Research Seminar Series: Professor Elvin Ong

Dear Academic and Corporate Peers,

We are thrilled to invite you to the upcoming session of the Research Seminar Series at the Asia School of Business, featuring Professor Elvin Ong.

Seminar Title:

Public Opinion Towards Democratic Reforms and Compromise in a New Democracy

Event Details:

📅 Date: 6 May 2026

⏰ Time: 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

📍Venue: CR-W2-05

💻 Zoom Details :

https://asb-my.zoom.us/j/93310749522?pwd=CdDXuh7ZVROZNNyabIwRqlBGKy0ZxF.1

Meeting ID: 933 1074 9522

Passcode: 803655

📝 Register here now!

Abstract

Consolidating democracy requires democratic reforms to expand civil liberties, enhance transparency, and improve accountability. Political actors, however, may undermine public support by framing such reforms as threats to their group’s interests. We examine how this framing affects public attitudes toward democratic reforms and willingness to accept compromises that balance competing interests through a survey experiment in Malaysia, a new democracy since 2018. We report three key findings. First, messages that emphasize improvements to the country’s democratic quality do not increase support for reforms. Second, framing reforms as threats to the status of a legacy privileged group decreases support, particularly among members of that group. Third, policy compromises can build broad-based support for highly polarized reforms but paradoxically polarize opinions on democratic reforms that were initially uncontroversial. Our results underscore how the nuanced framing of political reforms can either overcome or exacerbate the challenges of democratic consolidation in new democracies.

Speaker’s Bio

Professor Elvin Ong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. His research focuses on comparative politics, democratization, opposition movements, electoral autocracies, and political developments in Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia. He is the author of Opposing Power: Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies and has published widely in leading journals such as American Journal of Political Science, Government and Opposition, and Democratization. His work has been supported by prestigious awards including the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Award and the Singapore Social Science Research Council Fellowship.

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