ARTICLE ASSESSMENT REPORT

Rethinking Malaysian Federalism: From Centralised Thinking and Uniformity to

Federalised Culture of Multi-ethnic Nation

Introduction

The title of this article suggests two aspects of the discussion, namely centralised federalism to
federalised culture in the case of multi-ethnic Malaysia.

The author emphasised that the discussion is important since the studies on Malaysian federalism
so far have only focused on centralised federalism (top-down approach). According to the author,
focusing on structural aspects such as the constitution, centre-state relations, fiscal federalism, and
government policies alone cannot solve Malaysia's multi-ethnic issues. Therefore, a different
perspective was proposed by the author to solve this problem, which is the federal political culture
(bottom-up approach).

This bottom-up approach, according to the author, is "a code of conduct for non-governmental
actors such as citizens, civil society and politicians in appreciating the true values and principles
of federalism such as justice, freedom and cooperation."

The author then applied this federal political culture approach in the context of Malaysia by
evaluating it from three aspects, namely fostering a culture of federal thinking, strengthening the
cooperation between governments, and strengthening unity in diversity.

The conceptual discussion and literature review are both well-written. However, when applying
them in the context of Malaysia, which is the core of this article, the author only covered one of
the two aspects intended for the evaluation, which is centralised federalism.

Reviews and Evaluation

1. The analysis of a federal political culture in the context of Malaysia was confusing and out of
focus. The author simply repeated the same idea, stating that federal political culture is the
best approach to solving the multi-ethnic problem in Malaysian federalism as it prioritises
cooperation between leaders and the government, as well as emphasises tolerance between the
people, trust, togetherness and unity in the multi-ethnic country of Malaysia.
The question is, how to implement all of the above? To what extent has it been done? These
were not discussed by the author, thus leaving this article with no argument, except simply
stating that the bottom-up approach is the best.

2. The use of interview sources demonstrates that the writer is unfamiliar with the proper process
of gathering interview material. First, the informants were chosen without considering specific
criteria. Second, the informants' statements were very generic, did not address the problems
that should be discussed, contained no new information, and can even be prepared without an
interview. Third, there were two informants whose statements have quotes. However, the
 quotes were general in nature, did not answer the basic questions of the article and seemed
fabricated.

3. The empirical analysis was weak and did not discuss the basic question of this article, which
is to evaluate the practice of federal political culture in Malaysia or provide empirical
recommendations on how to successfully implement federal political culture in Malaysia.

4. The author defined the bottom-up approach as "a code of conduct for non-governmental actors
such as citizens, civil society and politicians in appreciating the true values and principles of
federalism such as justice, freedom and cooperation." The debate on non-governmental actors,
civil society and politicians, on the other hand, was minimal and simply addressed in a glimpse
with no empirical data or discussion.

5. Technical errors such as spelling, language, and facts were minimal. For example, "This is
arguing..." (Abstract); "Baba summed up the social solidarity practice as "... the only workable
strategy of nation-building...." (quotation with no page number); "This is why after 63 years
of its establishment, ...." (wrong fact); National Party (should be Perikatan Nasional);
Interviews (should be Interview).

Summary and Conclusion

This article is only a general article about federalism due to the weak empirical analysis and
absence of an argument as an academic article.

This article did not demonstrate an analysis of how federal political culture can be used as the
solution to the multi-ethnic problem of Malaysian federalism. It also did not suggest ways to
implement this proposal. It only repeatedly mentioned that a bottom-up approach involving NGOs,
people and politicians who appreciate the true values and principles of federalism such as justice,
freedom and cooperation can act as the solution to resolve the problems of multiethnicity in
Malaysian federalism. The question of how to do it and to what extent this has worked in Malaysian
federalism is yet to be addressed.

The interview data is very problematic. It looks very much like fabricated data rather than actual
interview data.

This article is, therefore, rejected.

October 17, 2022