ABSTRACT
Interpreting legislators’ activities as multiple dimensions of representation has helped describe the role of the Malaysian MP, particularly in relation to policymaking. In Malaysia, communal divisions and the problems of economic development dominate that environment. In divided societies, political cleavages are expected to coincide with communal divisions. Political parties are important institutions for the aggregation and articulation of interests in representative governments and are a key element in the institutional environment of a legislature. Concentration on the ethnic homogeneity of individual parties, however, obscures some of the complexity of party politics in Malaysia. Parties in Malaysia provide an institutional basis for the channeling of conflict within communal groupings as well as providing for bargaining and cooperation between community elites. MPs expressed their positions on some specific and potentially divisive issues of economic development policy. The activities most characteristic of MPs within different parties tend to reflect the particular strengths and appeals of those parties.
