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Michael Barr explores the complex and covert networks of power at work in one of the world's most prosperous countries - the city-state of Singapore. He argues that the contemporary networks of power are a deliberate project initiated and managed by Lee Kuan Yew - former prime minister and Singapore's 'founding father' - designed to empower himself and his family. Barr identifies the crucial institutions of power - including the country's sovereign wealth funds, and the government-linked companies - together with five critical features that form the key to understanding the nature of the networks. He provides an assessment of possible shifts of power within the elite in the wake of Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong, assuming power, and considers the possibility of a more fundamental democratic shift in Singapore's political system.
Singapore gained independence in 1965, a city-state in a world of nation-states. Yet its long and complex history reaches much farther back. Blending modernity and tradition, ideologies and ethnicities, a peculiar set of factors make Singapore what it is today. In this thematic study of the island nation, Michael D. Barr proposes a new approach to understand this development. From the pre-colonial period through to the modern day, he traces the idea, the politics and the geography of Singapore over five centuries of rich history. In doing so he rejects the official narrative of the so-called 'Singapore Story'. Drawing on in-depth archival work and oral histories, Singapore: A Modern History is a work both for students of the country's history and politics, but also for any reader seeking to engage with this enigmatic and vastly successful nation.
Singapore has few natural resources but, in a relatively short history, its economic and social development and transformation are nothing short of remarkable. Today Singapore is by far the most successful exemplar of material development in Southeast Asia and it often finds itself the envy of development in Southeast Asia and it often finds itself the envy of developed countries. Furthermore over the last three and a half decades the ruling party has presided over the formation of a thriving community of Singaporeans who love and are proud of their country.
Michael Barr explores the complex and covert networks of power at work in one of the world's most prosperous countries - the city-state of Singapore. He argues that the contemporary networks of power are a deliberate project initiated and managed by Lee Kuan Yew - former prime minister and Singapore's 'founding father' - designed to empower himself and his family. Barr identifies the crucial institutions of power - including the country's sovereign wealth funds, and the government-linked companies - together with five critical features that form the key to understanding the nature of the networks. He provides an assessment of possible shifts of power within the elite in the wake of Lee Kuan Yew's son, Lee Hsien Loong, assuming power, and considers the possibility of a more fundamental democratic shift in Singapore's political system.
Explains the changing pattern of contentious politics in the democratization process of the two city-states Singapore and Hong Kong. This book explores the causal connections between popular contention and democratization by applying a multi-disciplinary approach, using theoretical insights from the political sciences, sociology and psychology.
Singapore is changing. The consensus that the PAP government has constructed and maintained over five decades is fraying. The assumptions that underpin Singaporean exceptionalism are no longer accepted as easily and readily as before. Among these are the ideas that the country is uniquely vulnerable, that this vulnerability limits its policy and political options, that good governance demands a degree of political consensus that ordinary democratic arrangements cannot produce, and that the country's success requires a competitive meritocracy accompanied by relatively little income or wealth redistribution.But the policy and political conundrums that Singapore faces today are complex and defy easy answers. Confronted with a political landscape that is likely to become more contested, how should the government respond? What reforms should it pursue? This collection of essays suggests that a far-reaching and radical rethinking of the country's policies and institutions is necessary, even if it weakens the very consensus that enabled Singapore to succeed in its first fifty years.
When Singapore declared independence in 1965, it faced the monumental task of building a military from scratch. Aristocracy of Armed Talent tells the story of the development of the Singapore Armed Forces through a collective portrait of its leaders. This book is based on interviews with twenty-eight flag officers, offering a firsthand look at Singapore's military from the very leaders who helped shape it. It addresses the challenges Singapore faced in building its officer corps and encouraging individuals to stay and make a career out of military service. In a society where the majority Chinese population traditionally devalued military careers, and where military service was associated with foreign occupiers and colonizers, Singapore had to learn to build a culture of leadership for its armed forces. It also dispels some of the myths that have shrouded military culture in the country. As former flag officers are often recruited into senior civil service and political roles, understating the military elite culture is central to understanding Singapore's politics. This book provides a rare window on an exceptional and globally influential institution.
This book provides a detailed analysis of how governance in Singapore has evolved since independence to become what it is today, and what its prospects might be in a post-Lee Kuan Yew future. Firstly, it discusses the question of political leadership, electoral dominance and legislative monopoly in Singapore’s one-party dominant system and the system’s durability. Secondly, it tracks developments in Singapore’s public administration, critically analysing the formation and transformation of meritocracy and pragmatism, two key components of the state ideology. Thirdly, it discusses developments within civil society, focusing in particular on issues related to patriarchy and feminism, hetero-normativity and gay activism, immigration and migrant worker exploitation, and the contest over history and national narratives in academia, the media and the arts. Fourthly, it discusses the PAP government’s efforts to connect with the public, including its national public engagement exercises that can be interpreted as a subtler approach to social and political control. In increasingly complex conditions, the state struggles to maintain its hegemony while securing a pre-eminent position in the global economic order. Tan demonstrates how trends in these four areas converge in ways that signal plausible futures for a post-LKY Singapore.
Like the postcolonial world more generally, Southeast Asia exhibits tremendous variation in state capacity and authoritarian durability. Ordering Power draws on theoretical insights dating back to Thomas Hobbes to develop a unified framework for explaining both of these political outcomes. States are especially strong and dictatorships especially durable when they have their origins in 'protection pacts': broad elite coalitions unified by shared support for heightened state power and tightened authoritarian controls as bulwarks against especially threatening and challenging types of contentious politics. These coalitions provide the elite collective action underpinning strong states, robust ruling parties, cohesive militaries, and durable authoritarian regimes - all at the same time. Comparative-historical analysis of seven Southeast Asian countries (Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Vietnam, and Thailand) reveals that subtly divergent patterns of contentious politics after World War II provide the best explanation for the dramatic divergence in Southeast Asia's contemporary states and regimes.
This book delves into the limitations of Singapore’s authoritarian governance model. In doing so, the relevance of the Singapore governance model for other industrialising economies is systematically examined. Research in this book examines the challenges for an integrated governance model that has proven durable over four to five decades. The editors argue that established socio-political and economic formulae are now facing unprecedented challenges. Structural pressures associated with Singapore’s particular locus within globalised capitalism have fostered heightened social and material inequalities, compounded by the ruling party’s ideological resistance to substantive redistribution. As ‘growth with equity’ becomes more elusive, the rationale for power by a ruling party dominated by technocratic elite and state institutions crafted and controlled by the ruling party and its bureaucratic allies is open to more critical scrutiny.