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Forthcoming

The Geographic Scope of Opposition Challenges in Malaysia’s Parliament

DannyG15, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Sebastian Dettman

Singapore Management University, Singapore

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

  • English Abstract
  • Chinese 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.

马来西亚国会反对党挑战的地理范围

关键词: 威权立法机构,反对党,议会质询,地方主义,马来西亚。

在2018年之前马来西亚国阵(国民阵线)联盟的长期统治期间,马来西亚国会下议院,也即马来语中的”人民议会”, 在有关执政党和反对派之间的政治竞争的分析中基本上是缺席的。尽管如此,反对派的国会议员在此期间积极利用诸如国会质询等现有立法工具,为他们的优先事项和政治定位留下了丰富的数据资源。本文调查了反对派的国会议员怎样利用议会质询来打造他们的公众声誉,以及他们的声誉是否是围绕本地、低于国家层面或者国家层面的问题打造。本文使用了2008-2018年期间马来西亚众议院议员在国会提交的超过37000个口头质询的问题组成的原始数据。 我发现,相较于执政党的国会议员,反对派国会议员更有可能围绕本地和低于国家层面的问题打造自己的声誉。这些差异在东马来西亚尤其突出,那里反对派国会议员都高度关注本地基础设施以及本州的欠发展和自主性的问题。我的解释是,这些差别是由于反对派需要打造其在选民中的声誉,而不是获取政府资源的渠道,以及需要对具体的本地和地区性的民意不满做出力度更大的回应所导致的。 此关注点既补充了也区别于马来西亚国会议员利用议会外策略来培养个人以及政党声誉的做法。

Translated by Li Guo

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Last Revised: March 7, 2023
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