Economic vision and political opposition in Malaysia, 1981-96: the politics of the Mahathir era

Abstract

This article approaches Malaysian politics from 1981 to 1996 in two ways. First it reviews important political events so as to capture the critical issues and political themes of four sub-periods of the 'Mahathir era'. Second, it interprets the consequences of the political struggles of the entire period in relation to major social and political developments in Malaysian society. For the latter part, the article considers such socio-political trends as the emergence of new political and bureaucratic alignments, resulting from Mahathir's modernizing, industrializing and privatizing agenda; the centralization of executive power; authoriziansim; the formation of a state-capital alliance; and, the tensions felt in Mahathir's shift from the New Economic Policy to Vision 2020.