When institutions ‘bite’: Malaysia’s flawed democratisation

ABSTRACT While the expectation is that electoral turnover spurred by change agents will translate to political reform and/or consolidation of reform, recent outcomes have been disappointing. Taking the example of Malaysia’s recent political change, we argue that carrying out political reform and consolidating them remain elusive because there are strong tendencies by all parties – change agents included – to stay invested to aspects of state’s institutional qualities. We explain that institutions ‘bite’; that change agents are not completely free agents because political reform remains highly dependent on existing institutional qualities, the so-called rules of the game. While new reform ideas hold promises of change, issues of path dependence, increasing returns, and dense institutional networks impose challenges to actors making them highly invested in existing institutional mixes resulting in a botched democratisation effort.