Financial citizenship and nation-building in Malaysia: elites' and citizens' perspectives

Abstract

This article presents a postcolonial analysis of financial citizenship (FC) programmes in Malaysia. Drawing on secondary data and on interviews with elites and citizen investors, the paper explores the spatial and historically specific nature of financialisation in a postcolonial context. Specifically, the paper draws out the significance of FC as part of broader nation building objectives in Malaysia from an elite perspective, while also observing the reluctance of citizen investors who are engaging with the equity market to support the formal objectives of the policy. In doing so, it provides an example of the financialisation of everyday life in a distinctive and complex emerging economy context. Moreover, the paper explores these processes from both elite and citizen perspectives, allowing these layered relations within FC to be analysed. The article, therefore, contributes to the financialisation literature by bringing new understandings of elite–citizen relations in postcolonial nation-building strategies.

Regulatory Visions and the State in E. Asia: The Irrational Investor Problem in the Comparative Politics of Finance

“…The examples below serve as potential launchpads for hypothesis testing, rather than as claims to generalizability. In Malaysia, scholars note that while government financial literacy initiatives reflect the adoption of a rational investor, there remains a strong elite undercurrent that is skeptical of the average investor's ability to manage risk given their lack of financial sophistication (Rahman et al, 2020). In Indonesia, regulators employ similar hard paternalistic tools to those observed in this article, for example, limits on stock price movements, bans on short-selling, and randomizing stock market closing times to prevent market manipulation suggest a similar regulatory vision of investor irrationality at work.…”