Malaysia's Three Tiers of Government — and the One Malaysians Don't Elect

Malaysians vote for a Member of Parliament. They vote for a state assemblyman. They have never voted for the mayor or councillors who set their assessment tax, license their hawker stall, or approve the extension on their house — because that election hasn’t been held anywhere in Malaysia since 1965.

That gap is the clearest way to see that Malaysia runs on three tiers of government, not two. Each tier has a different legal source, a different way of getting into office, and a different slice of what the Federal Constitution calls the Ninth Schedule.

At a glance

Tier	Seat	Who runs it	Legal basis	Elected?
Federal	Putrajaya	Parliament (Dewan Rakyat + Dewan Negara) and the Cabinet, headed by the Prime Minister	Federal Constitution, Ninth Schedule List I	Yes — general election
State	13 state capitals	Ruler/Yang di-Pertua Negeri, Menteri Besar/Chief Minister, State Executive Council, State Legislative Assembly	Federal Constitution, Ninth Schedule List II; each State’s own Constitution	Yes — state election
Local	City/municipal/district level	City, municipal and district councils, under the state government and coordinated by KPKT/JKT	Local Government Act 1976 (Peninsular Malaysia); separate ordinances in Sabah and Sarawak	No — councillors appointed since 1965/1976

Federal: the Federal List

The federal government is the only tier with authority over the whole country, and its powers come from List I of the Ninth Schedule — the Federal List. It covers, among other things, external affairs, defence, internal security and the police, citizenship, finance and taxation, trade and industry, communications, and education and health.

Structurally, it is Parliament (the Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara) that makes federal law, and the Cabinet, led by the Prime Minister and answerable to the Dewan Rakyat, that runs the federal executive from Putrajaya. Malaysia’s 13 states sit under this tier, along with three areas that are not states at all: the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan, which the Federal List (item 27) places under direct federal administration rather than a state government.

State: the State List

Each of the 13 states is a self-governing unit under its own State Constitution, headed by a Ruler (in nine states) or a Yang di-Pertua Negeri appointed by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (in Melaka, Penang, Sabah and Sarawak). The head of government — a Menteri Besar where there is a Ruler, a Chief Minister in the other four states — is appointed from the State Legislative Assembly and runs the State Executive Council, the state-level equivalent of the Cabinet.

State power comes from List II of the Ninth Schedule — the State List. Its most consequential items are Islamic law and Malay custom (including the Syariah courts), and land — tenure, registration, mining and compulsory acquisition. It also covers agriculture and forestry, State-level works and water, State holidays, and — on paper — local government (item 4).

That last item is where the third tier comes from, and where the State List’s authority turns out to be more theoretical than real.

Local: the tier states don’t fully control

Item 4 of the State List gives states the power to legislate on local government. In practice, Parliament exercises that power for them: the Local Government Act 1976 (Act 171) is a federal statute that Peninsular Malaysia’s states adopted to standardise how their councils work, under the Constitution’s mechanism for Parliament to legislate uniformity onto a State List subject. Sabah and Sarawak instead run their own local government laws — the Local Government Ordinance 1961 in Sabah, and a separate ordinance framework in Sarawak — reflecting the wider pattern of those two states keeping more legislative independence after 1963.

Local authorities themselves come in three types, classified by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government’s Local Government Department (JKT) on population and annual revenue:

Type	Malay term	Threshold (JKT)	Typical focus
City council	Majlis Bandaraya	Population over 500,000; annual revenue at least RM100 million	High-level services, urban development
Municipal council	Majlis Perbandaran	Population over 150,000; annual revenue at least RM20 million	Business and commercial activity, community development
District council	Majlis Daerah	Population under 150,000; annual revenue under RM20 million	Infrastructure and public utilities in areas outside major towns

Whatever the size, a local authority’s day-to-day work is the most visible layer of government in most people’s lives: assessment tax bills, rubbish collection, business and signage licensing, planning permission for renovations, hawker and market management, parks, drains and local roads.

Why there’s no vote for this tier

Local government elections did once exist — Malaya’s first, in George Town in 1951, predate independence. They were suspended nationwide by the Emergency (Suspension of Local Government Elections) (Amendment) Regulation 1965, issued under the Emergency (Essential Powers) Act 1964 during Confrontation with Indonesia, and framed at the time as temporary.

They were never restored. A Royal Commission of Inquiry into local authorities reported in 1968 recommending elected local government resume; its recommendations were not acted on. Instead, Parliament passed the Local Government Act 1976, whose Section 15 provides that “all provisions relating to local government elections shall cease to have force or effect,” while Section 10 gives the state government the power to appoint local councillors in their place. Together, the two sections closed off local elections as a matter of ordinary law rather than emergency regulation — which is why the arrangement has outlasted the Confrontation that supposedly justified it by six decades.

A related constitutional feature reinforces the federal government’s reach into what is nominally state territory: Article 95A of the Federal Constitution creates a National Council for Local Government, chaired by a federal minister with one representative from each state, whose policy decisions can bind state governments on local government matters.

Common mistakes

“Local government is a state matter, so states fully control it.” State List item 4 gives states the legislative label, but the operating law for Peninsular Malaysia — Act 171 — is a federal statute states adopted, and the appointment (not election) of councillors under it is set by that same Act.

“Kuala Lumpur has a state government.” It doesn’t. Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan are Federal Territories, administered directly by the federal government (through the Ministry of Federal Territories for KL and Putrajaya), not by a Ruler, Menteri Besar or State Assembly.

“Local councillors used to be elected and now they’re appointed because of a recent policy change.” The switch is six decades old — suspended in 1965, made permanent by statute in 1976 — not a recent development.

“Sabah and Sarawak use the same local government law as the Peninsula.” They don’t. Act 171 applies to Peninsular Malaysia; Sabah and Sarawak each administer local government under their own separate ordinances.

What’s next

For the full text of what each tier can legislate on, see Who Decides What: The Federal, State and Concurrent Lists of the Ninth Schedule. For how the federal and state elections that do happen are run, see How Malaysia’s Elections Work and the Election Commission (SPR). For the different titles state heads of government carry, see Menteri Besar or Chief Minister. For the document both the Federal and State Lists come from, see the Federal Constitution of Malaysia.