[ Panels by World Area Main Menu ]
[ View the Timetable of Panels ]
Malay(si)a at Fifty: Continuity and Change in the Malaysian National Project (Sponsored by Malaysia/Singapore/Brunei Studies)
Organizer: Greg B. Felker, Willamette University
Chair: K. S. Jomo, United Nations
Discussant: Meredith Weiss, East-West Center
In 2007 Malaysia will celebrate a half-century as an independent nation-state. The milestone occurs as the country leaves behind a generational span in which a single powerful incumbent, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed, set much of the country’s agenda. This juncture compels reconsideration of basic questions about the nature of the Malaysian national enterprise. Like other national entities created in the post-WWII era, Malaya (and its successor state,
Malaysia) was an imperial syncretism featuring a communally plural society, a geographically arbitrary scope, and political and economic institutions imparted from the colonial state. The Malaysian national project – the pursuit of social, cultural, economic, and political modernization, stability, and unity – has confronted important contradictions, and has been the object of competing interests and meanings. Amidst crises and cycles, however, major continuities as well as achievements are evident. This panel will explore the significance of Malaysia’s national experience by critically surveying debates about its comparative and theoretical significances, linking retrospective and prospective questions. What has been settled and what remains fundamentally ambiguous and contested in the meaning of Malaysia? Are current questions and dilemmas confronting the Malaysian nation foundational, or are they “products of success”, arising from dynamics of structural change? What are the broader theoretical and comparative significances of Malaysia's national experience?
Malaysian Independence: 44 years and Still Counting!
Michael B. Leigh, University of Melbourne
Malaysia's birth as a nation came very close to being aborted, and
Sukarno should now receive full credit as 'Bapak Malaysia'. Based upon a re-examination of UK, US and Australian archival material, plus a number of interviews in Malaysia and Indonesia, this paper addresses the challenges to both Malaysian and Indonesian territorial integrity, and analyses the regional dimensions of nationhood.
“Malaysia, Truly Asian”? The Inside/Outside Parameters of Malaysian Foreign Relations within the ASEAN Context
David Camroux, Institut d'Etudes Sciences Politique
This paper attempts to provide an examination of Malaysian foreign relations since independence through an eclectic approach combining neo-realist, historical/sociological institutionalist and constructivist perspectives. Particular attention will be paid to the role of Malaysian leaderships within ASEAN and the evolution of proposals for an East Asian Community. Above all the agenda-setting role played by Malaysian political leaderships within ASEAN and in such projects as ASEAN +3 will be elucidated. Emphasis will be placed on continuities in Malaysian foreign relations from Tun Razak through Mahathir and the present prime ministership of Abdullah Badawi. It is a cliché to suggest that all foreign relations are an extension of domestic politics. Yet the intereactions between the “inside” and the “outside” requires, on the one hand, an examination of internal socio-political developments within Malaysia and, on the other, an analysis of the regional context in Southeast Asia and Asia more generally. It will be suggested that the peculiar nature of a multiethnic “consociational democracy” impacts on a small power foreign relations agenda in giving to Malaysian foreign relations its unique thrust. Competing notions of an Asian Community such as those expressed through APEC, ASEAN +3, EAEC will be addressed in order to tease out specific Malaysian approaches.
Malaysia after 50 years: More Sophisticated Voters, More Sophisticated Politicians?
Kian Ming Ong, Duke University and Bridget Welsh, Johns Hopkins University
Since achieving independence in 1957, Malaysia has undergone 11 elections, the most recent in March, 2004. While election results have often been interpreted with an ethnic lens and ethnic voting remains, perhaps, the most important factor in voting behavior, the changing nature of the behavior of voters and politicians have not been sufficiently and thoroughly investigated. Have voters become more sophisticated over time? Has the prevalence of strategic voting in the form of split ticket voting and not voting for non-credible candidates increased in successive elections? Are these changes occurring uniformly across all communities? Have politicians responded in kind? Have they, especially on the part of the opposition, coordinated strategies to increase their electoral prospects? This paper will present evidence from the past 11 elections answering these questions, mostly in the affirmative. The changing behavior of voters and politicians has implications in regards to the quality of representation and electoral competition moving forward. Nonetheless, these changes in strategic behavior have to be situated in the larger context of the electoral system, defined broadly to include issues of constituency gerrymandering and malapportionment, media access, campaign expenditure and the role of the Election Commission, in any discussion of the longer term prospects of substantive electoral reform in Malaysia.
Malaysian Development across Five Decades: The Gyroscopic Politics of Compensatory Growth
Greg B. Felker, Willamette University
Malaysia's economic history presents a curious set of antinomies. Its wealth stems from an admixture of colonially-rooted resource industries and advanced technology-based manufacturing. It has allowed the private-sector to lead growth even while the state has intervened heavily to guide economic change. It has pursued nationalist development goals through deepening global market integration. Major crises have prompted shifts of development strategy in 1969-70, 1985-86, and 1997-98. This paper will argue, however, that Malaysia's development history manifests underlying continuities reflecting a political logic of managing socio-economic distribution through growth. The liberal “founding bargain” of Malaysia’s political economy faltered as the political system shifted from ethnic consociationalism to Malay hegemony. Yet, the imperative of achieving acceptable distributional outcomes among class as well as ethnic constituencies has remained constant. This set of structural pressures has required the state to promote overall private sector growth, thus limiting both economic nationalist impulses and the rentier degeneration seen in other resource-based economies. Distributional politics, however, have simultaneously necessitated the state’s ongoing mediation of growth opportunities, resulting in both developmentalist and patronage dynamics. Despite the contradictions and shifts in Malaysia’s economic development, then, the very tenuousness of Malaysian nationalism has paradoxically stabilized the parameters of development policy making.