In this article, I warn that the realist assumptions of unitary actors and state sovereignty should be applied to Malaysia only after examining her domestic political conditions. My analysis proceeds in the following order. First, I briefly introduce realism and its sister assumptions of unitary actors and state sovereignty. Second, I argue that these realist assumptions presuppose a coherent “national self-interest” for states in the international system, which does not seem to hold for Malaysia. Third, I present Mohammed Ayoob’s theoretical effort to address this issue and suggest a venue for future research.

As a student of International Relations, I fell in love with realism after analyzing qualitative works of influential scholars, such as Kenneth Waltz and John Mearsheimer. I was deeply impressed by their ability to distill complex international phenomena into conflicts of interests between unitary actors, such as Germany or France. During the process, however, the complex and often incoherent policies of the French government and the diversity of views held by the French people were often thrown into one giant black box, “France.” While this practice offers considerable utility in formulating and testing macro-level hypotheses, it also makes a crucial assumption about the actors involved. It assumes that these unitary states are sovereign—that is, they possess the necessary authority within their territories to pursue their national interests in a coherent manner.

However, what if tensions along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines were so severe within a given population that “national interest” became an elusive concept? One example is Malaysia, where the indigenous Malays, the Chinese-Malays, and the Indian-Malays each hold considerable political clout. Though the Malays have traditionally dominated the Barisan Nasional (BN), Malaysia’s governing coalition since her independence in 1957, they have had to cooperate with powerful minority interest groups to maintain their authority. While the “national self-interest” may still enter political discourse in Malaysia, it seems to be much more fragile of a construct there than in other countries with less severe ethnic tensions.

For example, a major fracture appeared in 1969 as electoral inroads by minority parties led to a massive Malay backlash. In addition to widespread civilian violence against Chinese-Malaysians, the government declared a temporary suspension of democracy and implemented affirmative action policies for the bumiputra, “the sons of the soil.” This chain of events begs the questions: Are the Chinese and Indians on the periphery or the core in shaping Malaysian national self-interest? Could one quantify the authority these opposition parties can legitimately claim over the Malay society as a whole? Arguably, political scientists can only answer these questions by opening up the black box and analyzing the complexity of the ethnic dynamics in Malaysian politics.

In fact, the political clout of the Chinese and Indians in the Malaysian parliament seems to change with time. The BN had maintained a two-third majority in the parliament until the March 2008 elections, when the opposition parties won a significant number of seats and four of the nine states previously under BN control. While these results could reflect growing dissatisfaction with the current Prime Minister Abdulla Badawi, they could also forebode an unprecedented shift in the balance of power among Malaysia’s three major domestic groups. Unless one empirically examines major stakeholders and their interactions, it seems difficult to define “national interest” as it applies to Malaysia.

Nevertheless, a realist could counter that events in peacetime should make little if any difference, as national unity will be restored as external threats emerge. Though ethnic tensions may become more salient in peacetime, the argument would run, one external threat would unite all peoples of Malaysia in defense of their nation-state. This may indeed be the case, and the utility of the realist unitary assumption may vary as a function of structural political conditions. However, national interests of Malaysia continue to be defined and redefined in important ways even in peacetime. For example, in global institutions such as the United Nations (UN) or regional institutions such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ethnic politics of Malaysia may continue to influence the bargaining positions of her delegates. While the realist emphasis on the “national self-interest” is useful for some purposes, it may help to be aware of its limitations.

One of the latest theoretical efforts to incorporate the influence of domestic conditions on foreign policy is Mohammed Ayoob’s Subaltern Realism. In contrast to conventional realist interpretations, which attribute the insecurity felt by states in the international system to the uneven distribution of material capabilities, Ayoob argues that the source of insecurity, at least in the developing world, lies within the states themselves. For developing states, Ayoob argues, creating territorially defined states out of disparate ethnic, religious, linguistic groups is their primary pursuit, which ultimately shapes their foreign policies. Though this theoretical treatment is superior in its sensitivity to domestic concerns, it may share realism’s weakness in generalizing about the entirety of the developing world. After all, claming sovereignty may be a secondary pursuit for some developing states.

In the last analysis, the domestic conditions of Malaysia seem to warrant a careful rethinking of the utility and the limitations of the realist approach to International Relations. I have argued that the unitary actor and state sovereignty assumptions stand on more shaky grounds for states where notions of the “national self-interest” are divided along ethnic, religious, or linguistic lines. Though Ayoob has offered a useful theoretical tool for understanding the foreign policies of developing countries, his theory should be applied on a case-by-case basis after first examining the domestic conditions in greater detail. For example, future research could qualitatively study Malaysia’s foreign policy in action and trace some of its influences to the ethnic divide that characterizes Malaysian parliamentary politics.

References

• Ayoob, Mohammed. 1995. The Third World Security Predicament, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
• Narine, Shaun. 2004. “State Sovereignty, Political Legitimacy, and Regional Institutionalism in the Asia Pacific.” The Pacific Review 17, no. 3: 423-450.
• Nicoll, Alexander (ed). 2008. “Malaysia’s New Politics.” International Institute for Strategic Studies Strategic Comments 14, no. 3: http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/past-issues/volume-14-2008/volume-14-issue-3/malaysias-new-politics/

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