Malaysia's Think Tanks

A think tank is a research organisation that studies public policy and tries to influence it, sitting between universities and government. Malaysia has a modest but active scene: depending on the definition, roughly 18 to 30 recognised standalone think tanks, plus about 44 university-based policy institutes. That puts Malaysia near the regional median, with more think tanks than most ASEAN neighbours but fewer and less globally ranked than Singapore (ISEAS, SIIA) or Indonesia (CSIS Jakarta). The gap tracks almost exactly with economic size, since think-tank counts across East and Southeast Asia correlate with GDP at about 0.99.

The scene is ideologically plural but shallow. It clusters into free-market (IDEAS), progressive (REFSA, SEDAR, The Centre), foreign-policy and strategic (ISIS Malaysia), government-linked and party-linked (Khazanah Research Institute, EMIR Research, INSAP), and Islamic-oriented (IKIM, IAIS) camps. About two-thirds are multi-issue rather than single-cause advocates, so Malaysia's scene is less polarised by design than the American model.

Funding is the binding constraint. Most outfits run on short-term, project-based grants and struggle to cover rent and staff, and 58% reported a worsening funding climate in the 2024 On Think Tanks survey, up from 48% the year before. Over 60% said political polarisation had hurt their work. The sector stays busy anyway, because the government's Ekonomi Madani agenda, Budget 2025 (RM421 billion) and the 13th Malaysia Plan (2026 to 2030) all create steady demand for outside policy input.

Strip away the branding and Malaysian think tanks do five things, in different mixes.

First, research: reports, working papers, indices and briefs, usually published free on their own sites. Second, convening: conferences, closed-door roundtables and ministerial briefings, which for some institutes is the main activity rather than a side effect. Third, advising government, formally through commissioned work and informally through personal networks. Fourth, Track Two diplomacy, where analysts and officials meet in their private capacity to float ideas that later feed official ASEAN channels. Fifth, shaping public debate through op-eds, cited data and media commentary in three languages.

The mix defines the institute. Khazanah Research Institute is almost pure research. KSI is almost pure convening. ISIS Malaysia does all five. Knowing which mix you are looking at tells you how a given think tank actually earns its influence, and its money.

The main Malaysian policy-research bodies, what they focus on, and their orientation or funder. Orientation is how each is widely understood, often from its leadership or funding rather than any formal party tie.

The Institute of Strategic and International Studies, founded on 8 April 1983, is Malaysia's oldest and most influential think tank. The government created it to give the country an in-house strategic research capacity and a channel into regional diplomacy, and its founding director-general Noordin Sopiee ran it for two decades and remains its defining figure.

It is legally autonomous and non-profit, but it sits close to government: its chairman is a Prime Ministerial appointment, currently Mohd Faiz Abdullah, named by Anwar Ibrahim in 2023. It covers foreign policy and security, trade, social policy, climate and cyber. It was commissioned by the Cabinet to produce the National Interest Analysis that informed Malaysia's stance on the TPP, later the CPTPP, and it contributed to Vision 2020.

ISIS is a founding member of the ASEAN-ISIS network and of CSCAP, whose secretariat it hosts, and it runs the Asia-Pacific Roundtable, a flagship Track Two security dialogue held since 1987. On funding it is opaque by the sector's standards: founded with government money, US diplomatic cables describe it as having become largely self-sustaining on investment returns, topped up by project-based government support and foreign partners like Germany's Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung. It does not publish a budget breakdown.

The Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, launched on 8 February 2010, is Malaysia's free-market, classical-liberal think tank and the closest thing the country has to an advocacy shop. It organises around four pillars: rule of law, limited government, free markets and individual liberty, and it invokes the legacy of Tunku Abdul Rahman. It was co-founded by Tunku Abidin Muhriz and Wan Saiful Wan Jan, who left in 2018 for Bersatu politics; Tricia Yeoh led it to 2024, followed by acting CEO Aira Azhari.

It is the sector's transparency exemplar. Its public funding page lists foreign foundations (Friedrich Naumann, Atlas), democracy organisations (NED, IRI, NDI, EU, World Bank Group), the British High Commission, corporates and dozens of Malaysian firms, and it publishes audited accounts back to 2012 with a stated policy of not accepting funding conditional on research outcomes. That same disclosure is why its independence gets scrutinised: it is an Atlas Network partner (which won it the 2024 Asia Liberty Award), and it historically took tobacco-industry money from Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International, which it said in 2019 it would stop accepting. Its flagship work includes the Malaysia Open Budget Index and a civil-society Political Financing Bill.

Khazanah Research Institute, operational from 1 January 2014, is the research arm set up by Khazanah Nasional, Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund. It is a company limited by guarantee with Khazanah as its sole member, funded by Khazanah and its foundation Yayasan Hasanah, and it has openly said it depends on that funding. That parentage is the core of every independence question about it, even though its research is widely regarded as technically strong.

It is best known for the State of Households report series, which shaped how Malaysia talks about inequality and popularised the B40, M40 and T20 income brackets, and for its housing-affordability work. Its research consistently foregrounds household vulnerability, wage stagnation and social protection, a welfare-economics emphasis rather than a party line.

Its government-linked character surfaced publicly in 2020, when chairman Nungsari Ahmad Radhi resigned after being told he no longer had the funder's confidence. The press widely linked the timing to a commentary he co-authored criticising the government's Covid-19 response, though he neither confirmed nor denied it. He returned as chairman in 2024.

KSI Strategic Institute for Asia Pacific, founded in 2018 by Michael Yeoh, is the clearest example of a think tank whose product is access rather than research. Yeoh had earlier co-founded the Asian Strategy & Leadership Institute (ASLI) and ran it for over two decades. KSI brands itself a 'superconnector' between government, business and civil society, and in practice it runs events.

Day to day it stages economic forums, sectoral summits and international dialogues, arranges private briefings where ministers and CEOs meet, runs paid membership clubs (the Economic Club of Kuala Lumpur, the ASEAN Economic Club, the KSI CEO Council), and hands out business awards. Its research footprint is modest, roughly 15 publications and 15 staff in 2024, dwarfed by its events calendar. Its funding is not itemised publicly and appears to come mainly from conference fees, corporate sponsorship and memberships.

Its influence flows through the room, not the report. Its National Economic Forum and its World and Global Chinese Economic Summits regularly feature sitting ministers, and it is a notable channel for Malaysia-China and Chinese-diaspora business engagement.

Several institutes are close to a government or a party, which shapes both their funding and how their output should be read.

Penang Institute, founded in 1997 as SERI and renamed in 2011, is the think tank of the DAP-led Penang state government, which funds it and whose Chief Minister chairs its board. It produces state economic and urban research, fed into plans like Penang2030, and publishes Penang Monthly. REFSA (2004) is a progressive, trilingual think tank widely read as Pakatan Harapan and DAP-adjacent, largely because former chairman Liew Chin Tong served as a DAP leader and deputy minister while chairing it until 2025; REFSA itself says it is impartial. EMIR Research (2019), known for its 'Pulse From The Ground' opinion polls, was founded by Rais Hussin, a Bersatu co-founder who later chaired MDEC and now leads the government agency MRANTI, which is why its commentary is often read as government-adjacent.

Bait Al-Amanah (2015) began as a Johor UMNO reform vehicle and now presents as an independent, non-partisan institute working on foreign affairs, security and economics, with a research team that includes non-Malay staff. INSAP is UMNO's own party think tank. In each case the honest read is to note the tie and weigh the research accordingly, rather than dismiss or accept it wholesale.

When Malaysian media quote a GDP or sentiment forecast that is not from Bank Negara, it usually comes from one of two houses.

MIER, the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research, incorporated in 1985, is the standard independent reference. It is a non-profit company limited by guarantee that receives an annual government grant alongside endowment and consultancy income, so treat it as semi-official rather than fully independent. Its flagship Malaysian Economic Outlook and its two leading indicators, the Business Conditions Index (firms) and Consumer Sentiments Index (households), are benchmarked to 100, where above 100 signals optimism. Both are widely cited in budget and monetary-policy debate.

SERC, the Socio-Economic Research Centre, sits under ACCCIM, the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia. It publishes quarterly economic reports, and its stance should be read as reflecting the interests of the ethnic-Chinese business community and SMEs. For any forecast, the sound practice is to cross-check MIER against SERC, Bank Negara and the World Bank rather than lean on one house number.

Beyond the generalists sit focused institutes worth knowing.

The Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy is the main dedicated health think tank. It favours a free-market, patient-centric approach, has pushed ideas like national health insurance, and runs CodeBlue, a widely cited health-news site that is essential for anyone tracking Health Ministry policy. Third World Network, founded in Penang in 1984, is a progressive Global South advocacy network active in WTO and UN forums, publishing the SUNS and Third World Economics bulletins. The Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia at Sunway University (2014) is Malaysia's first think tank based in a private university, funded by the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and partnered with Harvard, Columbia and ISEAS. IKMAS sits inside Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

One foreign institute belongs on any Malaysian reading list: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. Its annual State of Southeast Asia survey breaks out Malaysia-specific views on the US-China rivalry and the South China Sea, and its Perspective papers are free. It is funded by the Singapore government, which is worth remembering when reading its regional framing.

Malaysian think tanks run on five overlapping money sources: government and GLC money, corporate sponsorship, foreign foundations and embassies, membership and consulting fees, and a little endowment income. Most mix several and lean on short-term project grants.

There is no think-tank transparency law. Bodies register with the Registrar of Societies or as a company limited by guarantee; the latter must file audited accounts, but neither route requires naming donors, and Malaysia has no political-financing disclosure law either. So the baseline is low disclosure, and voluntary donor transparency, of which IDEAS is the clearest example, is the exception rather than the norm.

Three foreign channels recur and draw the sharpest independence debates. The Atlas Network, a US free-market connector that deploys over US$10 million a year in grants and prizes and has drawn on Koch-linked money, backs IDEAS. German political foundations tied to German parties (Konrad-Adenauer for the CDU, Friedrich Naumann for the FDP) have funded Malaysian institutes for decades. And US democracy funders (NED and its affiliates IRI and NDI) operate here, which critics like Kua Kia Soong argue undermines the legitimacy of recipients. The core tension is structural rather than proven capture: reliance on short-term grants creates pressure regardless of editorial-independence clauses. The credible defences seen in practice are diversified funding, published donor lists and audited accounts, and explicit no-strings clauses, and few Malaysian institutes offer all three.

Influence runs through five channels, and it is strongest when an institute sits close to the government of the day.

First, pre-budget consultation: since 2019 the Finance Ministry publishes a Pre-Budget Statement and runs formal budget consultation sessions (the Budget 2025 round opened in July 2024 with over 400 participants), where think tanks and economists submit proposals. MIER's indices and KRI's pre-budget analyses feed this directly. Second, parliamentary select committees: after the 2023 creation of 10 special select committees, think-tank staff appear as expert witnesses, and IDEAS has run sustained campaigns through them for a Political Financing Act and parliamentary autonomy.

Third, and most telling, the revolving door. A small credentialed elite circulates between think tanks and government: IDEAS founder Wan Saiful Wan Jan became PTPTN chairman then an MP, EMIR's Rais Hussin became MDEC chairman, KRI research director Muhammed Abdul Khalid became economic adviser to PM Mahathir, and Penang Institute's Ong Kian Ming became a deputy minister. Fourth, the media: think-tank scholars are regular bylined commentators, and KRI's State of Households framing (the 2018 edition reported the T20 holding 46.8% of income against the B40's 16%) became reference material in inequality policy. Fifth, Track Two diplomacy, where ISIS feeds ideas into official ASEAN processes. The catch is that access shifts with each change of government, so a think tank's clout is rarely permanent.

The practical skill is matching the question to the right institute, then reading the answer against who paid for it.

For the economy and forecasts, start with MIER and SERC, cross-checked against Bank Negara. For inequality, households and cost of living, Khazanah Research Institute is the leading source, and its reports are Creative Commons and free to reuse. For foreign policy, security and ASEAN, ISIS Malaysia domestically and ISEAS regionally. For health, the Galen Centre and its CodeBlue portal. For market and governance reform, IDEAS. For progressive social policy, REFSA. For Penang and the northern region, Penang Institute. Almost every flagship report is a free PDF in the institute's Publications section, and the official statistics underneath are free and machine-readable on OpenDOSM and data.gov.my.

Read critically on three axes. Follow the funding: sovereign-wealth and semi-official bodies sit in the government orbit, state and party-linked chairs signal alignment, business-chamber money reflects commercial interests, and Atlas or foundation grants predict pro-market conclusions. Check the craft: prefer reports that cite their data (ideally DOSM), disclose methodology and release the dataset, and treat sentiment indices as measures of perception, not fact. Check the author: note whether they hold a political or agency role, since that shapes framing even when the data are sound.