Political leadership in a plural society : Penang in the 1960's

Abstract

Two things have often been said about politics in new nations: the political elite is crucial and new polities are fundamentally unstable because they are also plural societies. Therefore the role of leadership in a stable plural society is worthy of special attention. This thesis studies this role in the Malaysian state of Penang. The method used is analytical, being an attempt to identify a few scores of the most important contemporary leaders in Penang, in order to analyse their social backgrounds to discover the bases for their leadership, its relation to the formal authority structure of government and to the racial communities, its contribution to the stability of the Penang society since independence, and the signs of change in this pattern. An attempt is also made to project the analysis into the future by a supplementary survey of the political culture of high school students - a source for the future elite - in Penang.