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THE NEW ECONOMIC POLICY AND THE UNITED MALAYS NATIONAL ORGANIZATION —With Special Reference to the Restructuring of Malaysian Society—
Author(s) -
TORII Takashi
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
the developing economies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.305
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1746-1049
pISSN - 0012-1533
DOI - 10.1111/j.1746-1049.1997.tb00846.x
Subject(s) - restructuring , political science , public administration , regional science , economic system , sociology , economics , law
N 1990, Malaysia duly completed its twenty-year New Economic Policy (NEP) which was launched in 1971. Though the NEP has been described as an “economic” policy, its contents and implementation processes show that it went far beyond the scope of economic policy packages. In fact, policies in such noneconomic areas as education, language, culture, and religion have been formulated and implemented in close relationships with it. Consequently, the NEP has exerted major influences not only on Malaysia’s economy but on Malaysian society as a whole. From the point of view of the NEP’s stated objective, namely, “ to lift up the economic and social status of Malays,” the NEP has achieved signal successes, such as the creation of a Malay middle class and Malay entrepreneurs, most notably the new Malay business groups. A number of both positive and negative evaluations have been made about the NEP, which has had such a major impact on Malaysian society. These studies generally identify two basic characteristics of the NEP.