ABSTRACT
As Malaysia achieved independence in 1957, deeply entrenched racial pillarisation and class stratification foretold a difficult political path ahead, despite a high degree of elite consensus. Indeed, Malaysia today is home to multiple visions and histories: as the chapters that follow detail, Malaysian politics is hardly monolithic. That variety comes through across states and regions within the country (e.g. the economic and cultural differences marking east and west coast, urban and rural areas, or peninsular and East Malaysia); across administrative levels, however much attention tends to focus on national, and secondarily, state-level, politics; and across subsets of voters, whether seen in terms of ethnicity, religion, gender, age, or socioeconomic class.
