The geographic scope of opposition challenges in Malaysia’s Parliament

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

6-2023

Abstract

During the long rule of the BN (Barisan Nasional) coalition prior to 2018, Malaysia’s parliament, the Dewan Rakyat, was largely absent from analyses of political contestation between the ruling government and its opposition. Nevertheless, during this period, opposition MPs were active users of available legislative tools such as parliamentary questions, offering a rich source of data about their priorities and political positioning. This article investigates how MPs from the opposition used parliamentary questions to build their public reputations, and whether those reputations were built around attention to local, subnational, or national issues. It uses an original dataset of over 37,000 oral questions submitted by MPs in Malaysia’s House of Representatives from 2008–2018. I find that opposition MPs were more likely to focus on local and subnational reputation-building compared to ruling government MPs. These differences were especially pronounced in East Malaysia, where opposition MPs were heavily oriented towards local infrastructure and issues of state underdevelopment and autonomy. I explain these findings as a result of the opposition’s need to build a constituency reputation in lieu of access to state resources, as well as a greater responsiveness to local- and region-specific grievances. This focus both complements, and differs from, how Malaysia’s MPs used extra-parliamentary strategies to cultivate personal and party reputation.

Keywords

authoritarian legislatures, opposition parties, parliamentary questions, regionalism, Malaysia

Discipline

Asian Studies | Political Science

Research Areas

Political Science

Publication

Pacific Affairs

Volume

96

Issue

2

First Page

253

Last Page

279

ISSN

0030-851X

Identifier

10.5509.2023962253

Publisher

Pacific Affairs

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.5509.2023962253

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