Urban politics in Malaysia : a study of Kuala Lumpur

Abstract

Most of the research on Malaysian politics has dealt with national affairs. This is reflected not only in the book and monograph length published material but also in the professional and popular periodical literature and unpublished sources. Even before the commencement of fieldwork for this project it was clear that almost no political science research with an

urban focus had been undertaken in Malaysia. The social science research on urban affairs in Malaysia has been done mainly by geographers, sociologists, demographers and anthropologists and they have, in very large part, confined themselves to studying the process, consequences and problems of urbanisation. A few studies have described urban localities and some have surveyed specific conditions of urban life. Little is known about the governance of urban areas (large or small) and this holds true too for specific aspects of urban politics.