Should Malaysia Switch from a First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) to a Proportional Representation (PR) Electoral System? (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2020 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: South Asia, grade: 67.0, London School of Economics (School of Public Policy), course: Political Science for Public Policy, language: English, abstract: This essay examines the case for a PR electoral system in Malaysia. Based on assessments along three dimensions of electorate representation, ethnic conciliation and women's representation, I recommend the adoption of a preferential PR system with low district magnitude and an electoral threshold.

Malaysia is a plural society, defined by Eckstein as a society divided along ethnoreligious cleavages. Malaysia's multiracial population is divided into three main groups with the majority Bumiputera (67.4% of population) comprising of indigenous groups (mainly Muslim Malays), while Chinese and Indians minorities make up 24.6% and 7.3% of the population respectively.

A legacy of being a former British colony, Malaysia adopts the Westminster model of democracy. This has contributed to an extremely stable form of government with the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition ruling uninterrupted from independence in 1957 until the 2018 election, when it lost power to the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition.

The political system suffers from three key issues: disproportionate representation of electorate, ethnic polarization and low women's representation. The following sections assess the impact of a PR electoral system on each of these areas based on academic literature and empirical studies.