Will Malaysia Follow the Path of Taiwan and Mexico?
This essay focuses on the subset of semiauthoritarian systems that Beatriz Magaloni calls hegemonic-party autocracies. In such autocracies, a single party or coalition holds power without interruption for several decades under semiauthoritarian conditions while conducting regular multiparty elections. Within this category, the experiences of Mexico and the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan) from the l980s to 2000 are particularly helpful in illuminating the current political dynamics in Malaysia and its prospects (or lack thereof) for democratization.
From Opposition to Power: Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party. By Shelley Rigger. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001. 232p. $49.95
Until recently, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was a newly fledged opposition group trying to find its place in the turbulent process of Taiwan's democratization. But in March 2000, the DPP's candidate, Chen Shuibian, won the presidency, and in December 2001, the DPP replaced the former ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), as the largest party in Taiwan's Legislative Yuan. This dramatic rise to power and the party's current policies and future evolution are greatly illuminated by Shelley Rigger's up-close account of the DPP's history, organization, policies, and personnel.
Malaysia's general elections in 1999: a consolidated and high‐quality semi‐democracy
Malaysia's ruling coalition, first christened the Alliance and later the Barisan Nasional [National Front], has been in power since the mid-1950s. Over time, it has grown from three ethnically defined parties into fourteen. However, it has always remained anchored by the UMNO, the United Malays National Organization. Further, this UMNO-led coalition has been credited with a record of political stability, rapid industrialisation, and increasingly benign relations between the country's main ethnic communities, locally constructed as the "Malays" and the "Chinese". It has in part been this record, then, undergirded during lapses by authoritarian controls, that has enabled this coalition to win nine consecutive general elections. But if ever the Barisan could be defeated in elections, now seemed the time. During 1998, the economy was shaken by investor panic, causing it to contract by 7.5 per cent. Differences within the UMNO over how to resolve this crisis, closely entwined with factional ambitions, then swelled into a leadership challenge. The prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, responded in two ways, the first helping to strengthen his political standing, the second seriously diminishing it. Specifically, in dealing with the economic crisis, Mahathir imposed capital controls—pegging the ringgit, plugging outflows of capital gains, holding down interest rates, and encouraging local lending. Of course, these "unorthodox" measures may have coincided with, rather than caused, Malaysia's economic recovery during 1999. They restored some sense of national autonomy, though, while sparing the country much restructuring pain, thereby enabling Mahathir to rekindle support among local business interests, much of the middle class, and the country's Chinese community. On the other hand, in responding to the leadership challenge that had arisen amid the economic crisis, Mahathir was less effective. At the UMNO General Assembly held in June 1998, the deputy prime minister and finance minister,