News & Publications
BOOKS
Minorities Matter: Malaysian Politics and People Volume III
Reflecting on the changes, and continuities, that Malaysia has witnessed since the electoral outcome of GE14, Minorities Matter brings together a group of local and international scholar to look at contemporary Malaysian politics and society through the lens of those...
Illusions of Democracy: Malaysian Politics and People Volume II
September 25, 2017 Bringing together a group of both international and Malaysian scholars, Illusions of Democracy: Malaysian Politics and People Volume II offers an up-to-date and broad analysis of the contemporary state of Malaysian politics and society. Transcending...
Misplaced Democracy: Malaysian Politics and People
April 1, 2014 Misplaced Democracy: Malaysian Politics and People is the fruit of a three-year collaboration between academics who have chosen Malaysia as their specialty. Defined by its inter-disciplinarity and covering the fields of urban studies, political economy,...
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Truce and Tales in New Malaysia: Happy First Anniversary
The ASAN Forum, Vol 7 (4), June 2019 The expression “New Malaysia” or Malaysia Baharu emerged in 2016 as a semantic capsule for the democratic aspirations of the movement for electoral reform Bersih (“clean” in Malay), whose rally in November of that year brought more...
The Downfall of Malaysia’s Ruling Party
Journal of Democracy, Vol 29(4), 114 - 128 October 2018 General elections in May 2018 saw the downfall of controversial prime minister Najib Razak—and an end to the monopoly on power enjoyed by the ethnonationalist United Malays National Organization (UMNO) for the...
Islamist Echoes in the context of the Tunisian Islamist Party’s 10th Congress
European University Institute, Max Weber Programme, July 2017 Since the uprising in 2011, Tunisia is seen as a political lab whose experiences impact the entire region. The return to the political scene of the of the Islamists of the Ennahdha Party, and their...
BOOK CHAPTERS
Malaysia: Gangster Boogie, Bosses And Politics
In F.Allum and S.Gilmour, Handbook of Organised Crime and Politics, Chapter 26 Edward Elgar 29 March, 2019 This chapter focuses specifically on the relationship between the organisation PEKIDA and its satellites, and the former ruling party UMNO (1957-2018). It...
The Real World? Fabricating Legitimacy in a Semi-Authoritarian State
In S.Lemiere, Illusions of Democracy: Malaysian Politics and People (Europe and Americas Edition), Chapter 5 August 15, 2018 In the social sciences, the role of emotion in politics is not a new axis but is only starting to be taken up as a possibility in the study of...
Gangsta and politics in Malaysia
In S. Lemière, Misplaced Democracy: Malaysian Politics and People, Chapter 5 SIRD, 2014. This chapter is a short exploration of the relationship between political parties, and more specifically UMNO, and gangs through the case study of Pekida. The articulation of this...
INTERVIEWS
What Political Consultancy Is Like
How do you manage all the balancing factors of working in an industry as complicated as politics? Well, sometimes you need a little help. Dr. Sophie Lemiere, director of political consultancy firm SoCo, takes us through what political consultancy entails and...
Let’s Talk: Digital cultural archive – Astro AWANI
Sharaad Kuttan speaks to political anthropologist Sophie Lemière, founder of World Wonderers, about its cultural heritage preservation and community empowerment project in Sabah and Sarawak called PITCH - Preservation of Indigenous Intangible Traditions and Cultural...
Exploring Politics: Why Malaysia?
In this interview, Sophie Lemière was interviewed by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). The Shorenstein APARC addresses critical issues affecting the countries of Asia, their regional and global affairs, and U.S.-Asia...