Search

Everyday Justice in Myanmar: Informal Resolutions and State Evasion in a Time of Contested Transition. Edited by Helene Maria Kyed. Copenhagen, Denmark: MAS Press, 2020. Softcover: 367pp. Myanmar's legal framework [...]

Ballot secrecy is a cornerstone of electoral democracy, since its real or perceived absence can make voters reluctant to express their true preferences. Through survey data from Singapore, we show that doubts over ballot secrecy can alter voting behaviour even when the vote is secret and there are no individually-targeted punishments or incentives; specifically, they lead a small subset of Singaporean voters to support the dominant party, despite a preference for the opposition. We also examine individual-level correlates of doubting ballot secrecy: a tendency towards belief in conspiracies and distrust of the mass media are the strongest predictors. Finally, a counterfactual exercise demonstrates the sensitivity of election outcomes to marginal vote swings; it suggests that doubting ballot secrecy can secure the dominant party a small number of additional parliamentary seats, thereby buttressing dominant party rule without requiring any concerted action or overtly repressive measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Foreign Policy Journal (CFPJ) is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Malaysia held a general election in 2022 that was expected to resolve ongoing political instability. Instead, it produced a hung parliament, reflecting a deeply divided electorate and growing support for Islamist politics. Following a royal intervention, Anwar Ibrahim's progressive coalition formed a unity government with the long-dominant UMNO and East Malaysian parties; this unprecedented arrangement faces evolving social, political, and economic challenges that will test its stability and the very nature of Malaysian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Southeast Asia in the New International Era, sixth edition. By Robert Dayley and Clark D. Neher. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2013. 346 pp. $42.00 (paper). Interest in Southeast Asia among [...]

Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus. By Donald Low and Sudhir Vadaketh eds. Singapore: NUS Press, 2014. 272 pp. $24 (Paper). Singapore and its often-referenced 'exceptionalism' have long drawn attention [...]

Political Change in Southeast Asia. By Jacques Bertrand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 258 pp. $28.99 (paper). Political Change in Southeast Asia is a book with grand ambitions. It seeks [...]

Malaysia remained firmly in the grip of both the COVID-19 pandemic and economic turmoil in 2021. Ongoing political instability led to an emergency proclamation that suspended Parliament for the first time since 1969, followed by an unprecedented public rebuke of political leaders by the Malaysian king, and the third new government in as many years. This returned the longdominant UMNO to power. An unexpected political ceasefire promised extensive reforms, but their implementation was uncertain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Malaysia is an amalgamation of regions with distinct historical origins and features that provide the raw material for strong regional identities. The Malay‐Muslim nature of the nation‐building project led by the dominant United Malays Nasional Organisation (UMNO) has reified regional identities by sharpening the contrast between them and Malaysia's political center. Yet while regional identities are often pronounced, Malaysian politics are highly centralized, and neither deep fragmentation along regional lines nor meaningful secessionist movements have materialized. That results from Malaysia's institutional features and the primacy of highly essentialized, trans‐regional ethno‐religious identities. This article examines the process of regional and ethnic identity formation, which has occurred in an endogenous manner that draws from and reinforces the dominance of UMNO and its political heartland. It argues that the embrace of the ethno‐religious identities has enabled the primacy of Malay‐Muslim considerations in national political discourse and consequently crowded out particularistic regional demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

List experiments are a widely used survey technique for estimating the prevalence of socially sensitive attitudes or behaviors. Their design, however, makes them vulnerable to bias: because treatment group respondents see a greater number of items (J + 1) than control group respondents (J), the treatment group mean may be mechanically inflated due simply to the greater number of items. The few previous studies that directly examine this do not arrive at definitive conclusions. We find clear evidence of inflation in an original dataset, though only among respondents with low educational attainment. Furthermore, we use available data from previous studies and find similar heterogeneous patterns. The evidence of heterogeneous effects has implications for the interpretation of previous research using list experiments, especially in developing world contexts. We recommend a simple solution: using a necessarily false placebo statement for the control group equalizes list lengths, thereby protecting against mechanical inflation without imposing costs or altering interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore's 2020 general election was held amidst the most serious public health and economic crises in the country's history. Despite expectations that these parallel crises would precipitate a flight to safety and result in a strong performance by the dominant People's Action Party (PAP), the ruling party received its third-lowest popular vote share (61.2 percent) and lowest-ever seat share (89.2 percent) since independence. This article engages explanations for the unexpected results and argues that the vote swing against the PAP was enabled by a hitherto largely overlooked factor: the 2020 election included two opposition parties that could credibly compete with the PAP on the valence considerations that drive voting behaviour in Singapore, giving voters a perceived safe alternative to the PAP at the constituency level. Quantitative tests support the notion that party credibility--rather than demographic factors, incumbency advantages, Group Representation Constituencies, or assessments of the PAP's fourthgeneration leaders--best explains variation in the vote swing against the PAP. Ultimately, the results suggest that the PAP's monopoly on party credibility is no longer assured, thus portending greater opposition competitiveness and pressure against the PAP in future elections. Nonetheless, the PAP's dominance remains intact and there is little evidence of a general appetite among the electorate for a non-PAP government, suggesting the likelihood of smaller course corrections rather than major steps towards democratization in the coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia's 2018 election ended more than six decades of dominant party rule by the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO). Three questions are paramount. How did the opposition finally achieve victory? What did voters who rejected UMNO actually vote for? Finally, what do the answers imply for reform and democratization? We argue that Malaysia is comprised of four distinct identity-based polities, each with a unique electoral dynamic and vision for the country's political future. Using this framework provides valuable insights into UMNO's defeat, which was achieved by making inroads, largely through elite splits, into two arenas that were previously impenetrable for the opposition. One arena remains electorally pivotal and thus exerts a disproportionately large influence on the new government's reform agenda, entrenching the primacy of identity politics and ensuring the continuity of many policies that address ethnic relations. The case illustrates the extensive impact of divided polities and regionalism on democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indonesia's 2019 presidential election brings a rematch between incumbent Joko Widodo and Prabowo Subianto, though against a backdrop of increasingly active conservative Islamic movements. Analyses of this contest – as well as of contemporary Indonesian politics more generally – are often based on assumptions around which constituencies matter and which political factions they support. This paper examines those assumptions using an original dataset of fine-grained returns and census data, including a latent variable to capture the independent effect of Islamic conservatism. We find that conservative Muslim areas overwhelmingly supported Prabowo in 2014, but turned out in relatively low numbers. By contrast, rural poor areas turned out heavily for Widodo. This suggests that the conservative vote was under-mobilised and has a greater electoral potential than previously demonstrated. Given the recent mobilisation by conservative segments in society, observers should be prepared for significant shifts in the Indonesian electorate in 2019 and beyond.Abbreviations: NU: Nahdlatul Ulama; FPI: Islamic Defenders Front [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia's previously hegemonic Barisan Nasional (BN) government was unexpectedly defeated in the 2018 general election despite a fragmented opposition and widespread three-corner fights that theory states should inhibit turnover. Why? We argue that the opposition-split hypothesis rests on three core assumptions: third parties split only the antiincumbent vote; coalition/party support is relatively uniform across the country; and opposition parties are not "elite splits" in disguise. The Malaysian context challenges all three of these assumptions. Counterfactual election simulations ultimately suggest that the opposition split neither dramatically helped nor hurt the BN. While this does not upend conventional wisdom on opposition coordination, it does demonstrate that the theory manifests only when its assumptions accord with local realities. More substantively, our analysis also provides insights into why the new opposition will likely seek to increase the salience of ethno-religious issues in a bid to recapture electoral ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trudeau government’s foreign policy seeks to return Canada to its liberal internationalist roots. Executing this agenda falls upon the foreign affairs bureaucracy, particularly the missions and diplomats abroad. Recognizing this, Trudeau “ungagged” bureaucrats, thereby empowering them to engage in public diplomacy that promotes his stated agenda. How responsive have the bureaucratic agents been to the new political directive? We examine available evidence from digital diplomacy to assess whether the new foreign policy agenda and the change in communication policy have altered the public diplomacy of the foreign affairs bureaucracy. Analysis of over 400,000 tweets from the 296 major Twitter accounts associated with Global Affairs Canada points to few signs of a significant shift in levels of engagement, content of diplomatic outreach, independence of missions, or user interaction with tweets. We argue that despite the key policy change and global visibility of Trudeau’s professed agenda, institutional stickiness has inhibited a concomitant shift in the bureaucracy, thereby limiting the impact of the political directives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2001, Indonesia has undergone a rapid and extensive programme of decentralization of governance and resources from the centre to local level. This devolution has created a new class of regional political elites and has shifted significant power back to sub-national levels in Indonesia's centuries' long history of centre-local tensions. While the political motivations of mitigating centrifugal pressures appear to be vindicated, the anticipated gains in service provision and downstream economic impacts have not uniformly materialized: efficiency gains in some regions have been offset by the widespread emergence of clientalistic practices and fiscal inefficiencies. Recent efforts towards limited administrative and political recentralization underscore the tension that remains between the centre and local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Allegations of electoral irregularities loomed large prior to and following Malaysia’s 13th general election in May 2013. Yet while these irregularities elicited strong reactions domestically and internationally, they are unlikely to have played a significant role in shaping the election’s outcome. Rather than how the game was played, it was the very rules of the game itself that were responsible for returning the United Malays National Organization and its Barisan Nasional coalition to power for the 13th consecutive time, as Malaysia’s electoral institutions quietly transformed the incumbent coalition’s 4% deficit in the popular vote into a 20% winning margin of parliamentary seats. This is largely the result of substantial variation in the size of electoral districts, which had the effect of delivering parliamentary seats to Barisan Nasional with significantly fewer votes than were required by the opposition to secure its seats. This article has two primary aims. First, it seeks to understand better malapportionment in Malaysia by examining the degree of distortions at multiple institutional levels. It demonstrates these distortions to be exceptionally high from a comparative perspective. Second, it seeks to understand better the factors responsible for the size variation of electoral districts, specifically the extent to which the non-partisan factors stipulated in the constitution can explain the variation. Several tests are conducted using new data on the density of voters in electoral districts. The results strongly indicate a partisan element to malapportionment. This creates an institutionalized bias against the opposition and risks increasing polarization in the Malaysian polity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]