From Manufactured to Monetized Consensus: The Material Basis of One-Party Dominance

• In Event: 231. Democracy and Development at Risk: The Monetization of Politics in Malaysia. Sponsored by the Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei Studies Group

Abstract

There are two significant trends in the shifting dynamics of Malay-majority political dominance in Malaysia. First, the number of Malay-Muslim political parties contending for ethnic Malay-majority votes has increased; from the dominant UMNO and PAS, to two additional political parties, namely the PKR and Parti Amanah to further fragment the Malay consensus. The second trend is the diminishing efficacy of the rule-of-law and democratic accountability to impede large-scale and open corruption by public officials. The paper posits that there is a correlation between the two. Malay political fragmentation has essentially diminished the saliency of ethno-nationalism as the basis for political mobilization, leading to the ascendancy of money politics. We use a neo-Gramscian notion to explain this phenomenon of a shift from manufactured to monetized consensus. We argue that UMNO's rule, premised on ‘ethnocracy’ can no longer ride on a hegemonic cultural or even religious identity. The material basis for bumiputera dominance is still key to this continuing ethnocracy. However, it has shifted from wealth redistribution through ethnic affirmative action (in the 1970s and 1980s) to rentier and party capitalism (1990s and 2000s) to its current phase of kleptocracy, which sees state coffers used as the direct source of wealth accumulation and deployment for electioneering. Group complicity to preserve the dominance of race-based elites is sustained through a monetary ‘carrot and stick’ approach rather than ideological solidarity. The paper's historicization of the dynamism of money politics seeks to explain the embeddedness of corruption in a semi-democratic regime.

Authors

• Maznah Mohamad, National University of Singapore

• Johan Saravanamuttu, Nanyang Technological University