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There is a wide spectrum in academia that representatives of the citizens should act in line with the interests of those who are being represented. Knowledge about citizens' preferences, however, is still limited in the field of political representation in Malaysia. This paper examines the MPs' roles as the citizens' representatives in Malaysia from the perspective of the citizens themselves. Based on the survey (n=598), the voters' preferences that are being analysed through three models of representative-delegates, trustee and partisan. The research findings indicate that the constituents place a high priority on the MPs in bringing development to the constituency rather than in the law making and advocating. To this end, more expectations are for the MPs assemble to delegate model. Citizens perceive the MPs' main role as a legislator as a minor role. This perception could reflect on the political situation in Malaysia. Accordingly, this paper suggests that the MPs should focus on their main functions in policy making, to participate in the parliamentary debates actively and to represent their constituencies at the national level. The MPs should take the local issues for national policies implementation to be contextualized in their respective local constituencies.

This research integrates information from both environmental and social sciences to inform effective management of the wetlands. A three-stage research framework was developed for modelling the drivers and pressures imposed on the wetlands and their impacts to the ecosystem and the local communities. Firstly, a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) was used to predict the probability of anthropogenic activities affecting the delivery of different key wetland ecosystem services under different management scenarios. Secondly, Choice Experiment (CE) was used to quantify the relative preferences which key wetland stakeholder group (aquaculturists) held for delivery of different levels of these key ecosystem services. Thirdly, a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) was applied to produce an ordinal ranking of the alternative management scenarios accounting for their impacts upon ecosystem service delivery as perceived through the preferences of the aquaculturists. This integrated ecosystem management approach was applied to a wetland ecosystem in Setiu, Terengganu, Malaysia which currently supports a significant level of aquaculture activities. This research has produced clear guidelines to inform policy makers considering alternative wetland management scenarios: Intensive Aquaculture, Conservation or Ecotourism, in addition to the Status Quo. The findings of this research are as follows. The BBN revealed that current aquaculture activity is likely to have significant impacts on water column nutrient enrichment, but trivial impacts on caged fish biomass, especially under the Intensive Aquaculture scenario. Secondly, the best fitting CE models identified several stakeholder sub-groups for aquaculturists, each with distinct sets of preferences for the delivery of key ecosystem services. Thirdly the MCDA identified Conservation as the most desirable scenario overall based on ordinal ranking in the eyes of most of the stakeholder sub-groups. Ecotourism and Status Quo scenarios were the next most preferred and Intensive Aquaculture was the least desirable scenario. The methodologies developed through this research provide an opportunity for improving planning and decision making processes that aim to deliver sustainable management of wetland ecosystems in Malaysia.

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