Altruism vs. Transactional Politics: New Political Marketing Reality in the Post 14th General Election Malaysia

Abstract

With a resultant change in government occurring for the first time ever in Malaysia post 14^th General Election, this review paper explores the issues of the emergent of a new political marketing reality within its electorate market. This paper purports to critically examine how altruistic approach taken by the eventual victors, the Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition, enabled them to win the hearts and minds of voters over the overtly transactional approach taken by the incumbent Barisan Nasional (BN) pact. Altruism within political marketing is defined as putting the concerns of voters ahead of a party’s consigned interest while transactional politics refers to a reciprocal approach of offering reward to win votes. Here, the paper highlights the degree in which the coalitions dabbled in both approaches and how altruism finally emerged as the voters’ choice. It also focuses on how altruism fits into the whole milieu of political marketing and how this could change the political landscape of Malaysia. Moving forward, this paper hopes the factors highlighted here can be empirically examined by researchers and other stakeholders in order to test the efficacies of altruism and transactional approaches as a political marketing construct, in light with the expected competitive elections coming in the near future for Malaysia.