1. Legislatures and Divided Societies: The Malaysian Parliament and Multi-Ethnicity.
- Author
-
Musolf, Lloyd D. and Springer, J. Fred
- Subjects
COMMUNITY relations ,LEGISLATIVE bodies ,REPRESENTATIVE government ,MULTICULTURALISM ,CULTURAL pluralism ,ETHNOLOGY ,GROUP identity ,MALAYSIAN politics & government ,TWENTIETH century - Abstract
The applicability of the consociational democracy model to ethnically-divided Malaysia is examined by an analysis of the backgrounds, attitudes, and behavior of a sample of Members of Parliament. Though there is an irreducible minimum of inter-communal conflict in Malaysia, many important issues are found to cross communal boundaries. Interelite bargaining among communal parties, characteristic of consociational democracy, is increasingly challenged by intracommunal party rivalry which frequently centers on development policies. Parliament provides a forum for this challenge through electoral competition and the constituency linkage activities of MPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 1977
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