Barriers to building institutional capacity in the Malaysian housing development sector

Scholars have identified institutional capacity as key to effective policy-making and local economic success. The Malaysian housing sector has been found, however, to be afflicted with various institutional deficiencies: poor payment practices, a trust deficit between key actors, poor construction quality and housing oversupply, and an ineffective housing planning framework. These long-standing issues indicate a need to examine institutional conditions in the Malaysian housing sector and to consider measures to promote institutional capacity as a potential solution. Various theorists have put forward ‘recipes’ for building institutional capacity and identified social, knowledge and political resources as ‘essential ingredients’. The empirical research examined in this paper, however, identifies key shortages of these three resources. It appears thus imperative that institutional relations are developed in order to overcome communication barriers and power imbalances that will improve performance in the housing sector.