Politics in Malaysia Today-Demise of the Hybrid? Not So Fast

William Case

《Taiwan Journal of Democracy》 15卷2期 (2019/12) Pp. 1-29

摘要

Malaysia long operated a hybrid political regime, demarcated by limited civil liberties and calibrated electoral competitiveness. Further, while this regime's asymmetric institutions gained intrinsic resilience, they found grounding in Malaysia's divided and ranked society, pitting a politically favored community of ＂indigenous＂ Malays against peripheral ＂non-Malays,＂ mostly ethnic Chinese. In this milieu, a ruling coalition persisted in power, the Barisan Nasional (National Front), centered by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). The country's variant of hybrid politics thus articulated as a durable single-party dominant system. However, after forty-four years of incumbency, Barisan was defeated in an election by a rival coalition, Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope). Even so, this study shows that during Pakatan's first year in power, democratic change has been inhibited by a complex set of factors. They include the stifling legacies of hybrid politics, their resonance with insistent communal privileging, and the winning opposition's frailties in office. Thus, while Malaysia is no longer a single-party dominant system, its politics persist within a resilient hybrid category.

關鍵字

Authoritarian durability ； democratic change ； elections ； elite cohesion ； hybrid regimes ； Malaysia ； punishment regime

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