Party Politics and Institutional Internal Party Democracy in Malaysia

Abstract

Internal party democracy shows an intensive examination of the thought, idea and demonstration of democracy within the political parties. Each political party stands for internal party democracy through a course of actions and decisions, made in relation to those which are affiliated with power and authority. In the case of Malaysia where internal party democracies are low level institutionalization where the absence of free and powerful internal conflicts minimize confrontational political culture. It is acknowledged that political partiescannot undertake their democratic activities if they themselves are not democratic in their internal undertakings. It is much more important to understand how the political parties offer themselves to the general voters. These functions show intra-party democracy as crucial for development of institutional democracy. Firstly, it supports a political culture where the democratic argument and collective ownership are in the decision-making process. Secondly, it is practiced party solidarity through the minimizing f of factionalism. Thirdly, it offers a reasonable internal conflict resolution framework and fourthly, it reduces pioneering and the discretionary utilization of power.Thus, the degree to which political parties can retain internal party democracy relies on the degree to which procedures of successful membership supports are formally practiced. It is basically actualized in the party’s authoritative rules and strategies.Therefore, the objective of this paper is to assess internal party democracy among the major political parties and their political culture and its impact on party politics in Malaysia. Finally, this paper concludes by explaining how the prevailing political culture is pushing the country to the brink of an abyss and discusses the way out as well. Methodologically, it is a qualitative in nature and mostly secondary data such as newspaper reports, observers’ reports, and research reports have been used to prepare this article.

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