Sabah's 2020 election was Malaysia's pandemic election. While attention has centred on the impact the election had on the increase of COVID-19, this collection brings together scholars, journalists and social scientists who were on the ground on Sabah to analyse what happened, why, and the broader implications of the outcome for Sabah and Malaysian politics. The book is the first in-depth study of a Sabah election. It is multidisciplinary, with authors from different perspectives, and the majority of the authors are from Sabah. Traditional explanations prioritize the federal-state relationship in shaping Sabah politics. This collection challenges this paradigm, suggesting that politics in Sabah should be better understood as a reflection of conditions within Sabah—as Sabahans struggle to navigate and survive on Malaysia's periphery.

This book is a study of the political development of the Malaysian state of Sabah under the administration of Parti Bersatu Rakyat Jelata Sabah (Berjaya - Sabah People's United Party), which controlled the state legislature between 1976 and 1985. It attempts to disentangle the three dominant themes within social scientific studies of Sabah: the issues of federalism, the politics of ethnicity, and the political economy of development. The book argues that the emergence of a developmental discourse under the Berjaya regime in Sabah can largely be traced to its failure to reconcile the localized ethnic politics of Sabah with the demands of a strong central state and thus the need to find an alternative strategy of political support and control. While this strategy proved effective when developmental growth was high during the first Berjaya administration (1976-81), the relative collapse of the state economy from 1982 onwards exposed its ethnic predilections and prefigured declining support for the regime, particularly among the non-Muslim bumiputera groups. Despite the consolidation of federal support for Berjaya under the Mahathir administration, the unravelling of the Berjaya project was by this stage unstoppable. In the final analysis, the attempt to create a more compliant state administration under Berjaya came undone precisely because it failed to take into account the localized dimension of politics in Sabah.

The Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance came into force in June 1991, ushering in an important new stage of development in the Hong Kong legal system. This series contains all the judgements in which Bill of Rights issues are decided, and is thus an invalu

This edited volume examines the link between constitutional asymmetry and multinationalism in multi-tiered systems through a comprehensive and rigorous comparative analysis, covering countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Constitutional asymmetry means that the component units of a federation do not have equal relationships with each other and with the federal authority. In traditional federal theories, this is considered an anomaly. The degree of symmetry and asymmetry is seen as an indicator of the degree of harmony or conflict within each system. Therefore symmetrisation processes tend to be encouraged to secure the stability of the political system. However, scholars have linked asymmetry with multinational federalism, presenting federalism and asymmetry as forms of ethnical conflict management. This book offers insights into the different types of constitutional asymmetry, the factors that stimulate symmetrisation and asymmetrisation processes, and the ways in which constitutional asymmetry is linked with multinationalism.

On 16 September 1963 Malaysia came into being with the accession of Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore to the existing Federation of Malaya. This book marks the 50th anniversary of this notable event in South East Asia’s history. The focus of the book will be mainly on the experience of Sabah and Sarawak as subjects of the federation. It looks at the experience of federalism from a number of different perspectives, keeping in mind not just the effects of federalism on Sabah and Sarawak but also the effects on the federation as a whole. Has the bargain of 1963 been adhered to? Has Malaysian federalism been a successful example of this form of government in Asia, or has the bargain been undermined in ways contrary to the original deal in the Malaysia Agreement of 1963? What have been the practical effects on East Malaysia during 50 years?