IKMAS SEMINAR SERIES NO. 9/2019: Four Arenas: Malaysia’s 2018 Election, Reform, and Democratization

Date: 16 July 2019
Time: 10.00am – 12.00pm
Venue: IKMAS Meeting Room

Abstract

How do we make sense of voting patterns in Malaysia’s GE14, and what do they imply for democratization and reform? Most analyses use the country’s major ethnic groups or administrative units (typically the states) as categories to account for different voting patterns. This presentation argues that Malaysia is better conceived of as having four distinct, identity-based arenas, each with their own electoral dynamics and separate visions of what Malaysia Baru should look like. This has important implications for reform efforts, since one of the arenas has a disproportionately large influence on political calculations and largely sets the political agenda.

Biodata of speaker

Kai Ostwald is an assistant professor in the University of British Columbia’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. He is also the Director of UBC’s Centre for Southeast Asia Research and Associate Editor of Pacific Affairs. He holds a PhD from the University of California, San Diego, and has written widely on politics in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.