Abstract
Malaysia maintains one of the world’s most extensive affirmative action regimes, buttressed by the transformative and iconic New Economic Policy (NEP). Constitutional provisions, political imperatives, and socioeconomic conditions gave rise to the establishment of preferential policies in four broad sectors – higher education, employment, enterprise, and ownership – favoring the political dominant but economically disadvantaged Bumiputera majority. This chapter elucidates the origins, programs, outcomes, and implications of affirmative action in Malaysia. A brief historical overview explains the language and context of the constitutional authorization of Bumiputera quotas and the modest implementation in the early post-independence years, followed by policy expansion, centralization, and intensification from 1971 under the NEP, which was forged in the aftermath of May 13, 1969, racial conflagration. The NEP judiciously conceptualized a two-pronged strategy of poverty eradication regardless of race and “social restructuring” through Bumiputera-targeted affirmative action as distinct but complementary elements of the ultimate goals of national integration, which entails redressing imbalances and ultimately rolling back overt preferential treatment. However, the NEP lacked a systematic articulation of policy objectives, instruments, and outcomes. Malaysia has registered immense progress in facilitating Bumiputera access, participation, and upward mobility in the four designated policy sectors. Recent discourses have popularized misguided notions of reform that conflate the NEP’s twin elements and omit attention to the decisive shortfall of affirmative action – its inefficacy in building capability and competitiveness among the Bumiputera beneficiaries, which are requisite for Malaysia to attain the ultimate NEP goals. Malaysia has substantially remedied destabilizing inequalities but, moving forward, must fundamentally rethink affirmative action.
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Notes
- 1.
Article 153 stipulates that it is the national king’s responsibility to safeguard both the “special position” of the groups classified as Bumiputera and the “legitimate interests of other communities,” suggesting a mandate to balance contending claims. However, a closer reading finds that the specific provisions for the other communities only pertain to protection against arbitrary dismissal, confiscation, or non-renewal of employment, property, or contracts and licenses already in possession. Article 153’s protections for minority groups were limited to the independence transition; jobs, property, and contracts held before independence could not be taken away when the new nation was founded. Article 153 provides no constitutional oversight on minority group interests for any new, post-independence recruitment, property acquisition, or the award of contracts.
- 2.
A number of new public universities and pre-university matriculation colleges were founded in the 1990s. Some Bumiputera-exclusive pre-university programs introduced a 10% non-Bumiputera quota in 2001–2002. However, university admissions – operating through a centralized system – clearly maintained Bumiputera preferences, increasingly through these pre-university programs.
- 3.
The long series of poverty estimates from 1970 refers to the absolute poverty headcount ratio – the share of households with per capita income below the poverty line – which hinges on the pre-determined level of poverty line income (PLI). Malaysia’s near-zero official poverty rate in recent years has been criticized as unrealistically low. A PLI revision exercise in 2019 raised the bar, which subsequently raised the 2019 poverty rate from 0.2% to 5.6% (DOSM 2020a). Regardless of the PLI level, though, Malaysia’s long-term record of poverty reduction will assuredly stand.
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Lee, HA. (2022). Malaysia’s New Economic Policy and Affirmative Action: A Remedy in Need of a Rethink. In: Deshpande, A. (eds) Handbook on Economics of Discrimination and Affirmative Action. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4016-9_40-1
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