07 January 2022
WP337 | Can Youth Save Malaysia’s Democracy?
Abstract
In 2019, Malaysia passed a bipartisan constitutional amendment that lowered the country’s voting age from 21 to 18, setting in train a dramatic expansion of the electorate and downward tilt in the median voter age. Malaysian youth are, on average, both fairly well informed and politically aware, and concerned about their country’s direction and their own prospects. Yet we should not expect that a sudden flood of young voters will upend Malaysia’s next elections. Like their elders, not all youth share the same priorities or are committed to a similar democratic vision. Especially key are differing perspectives on the role of race and religion in government, and on the ethno-nationalist coalition that came to power in early 2020, supplanting the reformist coalition elected in 2018. Nevertheless, elections are not the only way youth can make their mark on Malaysian democracy. Today’s youth came of age in an era of expanded avenues for awareness-raising and mobilisation. Regardless of personal ideological or policy preferences, Malaysian youth are thus more likely acculturated to new ways of approaching and engaging in politics, positioning them to develop and model new habits of participation and enforcing accountability — habits conducive to more robust, if incremental, liberalisation.
Source: Maria Chin Abdullah’s Facebook
About the Author
Meredith Weiss is Professor of Political Science and director of Rockefeller College’s Semester in Washington Program. She has published widely on social mobilisation and civil society, the politics of identity and development, electoral politics and parties, institutional reform, and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, with particular focus on Malaysia and Singapore. Her books include Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow (Cornell SEAP, 2011); Protest and Possibilities: Civil Society and Coalitions for Political Change in Malaysia (Stanford, 2006); The Roots of Resilience: Party Machines and Grassroots Politics in Southeast Asia (Cornell, 2020); and the co-authored Mobilizing for Elections: Patronage and Political Machines in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, forthcoming). She has also edited or co-edited eleven volumes, most recently, The Political Logics of Anticorruption Efforts in Asia (SUNY, 2019), and Toward a New Malaysia? The 2018 Election and Its Aftermath (NUS, 2020). Her articles appear in Asian Studies Review, Asian Survey, Critical Asian Studies, Democratization, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Human Rights, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, and other journals. Current projects include collaborative studies of urban governance and public-goods delivery, of civil society in Southeast Asia, and of pandemic governance; and a monograph on Malaysian sociopolitical development.
Abstract
In 2019, Malaysia passed a bipartisan constitutional amendment that lowered the country’s voting age from 21 to 18, setting in train a dramatic expansion of the electorate and downward tilt in the median voter age. Malaysian youth are, on average, both fairly well informed and politically aware, and concerned about their country’s direction and their own prospects. Yet we should not expect that a sudden flood of young voters will upend Malaysia’s next elections. Like their elders, not all youth share the same priorities or are committed to a similar democratic vision. Especially key are differing perspectives on the role of race and religion in government, and on the ethno-nationalist coalition that came to power in early 2020, supplanting the reformist coalition elected in 2018. Nevertheless, elections are not the only way youth can make their mark on Malaysian democracy. Today’s youth came of age in an era of expanded avenues for awareness-raising and mobilisation. Regardless of personal ideological or policy preferences, Malaysian youth are thus more likely acculturated to new ways of approaching and engaging in politics, positioning them to develop and model new habits of participation and enforcing accountability — habits conducive to more robust, if incremental, liberalisation.
Source: Maria Chin Abdullah’s Facebook
About the Author
Meredith Weiss is Professor of Political Science and director of Rockefeller College’s Semester in Washington Program. She has published widely on social mobilisation and civil society, the politics of identity and development, electoral politics and parties, institutional reform, and subnational governance in Southeast Asia, with particular focus on Malaysia and Singapore. Her books include Student Activism in Malaysia: Crucible, Mirror, Sideshow (Cornell SEAP, 2011); Protest and Possibilities: Civil Society and Coalitions for Political Change in Malaysia (Stanford, 2006); The Roots of Resilience: Party Machines and Grassroots Politics in Southeast Asia (Cornell, 2020); and the co-authored Mobilizing for Elections: Patronage and Political Machines in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, forthcoming). She has also edited or co-edited eleven volumes, most recently, The Political Logics of Anticorruption Efforts in Asia (SUNY, 2019), and Toward a New Malaysia? The 2018 Election and Its Aftermath (NUS, 2020). Her articles appear in Asian Studies Review, Asian Survey, Critical Asian Studies, Democratization, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Human Rights, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, and other journals. Current projects include collaborative studies of urban governance and public-goods delivery, of civil society in Southeast Asia, and of pandemic governance; and a monograph on Malaysian sociopolitical development.
