Abdullah Ahmad Badawi: A Malaysian Neo-Conservative?

This article proposes an analysis of changes implemented during Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's administration (2003-09), using the theoretical framework commonplace in studies on conservatism. Based on the premise that transformations in conservative polities are prone to producing conflict, the dynamics of conflict situations during Abdullah's checkered Premiership is foregrounded. As we apply the main criteria defining conservatism to regime behaviour in Malaysia, it becomes clear that such criteria are stoutly held by the regime's elites in their quest for social harmony and political stability. Regime maintenance then finds justifications in such seemingly sublime ends, thereby self-perpetuating Malaysian conservatism. Such despondency prevailed during Mahathir Mohamad's administration (1981-2003), which displayed bias against changes and introduced schemes to justify the systems it upheld. Transmutations wrought during Abdullah's tenure may have been neither substantial nor totalizing, but within the conservative paradigm which had long gripped national politics, Abdullah's deviations were significant nevertheless.