The book of which my chapter forms part is entitled ‘Power-Sharing in the Global South: Patterns, Practices and Potential’, and the book in turn forms part of an original series entitled ‘Federalism and Internal Conflict’, published by Palgrave, and edited by two well-known experts on federalism, Soren Keil and Eva Maria Belser, both of Fribourg University’s Institute of Federalism. The series is inspired by the work of Arendt Lijphart.
The interest of the book lies in the way it addresses power-sharing as conflict resolution in the global south, as opposed to looking only at European examples such as Northern Ireland and South Tyrol. In fact, 13 cases across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific are presented.
My own chapter is entitled ‘Power-Sharing in Malaysia: Coalition Politics and the Social Contract’. It explains political power-sharing in ethnically divided Malaysia through an examination of two related approaches: the political trade-off that has come to be called the ‘social contract’; and the operation of multi-ethnic coalition politics.
Under the first approach, minorities recognise the ‘special position’ of the majority Malay/ Muslim community (usually called ‘bumiputera’) in return for the majority’s recognition of minorities’ ‘legitimate interests’. I explain this social contract not in Rousseau’s sense of a notional contract having explanatory value for the relationship between the individual and the state. Rather it is described as an actual, historical negotiated pact between parties representing ethnic communities planning to live together as citizens of a new state in peace and harmony rather than conflict. The social contract was revised under constitutional amendments (known as the ‘Rukunegara amendments’) in 1971, following serious inter-ethnic rioting in May 1969. The revised contract was designed to achieve within twenty years, via quota system and other devices, a radical distribution of wealth and opportunity to the Bumiputera community. The price to be paid for the peace that ensued was a drastic reduction of freedom of expression, so that any challenge to the policy, prescribing a number of ‘sensitive issues’, unless relating to implementation, would constitute the crime of sedition.
The chapter goes on to discuss the very difficult issues surrounding the contract. What exactly are its terms and how could they be debated or altered when freedom of expression is denied? What would happen when the object of what appears to be a transformative policy has been achieved? How is it to be decided when that point has arrived? How are success or failure to be assessed? Replacement of the social contract is an exercise fraught with danger and uncertainty as to what follows.
Under the second approach, I find that in Malaysia coalitions of parties (there are currently five of these) must generally draw on ethnic parties representing a range of minorities in order to gain a majority in elections. Such a coalition, the Alliance (later ‘Barisan Nasional’ or BN) of three ethnic parties formed the political substratum for the social contract in the 1950s, and kept inter-ethnic peace. However, the BN lost power in 2018, ushering in a period of political fragmentation in which increasingly long-accepted norms defining citizenship, rights, and political representation are challenged. At the same time the logic of coalition politics is challenged by fragmentation and intensification of competition for power, which has been the norm since the dominant party system collapsed.
My conclusion is as follows. The Malaysian example of consociational government can be admired as an example of ethnic accommodation in cases where it is the majority community that is historically disadvantaged. It can also be criticized for failing to address the notion of a common citizenship that should be basic to any idea of nation-building. It shows that affirmative action over an extended period can secure peace and stability, and at the same time secure economic growth that benefits all communities. Yet clearly there are also dangers in such an approach, or at least in consistently maintaining it, as the logic of affirmative action is that redistribution of opportunity should, over time, have equalizing effects and empower the disadvantaged, rather than deepen its dependency on the state. In fact, the result has been an entrenchment of inequality as, not a temporary deviation from a perceived norm, but as a basic entitlement based on ethnic criteria. In recent years, economic under-performance has also become an issue. During the current period of political fragmentation, it should in principle be possible to rethink consociationalism. Yet there are few signs that the nettle of consociationalism is about to be grasped, or that a new formulation of it is in prospect.
Keywords: consociationalism; power-sharing; interethnic accommodation
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Andrew J. Harding is Visiting Research Professor at the NUS Faculty of Law.
Email: lawajh@nus.edu.sg