Social Forces and Electoral Change in Sarawak: A Case Study of Five Social Forces

• Main Author: Chua, Wey Lin
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2017
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/23863/1/Chua%20Wey%20Lin%20ft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/23863/

Social forces in various parts of the world have played a significant role in instituting electoral change especially a change of government. However, change of government has not taken place in Malaysia despite the emergence of social movements engineered by social forces. Nonetheless, they were able to bring about significant electoral change in the 2008 and 2013 elections. The Barisan Nasional (BN) government lost a few states during this period but Sarawak remains a BN stronghold. Through Migdal (1994) State-In-Society theory, a qualitative research was carried out to study the pattern of Sarawak social forces and its contestation towards the state in instituting for electoral change. Many Sarawak social forces that can be seen pushing for electoral change suffer from weak internal and external structures. Restricted by their weak structures, these social forces work only on their issues of concern and are very localised in terms of geographical concentration. Over-concentration on their own issues of concern and being too localised geographically results in no cooperation between Sarawak social forces to form one large mass movement advocating issues that can bring about significant electoral change or a change of government. Nevertheless, two social forces of ROSE and the BMF had played a role in instituting electoral change in the state. Freer and fairer election and an increase in number of seats gained by the opposition in Sarawak were credited to the role played by ROSE and the BMF. Therefore, social forces may not be successful in instituting for a change of government in the state but it has undeniably played a role in bringing about electoral change in Sarawak.