ABSTRACT
Malaysia is often viewed as distinctive in the cohesion between its elites, the stability of its regime, and the resilience of its dominant party. It has thus gained scrutiny for its avoidance of the military and executive coups, social upheavals, and incessant ethnic and separatist conflicts that have roiled Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, New Order Indonesia, and Myanmar. In Malaysia, however, what political violence occurred during the decade prior to independence was hardly undertaken by local elites. Redistributive pressures failed in Malaysia to inspire any lasting pact of protection through which elites might cooperatively react in defence of their interests. Instead, elites fractured across ethnic lines, with those in United Malays National Organisation responding avidly to demands in order to re-energise their Malay supporters, but therein undermining the Chinese constituencies, and hence the standing, of their counterparts in the Malaysian Chinese Association.
