Beyond Mahathir. Malaysian Politics and its Discontents

Product Description A timely response to the retirement in October 2003 of Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Beyond Mahathir poses vital questions about Malaysian politics after Mahathir in judicious ways. The author examines Malaysia's long-term social transformation, the global disruptions of July 1997 and 'September 11', key leaders' calculations of power, and the pitfalls of succession that intersected to produce the political dramas of Mahathir's final decade in power. Organizing arguments around the critical but unstable fortunes of a 30-year nationalist-capitalist project, the author brings to life Mahathir's predicaments, contradictions in Anwar Ibrahim's career, Reformasi's creative dissent, Parti Islam's religious dissidence, and the cultural imperative behind the rainbow coalition of the Alternative Front.Beyond Mahathir is an instructive guide to momentous events that revolved around competing conceptions of what the future portends or should portend for Malaysia, and the contested ways of getting there. About the Author KHOO, Boo Teik, BA (Rochester), Master of City Planning (MIT), PhD (Flinders), is Associate Professor and Deputy Dean in the School of Social Sciences, University Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia.He is the author of Paradoxes of Mahathirism: An Intellectual Biography of Mahathir Mohamad (Oxford University Press, 1995) which had its 5th impression issued in 2001. Khoo is co-editor (with Francis Loh Kok Wah) of Democracy in Malaysia: Discourses and Practices (2002). He has also published academic essays in refereed journals and edited volumes, articles in the international press, and social and political commentaries.An Associate of the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Perth, Khoo is a member of the editorial boards of The Australian Journal of Political Science, the USM's Kajian Malaysia (Malaysian Studies) and the Penang-based NGO publication, Aliran Monthly. Presently he is also engaged in collaborative research on Southeast Asian politics and social change with colleagues working in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand.