Amer Ghazali

The Malaysian electoral process

Supervisors: Professor Charles Pattie and Professor Harvey Armstrong

My research will focus on the electoral geography of the non-western society. Electoral geography has been an identifiable sub-theme of human geography for almost 40 years, and the literature, both in geography and in political science is now large. But the vast bulk of that literature deals with the electoral geographies of a relatively small number of countries, almost all western societies with long-established liberal democratic systems.

Much less attention has been paid to the electoral geography of either non-western societies, or of political systems which are not liberal democracies. Yet, since the collapse of Communism in 1989, most elections are conducted in countries which fall into one or other, or both, of these understudied categories. There is, therefore, an important gap in our understanding. How do elections operate in non-western societies, and how do they operate when basic political rights are restricted? My research aims to help fill that gap in knowledge. I will do so using Malaysia as a case study. Although it has a long, unbroken, tradition of elections between independence and the present, Malaysia differs in several important respects from the western liberal democracies most commonly analysed by electoral geographers. It is an `Asian tiger´, and enjoyed rapid economic growth in the 1980s and 1990s. But at the same time, its political system is not fully democratic, despite the regular use of elections.

In fact, Malaysia is often described as a `semi democratic´ country. There are restrictions on opposition parties, on criticism of the government, and on campaigning. And, since independence, the Malaysian government has never changed hands. The same coalition, National Front (formerly known as Alliance), has remained at the heart of the government coalition since 1957. For all these reasons, Malaysia is a good place to study the electoral geography of a non-western, non-liberal democratic society.

ggp02asg@sheffield.ac.uk