Electing Reform Barisan Nasional Neopatrimonialism as Impetus for and Challenge to Malaysia's Democratic Transition

Meredith L. Weiss

《Taiwan Journal of Democracy》 15卷1期 (2019/07) Pp. 41-61

摘要

Malaysia's May 2018 general elections saw the Barisan Nasional (National Front) coalition voted out of office after more than six decades of rule. Key to that electoral upset was the extent to which corruption-specifically, a self-serving, far-reaching, neopatrimonial form-had pervaded the polity, notwithstanding a fairly elaborate anticorruption institutional architecture. The Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope) coalition now in power, and especially its determined prime minister, the nonagenarian Mahathir Mohamad, placed governance and anticorruption at the top of its reform agenda and took immediate steps toward institutional reform upon assuming office. However, the nature of a transition by election, in which the state apparatus, as well as a significant share of politicians, are holdovers from the old regime; the imperative to distribute the unavoidable costs of reform so as not to irritate too many voters; and the fact that opposition to former Prime Minister Najib Razak may have been more a ＂push＂ factor than institutional reform was a ＂pull＂ in Pakatan Harapan's win complicate the invariably dicey and protracted task of democratic consolidation. At least some extent of meaningful governance reform is all but certain; how deep or far that remaking will reach is less clear at this stage in Malaysia's transition.

關鍵字

Anticorruption ； corruption ； democratization ； Malaysia ； neopatrimonial ； reform

參考文獻

Meredith L. Weiss, “Malaysia’s 13th General Elections: Same Result, Different Outcome,”Asian Survey 53, no. 6 (2013): 1135-1158.

Ibrahim Suffian and Lee Tai De, “How Malaysia Voted in 2018,” in Toward a New Malaysia? The 2018 Election and Its Aftermath, ed. Meredith L. Weiss and Faisal S. Hazis (Singapore: NUS Press, forthcoming), chap. 2., p. 28.

Interview by author with Mahathir Mohamad, October 10, 2016, Putrajaya, Malaysia.

Data from Transparency International Malaysia, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2018,” slide presentation, January 29, 2019.

Marc Morjé Howard and Philip G. Roessler, “Liberalizing Electoral Outcomes in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 2 (2006): 365-381.