Meredith L. Weiss - Electoral Dynamics in Sarawak: Contesting Developmentalism and Rights

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Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia / Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Electoral Dynamics in Sarawak: Contesting Developmentalism and Rights /

edited by Meredith L. Weiss and Arnold Puyok

ISBN 978-967-0960-56-2

e-ISBN 978-967-0630-61-6

1. ElectionsSarawak. 2. Sarawak (Malaysia)Politics and government.

I. Weiss, Meredith L. (Meredith Leigh), 1972-. II. Arnold Puyok.

324.959522

ISEAS Library / Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Electoral Dynamics in Sarawak : Contesting Developmentalism and Rights /

edited by Meredith L. Weiss and Arnold Puyok.

1. ElectionsMalaysiaSarawak. 2. SarawakPolitics and government.

I. Weiss, Meredith L. (Meredith Leigh), 1972- II. Puyok, Arnold.

JQ1062 A953S3E372017

ISBN 978-981-47-6281-6 (soft cover)

ISBN 978-981-47-6282-3 (e-book PDF)

Copy-editing by Kay Lyons

Cover photograph by Meredith L. Weiss

Cover design and layout by Janice Cheong

Contents

Acknowledgements

This volume presents the findings of one prong of a multi-year, multi-country, many-person effort to examine the role of political networks and patronage flows as part of electoral cycles in Southeast Asia. In connection with that project, we have thus far deployed large teams across Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines to conduct ethnographic field research on the conduct of elections: Malaysias 13 th general election in 2013, Indonesias legislative election in 2014, the Philippines general election in 2016, and now the Sarawak state election, also in 2016. (Plans to include the Thai general election of 2015 were disrupted by the coup and subsequent emergency rule.) Guided by a set of central research questions and concepts, the researchers, distributed among a reasonably representative set of electoral districts, track the conduct of the campaign there, as situated within local history, issues, and socioeconomic context. The approach allows subnational, national, and cross-national comparisons about the composition, function, penetration, and durability of political networks; the mix and relative prevalence of material, affective, and ideological factors shaping voting behaviour; and the balance among individual-level (particularistic), community-level (meso-particularistic), and non-contingent and non-exclusive (programmatic) policies elections are likely to produce.

This effort is very much a collective endeavour, reliant on a large number of individuals and institutions. Our primary debt in this case is to the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), including Dean Neilson Ilan Mersat. A team of researchers from UNIMAS (supplemented by one Sarawakian from Universiti Malaya) participated in the research; four from that group went on to contribute chapters to this volume, based on their findings. That team put tremendous effort into what is inherently challenging research and writing; the chapters here aim to present empirically rich and analytically trenchant, thought-provoking contributions to the study of politics in Sarawak and Malaysia generally. Credit is due also to the co-principal investigators of the overarching project, together with editor Weiss: Edward Aspinall (who participated also in the workshop to develop this volume), Allen Hicken, and Paul Hutchcroft. The support of all three has been invaluable.

Furthermore, any project such as this requires material as well as moral support. Primary funding for the project as a whole, including this component, has been from the Australian Research Council, as part of a project on Money Politics: Patronage, Political Networks and Electoral Dynamics in Southeast Asia (DP140103114) although in-kind support from UNIMAS was equally critical to this research in Sarawak specifically. (A grant from Universiti Malaya generously funded previous research on the Malaysian general election, including in Sarawak, together with E. Terence Gomez and Surin Kaur.)

Lastly, we thank our publishers, SIRD in Petaling Jaya, particularly Chong Ton Sin and Charles Brophy, and ISEAS Publishing in Singapore, especially Rahilah Yusuf and her colleagues Deputy Director, Ooi Kee Beng and Senior Fellow, Lee Hock Guan at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, for their support of the project and this volume.

Glossary & Acronyms

1MDB1Malaysia Development Berhad