ABSTRACT
The major struggles for democracy in Malaysia after 2000 owed a lot of their direction, goals, strategies, and mixed success to new streams of dissent organized in two modes. The first mode was used by the opposition parties whose principal objective was to challenge the incumbent coalition for power at different levels of electoral contestation. By achieving strategic and pragmatic cooperation, the opposition parties overcame some of their previous weaknesses and extended their collective appeal to the electorate. The second mode, that of dissident civil society organizations, mobilized popular dissent over many issues, disparate and related, to contest the ideological hegemony of the state. It was crucial to the opposition and dissident civil society that they maintained an implicit alliance, thereby challenging the domination of the regime. This theme is empirically explored through an analysis of the development of the two modes of dissent through large and protracted movements for electoral and other reforms and steady electoral advances. An Epilogue reviews the opposition’s 2018 victory over the ruling coalition, the first ever in 61 years.
