Malaysia’s National Role Conceptions and Transitions of Foreign Policy From Tunku to Mahathir

Reviewing the history and trajectory of Malaysia’s foreign policy, this article highlights national role conceptions (NRCs) during Tunku’s premiership between 1957 and 1968 and the first and second Mahathir tenures of 1981–2003 and 2018–2020, respectively. Malaysia’s foreign policy and its fundamentals have remained reasonably stable over prolonged periods but NRCs, which define foreign policy, have witnessed shifting nuances and noticeable changes under different premierships. Foreign policy under succeeding Malaysian governments has seen major shifts occurring in the transition of foreign policy in tandem with changing NRCs. Malaysian foreign policy is articulated within the constraints posed by the global and regional environments and that of a highly politicised, often divided domestic landscape. In the Tunku era, Malaysia was decidedly a Western ally, symbolised by NRCs of being “pro-West” and “anti-communist”. Since then, Malaysia’s relations with major powers and regional countries have shown a stable, neutral and non-aligned stance and it emerged as a “regional neutral strategist” under the premiership of Tun Abdul Razak. This article argues that the shifts and revisions in Malaysia’s NRCs under Mahathir as a “global champion of the South”, exemplar of “Looking East” and “champion of moderate Islam” were not all just outcomes of elite preferences but reflected political agendas of elites and political agents within the domestic political game. Drawing on some examples of domestic contestations over NRCs and foreign policy, the article points to the re-definition and even the abandonment of policy directions which were not consonant with the imperatives of the domestic political game.