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Malaysia: Policies and Issues in Economic Development. By ISIS, Malaysia. ISIS: Kuala Lumpur, 2011. Pp. 693.
This voluminous book is more an economic history book rather than as its title may indicate, a book on the current economic policies and issues that impact the process of economic development in Malaysia. It was published to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), a government think-tank in Malaysia. It starts with an introductory chapter by David Lim on the economic history of Malaysia from the beginning of the colonial period in the late nineteenth century to the present and ends with a chapter by the late Dr Zainal Aznam Yusof on "Looking Forward" on the possible future trends in the Malaysian economy. In between the first and last chapters, there are twenty chapters divided into four sectors covering macroeconomic management, economic growth and transformation, growth and equity and the institutional aspects of development. However, the book does not discuss in detail the New Economic Model, the Economic Transformation Programme or the Government Transformation Programme or the Tenth Malaysia Plan, which are shaping the outcome of the Malaysian economy in the present and the near future.
The chapters do not run in sequence and there is no unified theme, and each author is left to develop his own framework and argument. The chapters are written by twenty-five social scientists and two institutions, that is, the Malaysian Industrial Development Authority (MIDA) and the Federation of Malaysia Manufacturers (FMM). Of the twenty-five social scientists, at least nine have worked at one time or another at the Faculty of Economics and Administration in the University of Malaya. Four of the authors are from ISIS and the rest come from government institutions or other Malaysian universities or have worked in these institutions in the past. Hence it is not surprising that there is a pro-government bias in several of...