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How to Transform Malaysia’s Regime 253

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costs of living consistently Malaysians’ top priority for a new government, was
increasing openness to alternatives.
Fifth and nally, Malaysia’s federal system has long provided a training
ground for opposition parties, even as the lack of local elections decreases the
odds for smaller or coalition-less parties. At the state level, voters can test
out opposition parties; those parties, in turn, can develop economic prowess,
leadership, ideas, machinery, and networks. ey have also been able to
experiment with coalition formulas (see Ting’s chapter in particular), albeit
laying bare tensions in the process; collaboration among DAP, PKR, and PAS—
the Pakatan Rakyat that retained control of Penang, Selangor, and Kelantan in
2013—was hardly smooth-sailing. e DAP’s record of governing at the state
level also helped to refute BN-fed presumptions that the party would be anti-
Malay or anti-Islam in o ce. Lessons from Pakatan’s experience in Penang
and Selangor peppered campaign rhetoric nationwide in 2018, including
economic growth statistics, litanies of welfare policies they had developed, and
reminders of their other policy initiatives. Pakatan legislators could promote,
too, their approach toward governance—for instance, legislators in Penang
who experimented with new consultative forums or innovative tools for
surveying and mapping constituency needs. Malaysia’s federal system thus
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allowed opposition parties and coalitions to sink roots and mature, in the
process cultivating new expectations and awareness among citizens.
ese trends and conditions laid the ground for a transition. at a
su cient number of voters, distributed so as to circumvent gerrymandering,
would change their votes was still not a given; as noted above, complementary
short-term catalysts helped to tip the scales. But these qualities shed light
on what Pakatan would need to foster to keep the transition going, why
we should not deem this result a uke or ash-in-the-pan, as well as why
Malaysia’s experience, however inspiring to reformers elsewhere, is not so
readily replicable: this change has been a long time coming.

From Transition to Consolidation
If this election result is to amount to more than a change in leadership—
if it is to be a step toward further liberal democractic reform—then aspects
of the system that promote more open, accountable governance will need to
be ampli ed. Countervailing tendencies will need to be obviated. In rough
sequence of what is easiest and/or quickest to change to further liberalization,
we turn to four arenas for reform: addressing current laws, institutional forms,
political economy, and political culture.

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