PoliticsPublic PolicySoutheast AsiaWorld
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Malaysia’s State Formation: Small Steps and Large Outcomes of a Contested Leviathan

This is my latest book, currently in press. The book will be out perhaps end of this year or early 2024. This book comes up with the Contested Leviathan Framework to describe the essence of Malaysia’s political economy. The framework is developed from tracing Malaysia’s political economy over approximately 157 years (1800-1957) and tested against…

PoliticsSoutheast Asia
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Transnationalism and Chinese Diaspora’s struggle for identity in British Malaya

Malayan Chinese muted response to the Malayan Union proposal in 1946 which promised common citizenship rights and equal opportunity to non-Malays have not been sufficiently explained by existing literature. This article suggests that such muted response is due to the presence of Chinese transnationalism that diluted and diverted the community’s attention from seeking a Malayan…

Book reviewPublic PolicySoutheast Asia
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Issues in Malaysia’s public policy and administration: An Institutional Analysis

How does institutional quality dictate a bureaucracy’s ability to change? Should we see change as transformational? Or should we see change as incremental, one that takes place in small steps over time? Are institutional legacies great impediments to change? This is a newly released book that touches on various issues on Malaysia’s public policy and…

Politics
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India mulls over Indo-Pacific Security Arrangement

The recent tiff between France and Australia over the latter’s buying of nuclear powered submarines has created diplomatic tension. Australia’s about turn – choosing of the US nuclear powered submarines against the French-made submarines – has soured relations between France, UK and the US with the French accusing its NATO partners of “stabbing its back.”…

World
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9/11 and the impact lives on…

The bombings of four key US installations on September 11, 2001, by four commercial planes, are still etched in most minds. Twenty years ago, the world watched the event unfold, real time, with awe and shock as the two towers of World Trade Centre collapsed minutes after the second plane struck the South Tower sending…