural divide that has attracted attention, it ultimately remains distinct. See Ng et al., “The 2013 Malaysian Elections,” and Pepinsky, “Interpreting Ethnicity,” for a discussion of that framework.

28 In order to distinguish between Peninsula Malay and Diverse arenas, we use data on the ethnic composition of districts reported by Malaysia’s most widely circulated English language daily newspapers, the Star. See The Star Online. “GE14 – Results Overview.” The Star Online. Accessed May 9, 2019. https://election.thestar.com.my

29 Johor is an exception among the former Unfederated Malay States. Although it did not succumb to British pressure to accept a resident advisor until 1914 and thereby remained outside the Federated Malay States, it experienced similar levels of immigration and development as the Federated Malay States. As a result, it shares the similar demographics and higher level of development with them.

30 Kessler, Islam and Politics in a Malay State.

31 Chin, “Exporting the BN/UMNO Model,” 83.

32 For example, the dynamic we associate with the Northeast arena is present in some parts of Kedah and Perlis, while the Peninsula diverse dynamic describes political behaviour in some urban and semi-urban areas of East Malaysia. Nevertheless, the categorization presented here helps to orient thinking about important differences.

33 See Oliver and Ostwald, “Not Enough to Win Another,” who show that pro-BN partisan bias resulting from malapportionment provided UMNO and the BN with an even greater potential parliamentary seat advantage over PH in GE14 relative to GE13. Although UMNO failed to capitalize on this advantage in GE14 due to the collapse in its popular support relative to GE13, the prevailing electoral boundaries leave open the opportunity for a resurgent UMNO to capitalize on this in the next election.

34 Some aspects of the progressive narrative may reflect more what Eric Thompson calls an “urban cosmopolitan chauvinism” than broadly supported sentiments. See Thompson, “Urban Cosmopolitan Chauvinism.”

35 Warisan flipped six out of the 10 previously BN-held parliamentary seats in Sabah. Similarly, Bersatu flipped 12 out of 26 previously BN-held parliamentary seats in the Peninsula Malay arena. Though PKR flipped the same number of seats in this arena, this elides the indirect though almost certainly positive effect of Bersatu’s membership in PH on the PKR’s performance in this arena.

36 This does not imply an absence of identity politics: some Chinese voters, for example, support the DAP for its perceived ability to protect their interests through a levelling of the racial hierarchy.

37 Ahmad Fauzi, “The Islamist Factor.”

38 See “Siapa Lagi Melayu Mau.” The Star Online, June 9, 2019.

39 Hamayotsu, “Towards a More Democratic Regime and Society?”; Mohamed Osman, “The Islamic Conservative Turn.”

40 “Najib Warns Malay Base of Threat to Islam if Opponents Win Power.” Bloomberg, November 30, 2016.

41 Rahman, “Was It a Malay Tsunami?” Welsh, “‘Saviour’ Politics” reaches a related conclusion.

42 Faisal, “Domination, Contestation, and Accommodation”; Chin, “Exporting the BN/UMNO Model.”

43 Chin, “Sabah and Sarawak”; Mersat, “The Sarawak Dayaks’ Shift.”

44 Note the #UndiRosak movement, in which progressive voters pledged to invalidate their ballots in protest against PH’s perceived movement away from the progressive agenda prior to GE14, ultimately was a non-factor in the election.

45 Norshahril, “A Complicated Political Reality.”

46 Horowitz, “The Challenge.”

47 Waikar, “ICERD.”

48 Lee, “Education in Post GE-14 Malaysia.”

49 IDEAS, Projek Pantau; Bersih, First Year Report Card.

50 Ostwald, “Federalism.”

51 At the time of writing, many of the discussed reforms have not be fully codified into law, leaving open the possibility of their reversal.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kai Ostwald

Kai Ostwald is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy & Global Affairs and the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is also the Director of UBC’s Centre for Southeast Asia Research and Associate Editor (Southeast Asia) at Pacific Affairs.

Steven Oliver

Steven Oliver is an Assistant Professor of Social Sciences at Yale-NUS College in Singapore.