Malaysia: Centralized Federalism in an Electoral One-Party State

Much like India before 1990s,1 Malaysia is a centralized parliamentary federalism characterized by one-party predominance. However, Malaysia has never experienced party alternation at the federal level as India first had in 1977. Also unlike India’s Congress Party central government, which had to deal with opposition parties controlling half of the state governments as early as 1967, merely twenty years after Independence, Malaysia’s National Front [Barisan Nasional (BN)] had never lost the control of more than two out of 13 state governments at a time until 2008.