Ethnic Consciousness or Civic Consciousness: Re-examining Young Chinese Malaysians?Political Decisions and Attributes after the 13th Malaysian General Election

Abstract

The 13th Malaysia General Election held on 5 May 2013 was concluded with the reinstatement of the ruling party, Barisan National (BN) with only 47.38% votes won. The results of the election were then interpreted from multiple perspectives due to the fact that only approximately 24.4% of Chinese Malaysian voted for BN. Certain quarters interpreted the results as an outcome of ethnic politics while some interpreted it as an outcome of increasing civic consciousness. The former argued that the collective shift in Chinese Malaysians?voting decisions were responsible for the huge losses of BN. The latter claimed that the results were an outcome of higher civic awareness among urbanites who were dissatisfied with BN抯 poor governance. Nevertheless, such conclusions were made based only on election outcomes and might not reflect or took into consideration the rationale behind Chinese voters?collective actions. Recently, a sociological perspective was initiated to understand Chinese Malaysians?political behavior from the rational choice perspective. From this perspective, it is believed that both ethnic and civic consciousness play vital role in shaping Chinese Malaysians voting decision. This paper aims to re-examine the possibility that in a multi-ethnic society, young Chinese Malaysians?voting decision are made based on both ethnic and civic consciousness choices. Data collected after the 2013 general election were used to investigate inter-relationships between civic consciousness and ethnic consciousness and how they affected respondents?political decisions. Findings from this study show that political decisions in a multi-ethnic society are dynamic and rational. Both ethnic consciousness and civic consciousness play significant roles in shaping young Chinese respondents?political behavior.
Keywords: Ethnic consciousness, civic consciousness, Chinese Malaysian, election, political attribute.