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Abstract
Sri Lankan military forces and government authorities have succeeded to counter measure terrorism by defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, their initiatives and efforts to restore peace and harmony among different ethno-religious groups in the post-war context are highly complex. The additional space given to the reemergence of radical religious groups has negatively influenced the process of fostering religious tolerance and harmony, which have been maintained for centuries in the country. Ethno-religious minorities became the major targets of religious hatred and violent attacks. At both the societal and political platforms, majoritarian religious sentiments and discourse have established a dominant presence in opposing the existence and practice of the religious fundamentals of minorities. This study has attempted to investigate the nature and impact of majoritarian religious violence in post-war Sri Lanka, as well as the efforts made by the government authorities to control them in order to foster religious tolerance and harmony in the country. This study argues that religious violence under the shadow of religious nationalism has been promoted by many forces as a mechanism by which to consolidate a majoritarian ethno-religious hegemony in the absence of competing ethnic-groups context in post-war Sri Lanka. In many ways, state apparatuses have failed to control religious violence, maintain religious tolerance and inter-religious harmony, particularly of accommodating minorities in nature. The study concludes that the continuous promotion of majoritarian religious hegemony through anti-minority religious hatred and violence would further promote religious intolerance and radicalism challenging the establishment of religious harmony in the country.

Sri Lankan military forces and government authorities have succeeded to counter measure terrorism by defeating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, their initiatives and efforts to restore peace and harmony among different ethno-religious groups in the post-war context are highly complex. The additional space given to the reemergence of radical religious groups has negatively influenced the process of fostering religious tolerance and harmony, which have been maintained for centuries in the country. Ethno-religious minorities became the major targets of religious hatred and violent attacks. At both the societal and political platforms, majoritarian religious sentiments and discourse have established a dominant presence in opposing the existence and practice of the religious fundamentals of minorities. This study has attempted to investigate the nature and impact of majoritarian religious violence in post-war Sri Lanka, as well as the efforts made by the government authorities to control them in order to foster religious tolerance and harmony in the country. This study argues that religious violence under the shadow of religious nationalism has been promoted by many forces as a mechanism by which to consolidate a majoritarian ethno-religious hegemony in the absence of competing ethnic-groups context in post-war Sri Lanka. In many ways, state apparatuses have failed to control religious violence, maintain religious tolerance and inter-religious harmony, particularly of accommodating minorities in nature. The study concludes that the continuous promotion of majoritarian religious hegemony through anti-minority religious hatred and violence would further promote religious intolerance and radicalism challenging the establishment of religious harmony in the country.

The Muslim community living in the "South-Eastern Region" of Sri Lanka has long been urging the government authorities to establish a separate Kalmunai administrative district carved out of the coastal belt of the present Amparai district, as an institutional mechanism to improve public service delivery and development administration functions in the region. However, the establishment of the Kalmunai administrative district has continually been challenged, receiving criticism and oppositions from different sources, including from the Muslim community and its politicians. This study analyzes the perspectives of Muslim community and its politics towards the demand for the Kalmunai administrative district and its impacts on the political advocacy and methods to achieving it. This study has found that there are different and contradictory perspectives on the matter of the Kalmunai administrative district among the Muslim political parties and in different segments of the community. It is also discovered that the public understanding on the subject of the proposed district is very minimal. The establishment of the proposed Kalmunai administrative district has frequently failed on many crucial occasions mainly due to the lack of consensus among the Muslims leaders regarding the contested subjects of the proposed district. Additionally, this study has observed that the Muslim leaders have conceptualized the proposed Kalmunai district purely based on ethnicity only and have failed to justify it on public and rational grounds. The study has further found that the establishment of the proposed Kalmunai administrative district and its purported positive impacts would strongly depend on making the demand for the proposed district a more secular and public one.

In Sri Lanka's ethnic politics, the Kalmunai administrative district demand has become the forefront issue in the past few decades. This demand advocates the establishment of a new administrative district—an intermediate decentralized administrative institution connecting the central government and local public in terms of public service delivery, and economic and regional development—for the coastal belt of the present Amparai district in the eastern province. Though the Kalmunai administrative district demand has become a popular concern of the Sri Lanka's ethnic politics in the new millennium and was highly advocated by the political and civil forces among the Muslims of the area, the demand faced ups and downs in its politicization and advocacy process that ultimately challenge the possibilities of establishing the proposed administrative district up till this day. This study attempted to evaluate the history of the politicization and advocacy of the Kalmunai administrative district demand extensively. The finding reveals that although the Kalmunai administrative district demand emerged on rational ground, in due cause, it became over ethnicized and brought more communal criticisms and oppositions that challenged the political advocacy and the success of the demand to a certain extent. Further, the political advocacy of the demand was also on and off in nature and the major advocating party has failed to make the opportunities successful. This study highlights the importance of a continued and collective political advocacy for on rational ground with the purpose of making the Kalmunai administrative district demand a public issue and to transform it as an "input" to the political system for the policy-making process. DOI:10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n3p61

Direct local election in Indonesia has been run since the middle of 2005. It is bringing some changes, especially in political reformation. Changed election mechanism to direct election done by the society in the region. This article seen that the changes has brought some positive impacts to the society as growing increasingly broad political participation, the legitimacy of local heads becomes higher and political party roles also become important. This changed which the author said as a form of deeper democratic process to "new democracy" in Indonesia. In addition, some weaknesses also appeared, such as the booming of money politic, weaken of regional institution and the emergence of new local elites. It leads to government as a minority in the scope of the power legislative institution which act as majority.

Federalism is a system of fair and orderly power sharing between the state and federal governments. However, in the case of the Federation of Malaysia, this division is unbalanced and asymmetrical, owing to the fact that Sabah and Sarawak have been given more privileges than other states in Malaya as a condition to join the Federation of Malaysia during its formation on 16 September 1963. These terms were proposed by the Intergovernmental Committee and included in the Malaysia Agreement 1963 (MA63), which was signed on July 9, 1963, in London by the United Kingdom, the Federation of Malaya (Malaya), North Borneo (Sabah), Sarawak, and Singapore. Despite the fact that MA63 and the 20-point Agreement grant Sabah unique privileges, the state has long struggled with federalism issues, giving rise to anti-federal sentiments. Using the concept of asymmetrical federalism as a tool of analysis, this study examines the issues of asymmetrical federalism responsible for the anti-federal sentiment in Sabah. Interviews were used to collect primary data, while sources including books, journals, newspapers and online news were mined for secondary data in this qualitative study. Oil royalties, unequal development between Sabah and the Peninsula, immigration and security threats, Sabah's regional status within Malaysia and Borneonisation were found to be the five main issues that prompted Sabahans to be dissatisfied with the implementation of asymmetrical federalism. The failure of the Sabah and federal governments to address these issues has contributed to the birth of anti-federal sentiment in Sabah.

Civil disobedience is not new in Malaysia. It has been going on since the days of Tunku Abdul Rahman. However, it did not explode until the final phase of the reign of Dr. Mahathir in 1998. While in 2007 there was widespread civil disobedience when people were not satisfied with the administration of Abdullah Badawi.The purpose of this article is to analyze the factors that caused at the time of the occurrence of civil disobedience during the era of Dr. Mahathir and Abdullah Badawi. Results show that the main reason for the occurrence of civil disobedience at the time of Dr. Mahathir was due to the grievances of the people on the issue of the dismissal of Anwar Ibrahim. Whereas at the time of Abdullah Badawi the emergence of civil disobedience is caused by the weakness of his leadership. In addition, the analysis also found that civil disobedience affect the outcome of the general elections in 1999 and 2008 when the Barisan Nasional (National Front) performance deteriorated badly in the General Elections. The Barisan Nasional decline in the general election of 2008 resulted in Abdullah Badawi's resignation in April 2009 DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n1s1p279

Prior to the 14th general election (GE-14), electoral practices in Malaysia have been often criticised as being obscure and biased since it was plagued with issues such as dubious voter registers and ballot paper fraud. Therefore, in its manifesto during GE-14, Pakatan Harapan (PH) promised to reform this electoral practice to make it more independent, transparent, and fair. PH thenwon the GE-14 on the strength of this vow, forcing it to keep its manifesto pledge. However, implementing the said promise is not easy as most of the proposals involve amendments to the Federal Constitution that require the support of at least a two-thirds majority. The fact that PH lacks such a majority has raised the issue of whether or notthe objective to reform the electoral system can be materialised. Thus, this article examines the aspects of electoral reform implemented by PH during its 22 months in power and assesses the challenges faced in implementing such electoral system reform. The concept of electoral reform was used as an analytical tool in this article. This article mainly obtained its data from secondary sources including books, journals, theses, official government documents and websites, while primary data were collected from unstructured interviews with authoritative informants. Findings revealed that among the important reforms of the country's electoral system that have been accomplished by PH are improving the standard operating procedures of elections, enhancing election rules that do not require amendments, amending laws that require simple majority support in the parliament, and implementing 'high-impact' electoral reforms that require amendments to the Federal Constitution. Moreover, it was also discovered that the main challenge to reforming the electoral system was the constraint of electoral rule amendments that require the approval of a two-thirds majority of parliamentarians. Other obstacles included politicians' unwillingness to accept a new electoral system culture, barriers to accessing data and ...

The weak implementation of the House of Representatives', or Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat's (DPR), function indicates stagnation in Indonesia's democracy. This fact is due to the party oligarchy's stronghold in the Jokowi government, which ignores the nature of public representation that should be carried out. The oligarchy controls the government and DPR's performance in establishing political compromises for every legislative policy with the government to facilitate the affairs of party oligarchs, who are also the members of the Jokowi government coalition. In addition, they engage in cartel politics to secure their respective power and material interests. This article examines the roles of party oligarchs in influencing the implementation of political functions in the DPR. Ironically, the coalition formed by the party oligarchy has helped the Jokowi government and the DPR to secure government policies and the economic and political interests of the oligarchic group.

Regional politics play a decisive role in national politics when region poses ethnic groups in competing manner. Sri Lanka's Eastern province has been a contested region in terms of ethnic and territorial integration as well as the integration of majority and minorities from the independence of the country, during civil war, and in the post-civil war era. This study explores the ethnic groups' competition for political control and autonomy, as well as its impact in Eastern Sri Lanka. This study has employed both qualitative and quantitative data, collected mainly through secondary sources such as literary books, book chapters, journal articles, newspaper cuttings, and government documents, which are analyzed and presented through interpretive and descriptive manners. The study has found that the Eastern province has been a contested choice for the ethnic majority to extend their ethnic domination, and to implement ethno-centric development-cum settlement policies and programs, all of which are ultimately induced to change the ethnic composition of the region and pushed ethnic minorities to mobilize and demand for more decentralized power and autonomy in the region. The thirty-year prolonged civil war made the region not only a war-torn, but also let to undermining regional democratic principles, including minorities' rights for autonomy. The study also reveals that the new emerging post-war political context at the provincial and national levels continues to undermine the minorities' hopes for autonomy in the region. Nevertheless, the region has emerged as 'role-model' for ethnic cohesive politics.

The traditional Muslim politics in Sri Lanka transformed with the formation of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC) and its active communal politics under its founder-leader, M.H.M.Ashraff. While representing the interests of the Muslim community, particularly those living in the north-eastern region, SLMC through its politics of bargaining and consensus voiced and advocated for the interests, rights and privileges of the Muslim community as well as contributed to their socio-economic and cultural upliftment at the crossroad of ethnic conflict and civil war. Although SLMC received popular mandate from the Muslim community, the party fell into fragmentation with the unexpected demise of its founder-leader in 2000, and splits were instigated shortly. This fragmentation caused a severe effect in the distinct path of Muslim politics in Sri Lanka. This study examines the fragmented nature and the trends of Muslim politics, particularly the politics of SLMC in post-Ashraff era and their impact. This study reveals that the fragmentation within SLMC caused leadership crisis and emergence of many Muslim political parties that promoted ugly politics of opportunism. This trend ultimately reduced the bargaining strength of Muslim politics, negatively influenced representative politics, leading to the negligence and marginalisation of Muslims' concerns and grievances in national politics. The leadership crisis and regionalism also negatively influenced the politics of SLMC and other Muslim parties in post-Ashraff era. This study also finds that unifying splinter-groups, reforming party structure and procedures, and redefining goals and path of achieving them would not only strengthen the politics of SLMC and other Muslim political parties but also would give a new brand for Muslim minority politics in Sri Lanka.

With the increase of ethnic conflicts and ethnic groups' mobilizations for ethno-nationalism to secure and share state power, the concept of decentralization has also been getting attention in ethnically plural countries, and many of them have taken advantages of adopting decentralization policies for the empowerment of diverse groups in their state cum nation-building process. Similarly, the requests and supports for the adaptation of different forms of decentralization as to accommodate number of political and administrative demands and claims emerging from different ethnic groups within a country has also increased in the recent past. This has induced the researcher and international actors to develop different definitions, interpretations, and objectives for decentralization on its ethnic diversity accommodation perspective. This paper attempted to conceptualize the decentralization as a tool for ethnic diversity accommodation through reviewing the existing literary definitions, explanations and with researchers' interpretive arguments. The finding reveals that decentralization initiatives, like other impacts, in number of ways, contributes to accommodate rights, interests, needs and claims of competing ethnic groups, especially of ethnic minorities and accommodate them within the larger political system and their local attachments. However, the success of this process highly depends on the mechanisms adopted for sharing powers and responsibilities; the nature, subject and decree of decentralized power; and the willingness of authorities to allow the groups to exercise those powers, with other factors.