Malaysia's Electoral Process: The Methods and Costs of Perpetuating UMNO Rule

Summary

Introduction

Malaysia will hold its 14th general election before August 2018. Though it is not a foregone conclusion, few analysts expect an outcome different from the prior 13 general elections held since independence in 1957: a victory by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) and its Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition. UMNO's unbroken electoral dominance has several reasons. Many stem from the country's exemplary developmental performance under the helm of UMNO, with Malaysia having enjoyed relative social stability, seen substantial improvements in the living conditions of its citizens, and joined the ranks of upper middle-income economies. Yet Malaysia's electoral process has also played a central role, as it is manipulated in ways that confer fundamental advantages to the BN.

This paper acts as a primer on elections in Malaysia by providing a systematic assessment of how the electoral process is strategically manipulated to secure the political dominance of UMNO and its coalition partners. It is divided into four parts. The first provides a brief overview of Malaysia's institutional structure and electoral history. The second brings Malaysia's electoral process into comparative perspective using recent data from the Electoral Integrity Project (Norris and Grömping 2017a). By these and other measures, Malaysia manipulates its electoral system more significantly than other countries with comparable levels of development and institutionalization. This has strong implications for our understanding of Malaysia's domestic politics; it also illustrates the importance of Malaysia as a case in the growing body of research on electoral integrity. The third section uses a theoretical framework from Birch (2011) to provide a structured overview of manipulations in each phase of Malaysia's electoral process. The pre-election period is the most significant, as extensive institutional bias creates a fundamentally uneven playing field for political competition by inhibiting challengers and shaping the preferences of voters towards the BN. The final section briefly discusses the range of costs entailed by the electoral manipulations. These are both direct in nature, for example, inefficient budgetary allocations and resultant fiscal burdens, as well as indirect, including disillusionment and subsequent disengagement with the political system among a substantial portion of the electorate.

Ultimately, these costs impede Malaysia's efforts to attain higher levels of development.