David Martin Jones

Department of Sociology, Humboldt State University
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, ASIAN VALUES AND THE POLITICAL ORDERING OF

CONTEMPORARY SINGAPORE
Author(s): David Martin-Jones
Source: Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, Vol. 23, No. 1/2, ASIA (1997), pp. 121-145
Published by: Department of Sociology, Humboldt State University
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ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT,
ASIAN VALUES AND THE
POLITICAL ORDERING OF
CONTEMPORARY
SINGAPORE
David Martin-]ones
There exists a current fascination with the Singaporean model of political

and economic development that has occasioned a flurry of scholarly and
not so scholarly studies of the small city state perched at the end of
peninsula Malaysia. On the one hand, commentators of a conservative
disposition derive comfort from Singapore's bracingly elitist education and
refreshingly retributive approach to justice (Rodan, 1996:340). Elsewhere,
economic liberals admire the city state's commitment to open trade and
point out that Singapore ranks second only to Hong Kong on an "index
of Economic Freedom compiled by the independent Heritage
Foundation" (Peebles and Wilson, 1996:3), whilst somewhat differently,
erstwhile socialists, recently reinvented as communitarians, like Britain's
Labor leader, Tony Blair, consider Singaporean attention to state financed
infrastructure, health care, religious harmony and community appealingly
an ti—individualistic (The Economist, January 13, 1996; The Straits Times
Weekly, January 13, 1996; Hutton, 1995). On the other hand we find,
particularly in the United States, an analogous mixture of democrats,
economic liberals and conservatives ranged against this paean to the
Singapore model. Thus, William Safire condemns the Nixon Center for
Peace and Freedom's selection of Singapore's Senior Minister, Lee Kuan
Yew, as an "architect of the new century," describing it as "sucking up
to a tin pot dictator," (Washington Post, November 12,1996). From a slighdy
more dispassionate perspective, Christopher Lingle finds the Singaporean
model a "schizophrenic" form of authoritarian capitalism (Lingle,
1996:158) whilst Christopher Tremewan considers the "PAP state" a
dubious agent of "foreign capital" (Tremewan, 1994:Chapter 2).
121
122
This capacity to volatize academic and journalistic discourse is cunous

given the small size of the city state and its relative political and economic
insignificance compared with Japan or the United States. This curiosity
can be explained in part by the assiduity with which Singapore's scholar
bureaucrats with their command of the English language and their exposure
to western academic practice have actively assumed the self appointed
task of defending the utility of Asian values in promoting social cohesion
and state led economic development (Koh, Straits Times, December 14,
1993; Schein, 1996:30; Tamney, 1995:180). In particular, what Eric Jones
terms the " Singapore School," have promoted the view that given its high
rates of growth sustained over three decades since independence, Singapore
could project itself as an Asian miracle that has solved both the problem
of rapid and successful modernization and the attendant consequences
of anornie and urban breakdown (Jones, 1994:18) Indeed, its cadres of
scholar bureaucrats widely promote the City State not only as a model for
development elsewhere in Asia and Afnca (Straits Times, Apnl 19, 1995;
November 13, 1993), but also for reforming the moral blight that vitiates
the contemporary western city scape.
What, we might ask, is the actual character of the current Asian model
of development in its Singaporean manifestation, to what extent has the
rapid and successful economic development of the small city state generated
a cnsis of identity in contemporary Singaporean politics and how, if at all,
has the evolution of a distinctive Singaporean ideology grounded in "Asian
values" overcome this crisis and finally what implications does this evolution
shed upon our understanding of the relationship between constitutionalism
and economic development in an Asian context?
Daring to Dream, Singapore Inc.—The Economic Model

The vision of an efficient, economically developed, rational order shaped
the ideology of the People's Action Party (PAP) that has ruled Singapore
continuously since independence in 1965.1 The first generation leaders
of modern Singapore and particularly current Senior Minister, Lee Kuan
Yew. Lee assumed "(1) that economic development must precede political
development, (2) that long range successful economic development could
only occur if there was political stability, and (3) that political stability
could be achieved and maintained only by firm...government controls"
(Schein, 1996:164). Lee, although no longer Prime Minister, continues to
direct PAP strategy and, to a significant degree, it is his plan that has single
mindedly modernized the small island state of three million mainly
Chinese souls surrounded by a "sea of Malay peoples" (Hill and Lian,
1995:63).
Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2
123
To realize Lee's vision of a technocratically engineered Utopia and build

a "tropical city of the future," however, requires a single minded
commitment to technocratically planned development that led, it is
maintained, the resource poor island from third worldism in 1965 to
potential OECD membership by 1996 (Straits Times Weekly , January 27,
1996, Schein, 1996:Chapter 2; Sikorski, 1996:830). Central to the legitimacy
and continuation of the rule of an evolving PAP oligarchy, is the
technocratic capacity to manage development without social dislocation.
Bearing in mind that the ruling elite habitually treat "economic, social and
related information as a strategic resource at the state's disposal" (Asher,
1994:34) what we need to consider initially, therefore, is the character of
this state managed economic development (Schein, 1996:43).
In the World Bank's assessment, post colonial Singapore "has
transformed itself from a resource poor maritime center into a dynamic,
industrialized economy" with real GDP growth averaging 8.2 percent from
1960-1990 (World Bank, 1993:xi). Moreover, since 1990 growth has
continued to average between 8-9 percent per annum (Abeysinghe, et al.,
1994:11; Straits Times Weekly, November 18, 1995). Lacking resources,
Singapore developed essentially as a re-export economy. Possessing the
world's most efficient container port and with unrivaled air transport
facilities, Singapore functions as the hub of a dynamic Southeast Asian
economy, whose "imported inputs are used in the production of some or
all export production activities" (Lloyd and Sandilands, 1988:5). Between
1960-1990 per capita GDP increased from $3455 to $13,150 (US). By
1995 per capita GDP at $21,493 had clearly surpassed that of its erstwhile
colonial master ('Asiaweek, November 8, 1995:56).
Accounting for this sustained growth, political economists generally
concur that "Singapore's development relied on a combination of external
free trade and strong internal economic control" (Huff, 1994:301). This
policy effectively dates from 1961 and the introduction of Singapore's
first Development Plan, formulated, in fact, by the UN sponsored
Winsemius mission. On the basis of this, the government established the
Economic Development Board (EDB) both to promote investment and
the development of manufacturing notably in ship building and repair,
metal engineering, and chemical and electrical equipment. The EDB's
industrial facilities division built large industrial estates, stimulated favorable
investment opportunities, through the Economic Expansion Incentives
Act (1967) and facilitated communications in order to attract Multi-National
Enterprises (MNE's). Internal economic control further required a tight
macroeconomic policy, the emasculation of the labor movement and the
124
suppression of communism and communist front activities (Schein,

1996:Chapter 3). The creation of the PAP managed National Trade Union
Congress (NTUC) in 1961 followed by the elimination of alternative labor
organizations through the Employment Act (1967) and the Amendment
of Industrial Relations Act (1968) together with the creation of the National
Wages Council (NWQ in 1971 created in the euphemism of the World
Bank, "harmonious industrial labor relations" (World Bank, 1993:34). As
Stephen Haggard somewhat more judiciously observes, Singapore presents,
"the clearest case of a link between export led growth and labor control"
(Haggard 1990:112).
After 1965, Singapore's ejection from the Malaysian federation, the
concomitant necessity to foster export oriented growth, together with the
expanded governmental capacity to manage a relatively small city state
along corporatist lines (Brown, 1994:82-3), further facilitated state economic
management. The success of the EDB in attracting foreign, largely
American, direct investment and promoting export led growth in the late
1960s was, in other words, "preceded by institutional reforms that
concentrated economic decision making and expanded the economic
instruments in the hands of the government" (Haggard, 1990:113; see
also Schein, Chapter 4). In the view of former Deputy Prime Minister,
Goh Keng Swee, rapid manufacturing development could be explained by
the fact that Singapore "imported entrepreneurs in the form of
multinational corporations and the government itself became an
entrepreneur in a big way" (Huff, 1994:330). An unforeseen consequence
of this policy has restricted the opportunity for a "strong local capitalist
class" (Tremewan, 1994:34-5) or indigenous state linked chaebols to develop
in Singapore, an economic fact that contrasts strikingly with comparable
export oriented Northeast Asian economies.
Instead, the government participated in business activity through a
variety of statutory boards and a large number of state-owned enterprises
(SOE's). These state owned enterprises initially took the form of a colonial
inheritance like the Royal Naval Dockyards and Singapore Harbor Board,
which gave the new state a significant stake in the shipbuilding and repair
industry
Government initiated, export oriented growth not only achieved
spectacular foreign investment by the early 1970s, it also realized the initial
government plan of creating full employment. After 1973 the EDB began
to move its investment promotion efforts away from labor intensive
manufacturing industries and instead sought to upgrade and restructure
the economy. As Goh Keng Swee observed in 1990, investment in
125
manpower training meant that Singapore's attraction to MNE's henceforth

resided not in cheap labor, but "a supply of efficient engineers and
technicians" (Goh, April 21,1991). Technically educating the work force
and promoting investment in high value added technology based
manufacturing made Singapore increasingly attractive to electronics
multinationals like Siemens, Sony, Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard
in the course of the late 1970s and early 1980s. These multinationals
generally moved to Singapore at earlier stages of product development or
for speciali2ed niche work. In particular, the EDB's "one stop service"
that solved communication, relocation and any technical problems
encountered by MNE's particularly facilitated the decision of electronics
and chemical MNE's, like Lubrizol and Mobil, to move to Singapore (Schein,
1996:Chapter 4).
The shift to this second industrial revolution strategy, however, was not
without problems. The oil shock of 1973-4 negatively affected growth
rates during the initial stages of this revolution (Quah, 1994:10). More
worrying, from the economic management perspective of the EDB, was
the unforeseen recession of 1984-1985 that witnessed a real GDP decline
of 1.6 percent Significantly, the technocratically designed strategy of

promoting high wage and high value technology actually exacerbated the
economic downturn.
The 1984-5 recession, however, was shortlived. Althougjh its immediate

aftermath required a sharp reduction in labor costs, the general trend in
real wages since 1985 has been upward. "Upgrading" skill and the use of
more capital eventually raised the value added per manufacturing worker.
Hourly wage rates rose in US dollar terms from $1.49 in 1980 to $3.78 in
1990 (Huff, 1994:342) and $6.29 by 1995. (Straits Times Weekly, August 19,
1995). Moreover, the government's commitment to providing public goods
such as "the maintenance of honest markets, an environment conducive
to easy operation and the stability of the Singapore dollar" (Huff 1994
342) contributed significantly to the growth of financial and business
services. In the course of the 1980s, consequently, Singapore developed
its regional advantage as a provider of financial , business, retailing and
tourist services. In particular, the state planners developed both the
Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) and the Monetary Authority of
Singapore (MAS), established in 1971 and substantially reformed in 1981,
as a quasi central bank, to promote Singapore as the "Zurich of the East"
(342). By the end of the 1980s Singapore was the fourth largest foreign
exchange market in the world and its development as a financial
supermarket created opportunities for financial specialization and fund
126
management. MAS financial innovation facilitated the Singapore

International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX) becoming globally significant
in the derivatives. The expansion of these "brain services" further illustrated
the shift from dependence upon cheap labor to higher value added, human
capital intensive jobs.
Particularly during the late 1980s, government economic guidance, in
the form of technocratically managed state owned enterprises (SOE's),
profoundly affected the local and regional economy. The cumulative effect
of government involvement in SOE's has created enterprises of two types:
first tier companies established by the government, generally subsidiaries
of one of four government holding companies namely: Temasek Holdings,
Singapore Technology Holdings, MND Holdings and Health Corporation
Holdings; and second and lower tier subsidiaries of the first tier companies.
Government Holding Companies support Government Linked
Corporations (GLC's) like the Neptune and Orient Line shipping fleet,
Singapore Airlines and Singapore Telecom. After 1983, the government
privatized a number of these companies "to enhance the private sector in
the country's future growth," whilst at the same time retaining the holding
company as the largest shareholder (Huff, 1995:744; Vennewald, 1994:17
20). By 1990, GLC's accounted for 22.9 percent of the assets of Singapore's
500 largest firms and provided employment for 18 percent of the
population (World Bank, 1993:22-3).
Singapore's success in upgrading its service sector in the late 1980s
together with its increasingly tight labor market, the expanding capacity of
a number of SOE's like Singapore Technology and Keppel Corporation
and its emerging role as a global city dependent on an open trading
environment, form the background to the most recent technocratic
initiative, the Strategic Economic Plan (SEP) of 1991. The SEP constitutes
the economic dimension of a technocratic strategy to build an "international
city of distinction" (Low, 1993:169; Government of Singapore, 1991). The
SEP encourages pnvate and public sector investment abroad primarily in
the ASEAN region, but also in China and India. Explaining the need to
generate this external economy, Lee Kuan Yew, maintained, "now we are
proposing to go abroad to invest. This means the risk of losing our capital
in countries which do not have the conditions which we have created in
Singapore for the MNC's" (Business Times, January 9-10,1993). In order to
minimize entrepreneurial risk, statutory boards piloted Singapore's "external
wing" of investment. Beginning in 1989, the government established a
growth triangle synergistically linking Singaporean management and capital
to neighboring suppliers of low cost labor in relatively under developed
127
Johore and Batam. More spectacularly, in 1993 the government secured a

memorandum of understanding with China's |iangsu province "to
cooperate in developing an industrial township in Suzhou City." (Straits
Times, October 27, 1993). The agreement intended to secure GLC
investment in China by "bud grafting Singapore methods of urban and
social organization onto a Chinese tree." (Lee Kuan Yew Straits Times, May
12,1993). By 1995, Singapore was the ASEAN region's largest outward
investor. Although these investments were concentrated in Malaysia and
Indonesia, by early 1995 government sponsored corporations like Keppel
were expanding vigorously into China and Vietnam (Lim, 1995:39).
Economic development after 1959 can effectively be divided into four
stages: a period of import substitution 1959-1965; an export led growth
strategy 1965-1976; a second industrial revolution with several hiccups
between 1977-1989; and a global city with a developing external economy
after 1990.2 Each stage required government intervention and government
direction. Summing up Singapore's Industrial policy, the World Bank
considered the provision of liberal fiscal incentives together with industrial
targeting via investment incentives crucial to subsequent growth (World
Bank, 1993:18). Furthermore, the PAP's proactive choice of
industrialization as a developmental strategy, dependence on foreign MNE's
to establish new enterpnses, investment in human capital and infrastructure,
management and control of labor and maintenance of a stable
macroeconomic environment provided the necessary milieu for this
industrial policy to work.
In the World Bank's view, therefore, "good governance" (19), rather
than the invisible hand, facilitated successful development. State autonomy
combined with an efficient civil service (Quah, 1994:152) and an economic
technocracy that "dared to dream" a developed Singapore (Schein,
1996:244) provided the institutional framework for effective and sustained
growth. In order to sustain sound and increasingly technocratic management
the PAP leadership, as early as the 1960s, forged an alliance with the civil
service through "resocialization and politicization" (Chan, 1989:75). By
the early 1970s, the PAP was no longer a party but an administration and
the civil service and statutory boards, like the EDB, "became a part of
that" (Vasil, 1984:146).
Apart from its size and developing pervasiveness, the distinctiveness
of the civil service rested in its discipline, meritocratic performance and
relative lack of corruption (Quah, 1994:153). Equally characteristic was
the role played by the small group of hand picked, highly trained and
tightly knit technocrats who run the statutory boards and through them
128
oversee socio-economic development (see Chua, 1995:Chapter 6,

Vennewald, 1994:42-44). The early success of the EDB in what Edgar
Schein terms its strategically pragmatic approach in attracting the most
productive people enhancing multinational investment to the city state
(Schein, 1996:178) facilitated the spread of this polyvalent regulatory
mechanism to a wide range of social and economic activities including
tourism, trade, infrastructure, family planning, education, transport and
productivity. The statutory board's utility rests in its responsiveness to
ministerial direction. According to one measure, eighty statutory boards
existed in 1990 (Milne and Mauzy, 1990:83) presiding over virtually every
aspect of socio-economic activity.
In the World Bank's assessment, these statutory boards have been
"atypically effective" in Singapore (World Bank, 20). Apart from the EDB's
evident centrality to economic development, the statutory boards that have
impinged most direcdy on the social and political development of Singapore
are those concerned with public housing (the Housing Development
Board—HDB) and compulsory saving , (the Central Provident Fund—
CPF). As Mukul Asher observes, "among the economies classified by the
World Bank as high income, Singapore...is with the exception of Hong
Kong unique in using the national provident fund mechanism to finance
social security" (Asher, 1994:33). The CPF scheme introduced, as in Hong
Kong, by the British colonial administration in 1955, constitutes a form of
compulsory state managed domestic saving. It grew rapidly and helped by
full employment encompassed the majority of Singaporeans by 1973 (Huff,
1994:334). By July 1991, the CPF rate comprised 40 percent of net wages
with employer's contributing 17.5 percent and employees 22.5 percent
(Asher, 1993:156). High rates and rising wages, "have meant that the CPF
system has been an important contributor to Singapore's high saving rates"
(156). In 1990, Asher calculates, the CPF system accounted for 30.1 percent
of gross national savings. An arrangement that facilitated the accumulation
of extensive foreign reserves and illustrated the government's paternalistic
fiduciary duty to act as "the people's agent" (Huff, 1994:347). The relatively
high level of CPF contributions, moreover, constitutes an important part
of Singapore's macroeconomic policy to control inflation and maintain
exchange rate stability. It has also facilitated the growth of the financial
services sector as well as servicing government debt (Peebles and Wilson,
1996:26-29). As the World Bank observes, "CPF funds have...provided
much of the government's capital for development" (World Bank, 360). It
further facilitated the government's ability to "influence the avenues of
consumption and savings as well as to exert enormous social, political and
economic control" (Asher, 1993:158).
129
One avenue the forced saving scheme opened was home ownership
through the Approved Housing Scheme (AHS) established in 1968. This
permitted members to use CPF savings to buy apartments built by another
statutory board, the HDB. As Rodan observes, one of the "outstanding
features of Singapore's economic and social development has been the
role of subsidized public housing" (Rodan, 1992:372). Housing and
education, in fact, formed the core social initiatives in the first development
plan, "the first by providing low cost accommodation for the work-force
and the second by providing it with the requisite technical skills" (Hill and
Lian, 1995:118.) In the 1960s the HDB addressed a perceived housing
crisis by rapidly constructing emergency one and two room and standard
two and three room apartments. Subsequently, the HDB extended its range
of accommodation to four and five room units. The compulsory acquisition
of land "at reasonable, non-inflated paces under the Land Acquisition
Act" (1966:119-120) assisted the process. By 1990, 90.2 percent of the
population owned their own homes and 85 percent of them lived in public
housing (Lim, 1989:183; World Bank, 1993:20).
The outlay on public housing, owner occupation and publicly funded
schooling was consistent both with the PAP's Fabian socialist roots and its
commitment to proactive economic and social development (Schein,
1996:31). As Rodan suggests the early years of independence required the
PAP to extend the social base of its support beyond the middle class. They
could "only do this by carrying out real reforms of benefit to the working
class" (Rodan, 1989:66) in the form of affordable public housing. By 1995,
Singapore had the highest rate of home ownership in the OECD.
Nevertheless, ownership of a HDB apartment establishes neither the
autonomy of the property owner nor an indefeasible property right. Instead,
as Tremewan points out, it has significandy increased "the PAP-state's social
control" (Tremewan, 57). HDB owners are routinely subject to a range of
restrictions and regulations that vary from the petty to the punitive. The
HDB has to approve "renovation, rental and resale, forbids the conduct
of business in the units and has the right to evict residents found guilty of
morally inappropriate behavior, not necessarily with compensation for their
equity in the unit" (Lim, 1989:183). The curiously conditional nature of
HDB ownership together with its link to the CPF system effectively
imbricates Singaporeans in the administrative state. A fact recognized by
the PAP which during elections in both 1991 and 1996 and by-elections
offers HDB renovation to the working class constituencies that vote
rationally and "endorse" PAP rule (Straits Times, May 28, 1992; Chee,
1994:84-5, Straits Times Interactive, January 3,1997).
130
Clearly, the success in engineering economic growth through the

polyvalent technology of statutory boards ineluctably facilitated an evolving
bureaucratic concern with the social engineering of education, housing
and public savings. In this context of permanent socio-economic
administration, the PAP came increasingly to present political decisions as
managerial ones and the city state as a rationally managed corporation.
Indeed, in the course of his 1996 National Day rally speech, Goh Chok
Tong observed, "I regard my cabinet as a Board of Trustees and myself as
its elected Chairman. Like a publicly listed company the account must be
presented and approved by you, the shareholders." ( Goh, August 18,
1996 on Straits Times Interactive, September 3,1996). So effectively has the
PAP promoted itself as an "administrative state," (Chan, 1989:78-82)
masterminding development, that the World Bank, concluding its report
on the City state, found the government "integral to Singapore's rapid
industrialization," (World Bank, 1993:40) and its continuing economic
success dependent upon "political continuity" (29). The open trading
environment and MNE sponsored industrialization apparently would not
have occurred without the "social and political stability" secured by the
Party and its visionary leadership. Even American political economists,
seduced by the prospect of bringing the state back in to the study of
development, contend that "single party rule was justified by economic
objectives and performances" (Haggard, 1990:260). A finding that
reinforces the view of Singaporean political scientists that the "absence
of parliamentary opposition in Singapore from 1966-1973 enabled the
PAP government to switch from its earlier policy of import substitution
to that of export substitution in 1967 without any difficulty" (Quah,
1994:10).
The Limitations of the Singapore Incorporated Model

The officially sanctioned and widely accepted account of state managed,
market oriented economic growth combined with effective and proactive
social engineering by a technocratic party elite, however, neglects a number
of important factors in Singapore's economic development. This neglect
has both distorted an understanding of the Singapore model and served
as the basis for the evolution of PAP ideology. To begin with, it was
precisely because the PAP, like similarly minded nationalist parties in the
recently decolonized third world, embarked upon a policy of import
substitution after the crown colony was made self governing in 1959
(Turnbull, 1992:257) that the Winsemius mission found the city state's
economy suffering from low growth and underemployment in 1961. Thus
131
although the subsequent abolition of political opposition certainly eased

the switch to export oriented growth after 1965, the fact that the policy
change required such drastic measures reflected the post 1959 economic
mismanagement of the PAP leadership and its hand picked technocrats
at the EDB. Indeed, if the city state was an "economic basket case" in
1965 (Lim and Associates, 1988:xi) this was in no small measure a
consequence of the PAP's initial economic nationalism.
Moreover, the successful shift to export oriented growth was not only
unavoidable given Singapore's lack of a hinterland after its expulsion from
the Malaysian federation in 1965, but also rendered relatively painless by
the administrative and physical infrastructure already developed in the
colonial era. Interestingly, PAP and World Bank sponsored accounts of
Singapore's spectacular economic success, conspicuously neglect the penod
prior to decolonization. Indeed, as the Winsemius mission acknowledged
in 1961 the trading and shipping activities of the port were already "highly
developed" (Schein, 1996:36). Somewhat problematically for the model
of party led growth, the staple port of Singapore had already grown
spectacularly under decadent colonial rule prior to 1939. Although the
period 1945-1966 was one of political instability in Southeast Asia,
Singapore nevertheless possessed both the natural resource of geography
and the colonial legacy of an efficient bureaucracy to benefit from an
increasingly open Pacific market maintained by successive American
governments committed to containing the Cold War Communist threat in
Southeast Asia. As WG. Huff observes, the PAP "inherited a successful
economy and...a stable and efficiently functioning administration" (Huff,
1994:357-8; 1995:737-8) and was extremely well placed to capitalize upon
the embedded liberalism of "favorable international economic forces"
(Huff, 1994:31).
Moreover, despite the highly favorable economic climate for growth
inherited by the PAP, it would seem that the high rates of growth after
1965 notably in manufacturing the area particularly targeted by strategic
pragmatists at the EDB, may not in fact be quite as spectacular as the
World Bank contends. Alwyn Young, in a comparative study of laisserfare
but colonial Hong Kong and state managed but self determining Singapore,
found that both capital and (human capital adjusted) labor input have grown
considerably faster in Singapore than in Hong Kong. Yet, "total factor
productivity (tfp) growth has contributed substantially to economic growth
in Hong Kong, (whilst) its contribution to growth in Singapore is next to
nil" (Young, 1992:16; 1995:671). Such findings have led Stanford economist
Paul Krugman to conclude that an "astonishing mobilization of resources,"
132
accounts almost entirely for Singapore's growth. Astonishingly, in

Krugman's view, "all of Singapore's growth can be explained by increases
in measured inputs" of capital, machinery and labor, whilst "there is no
sign at all of increased efficiency" (Krugman, 1995:70-1).
Whilst such neo classical revisionism neglects the import replacing
efficiency and post 1985 growth of Singapore's finance and services sector
(Peebles and Wilson, 1996:165), it is nevertheless significant that Singapore's
before-subsidy rate of return on capital is currently one of the lowest in
the world. This, together with an overvalued Singapore dollar, and a notably
inflated domestic housing sector (Cheong, 1994:74-5), suggests that the
Singapore economy is both over managed and in danger of "hollowing
out" (Peebles and Wilson, 1996:245-7).
It further suggests that the EDB must, as a matter of urgency, look
overseas to secure future economic growth and establish Singapore as a
"global city" with total business capabilities (Cheah, 1993:105).
Consequently, the EDB has gone to considerable lengths to export the
Singapore model both regionally through economic growth triangles and
to developing countries like China, Vietnam, India and even South Africa.
In this endeavor, the latest economic plan promoting the state led
development of special economic zones in East and Southeast Asia, in
order to secure continued high rates of return to Smgapore, paradoxically
resembles the strategy adopted by nineteenth century liberal colonialists.
The EDB's role in developing Suzhou and Song Hong in South Vietnam
strikingly parallels both Stamford Raffles' enterprise on behalf of the East
India Company in the early nineteenth century and the subsequent
negotiation by European governments for trading concessions throughout
East Asia. To avoid such invidious comparisons, PAP technocrats
contradictorily maintain that Smgapore is a "not fully developed," fragile,
third world country whose economy lacks both depth and self-sustainability
(Lee Kuan Yew in Straits Times Weekly, December 7,1996) and, at the same
time, a fully developed country with a per capita GDP higher than the UK
(Straits Times Weekly, January 13,1996; June 15,1996).
Such incoherence is in fact useful both financially and diplomatically. It
enables Lee Kuan Yew, on his frequent ambassadorial missions, to pose as
a Third World Leader of an emerging country. In this manifestation, Lee
routinely denounces the Australian, British and American media for their
importunate neo-colonialist assumptions and warns them "to muffle
criticism" of Asian political practice. The evolving Singapore model of
economic development holds somewhat contradictorily, therefore, that
Bntain, France and Holland ruthlessly colonized Asia, but when Lee Kuan
133
Yew "transplants" Singapore managerial software to India, Vietnam, South

Africa and mainland China it is a "third way" of third world cooperation.
It is in part to conceal the incoherences in its economic practice that the
administrative state has developed an evolving preoccupation with political
identity and the values held by the new Singaporean citizen. It is to this
ideological evolution that we now turn.
Asian Values and the Nation Building State

As we have already observed, the administrative style of a late developing
state like Singapore lends itself to an evolving concern with the quality
and productivity of the population. As Huff contends, "over the 1970s
and 1980s, as state power increased, so did the interventionist propensity"
(Huff, 1994:350). Consequently, government feedback units monitor what
people think, and education units advise Singaporeans to "train up be the
best you can be" whilst the Productivity Board's Quality Club encourages
"quality work."
It is, however, the resources devoted to upgrading the eugenic quality
of the Singaporean that most cleady illustrates both the growing capacity
and anti-individualistic nature of this organizational order. In 1966, the
Singapore Family Planning and Population Board was given the task of
reducing the island's population (Hill and Lian, 146). With basic messages
like "small families have more to eat," and financial incentives for
sterilization the campaign successfully reduced the birth rate (Saw, 1990:2
3). Between 1957-1990 Singapore's population growth slowed from 4.4
percent to 2.9 percent (Huff, 1994:292).
The capacity of the state to mobilize the population reproductively
was if anything too successful. In his 1983 National Day message Lee
warned that "if we continue to reproduce ourselves in this lopsided way,
we will be unable to maintain our present standards" (Saw, 1990:43). In
1984, the Board's emphasis changed to breeding both more and better
quality Singaporeans. In 1985, the government introduced the Social
Development Unit (SDU) as a state run matchmaker encouraging
underprocreating graduates to "make a little room for love" in their overly
academic lives. By 1987, the government decided that the potential birth
shortfall among the better educated sector of the population required
legislative intervention.
This eugenic concern reflected a wider preoccupation with building a
new nation and forging a collective Singaporean identity from disparate
and heterogeneous elements. A preoccupation that reflects the fact that
identity has constituted a continuing problem for political development in
134
Singapore. Moreover, it was in the process of development that the problem

of forging a Singaporean identity became increasingly acute. In the 1960s
and 1970s the question of citizen identity appeared secondary to the
problem of economic development and catching up with the developed
world. A common analogy in Singaporean political discourse treats both
people and leaders as members of a team competing for promotion to the
premier league of international economic competition (Goh in
Government of Singapore, 1991:149; Straits Times Weekly, June 16,1996).
The initial need merely to sustain an independent existence in unpromising
regional and international circumstances between 1963-1966 facilitated
what Chan and Evers described as an ideology of survival founded on the
cultivation of pragmatic rationality (Chan and Evers, 1973:317). In this
context, Singaporeans were encouraged to view their identity as a uniquely
harmonious blend of religion, ethnicity and even of Eastern and Western
values (Goh, 1979:v). Central to pragmatism was the notion of a self
reliant "rugged society" (Hill and Lian, 1995:Chapter 8). It was only during
the 1980s with economic development secured and when the internal and
external threats of communalism and communism had withered into
insignificance, that the problem of identity became apparent.
To resolve the deracinating transition from underdevelopment to
modernity, the government turned increasingly to traditional understandings
of relationship and order now centrally transmitted through the powerful
modern media of television, school and press to reconstitute in the
burgeoning global city the traditional hierarchical values that the
modernization process had eroded. Thus, although, the literate, mobile,
urban and formally equal lifestyle of the East Asian miracle contrasts
fundamentally with the stable, immobile and local cultural practices of the
relatively recent Southeast Asian past, it was in the process of this
transformation that a national culture was at first hesitantly promulgated
through centrally supervised educational agencies. The PAP bureaucracy,
therefore, came increasingly to invoke attenuated traditional understandings
as a resource against the anxiety generated by rapid industrialization. These
reinvented practices, moreover, inculcated habits that both facilitated
mobilization towards new developmental targets and provided the
technocratic elite with a new and invaluable source of legitimacy.
However, in view of the synthetic character of the post colonial elite
culture (Pye in Binder, et al., 1971:132),itwas not quite clearwhat precisely
constituted the high cultural values that informed the emerging Singaporean
identity. Beginning with the Ong report on moral education in 1979, the
government attempted to devise and instill in young Singaporeans a set of
135
"core" values (Hill and Lian, 1995:196ff). At various times, moral education
programs included, Confucian, Islamic, Christian, Buddhist or secular
norms in an attempt to equip the "good citizen" with an ethical core
(Tamney, 1996:37f£). After 1991, the government devoted renewed
attention to developing a national ideology of shared values in order to
guard against a deracinating individualism. The shared values of the new
Singaporean nation are ntually advertised most spectacularly in the National
Day celebrations held each August to celebrate the city state's liberation
from colonial bondage.
Interestingly, the 1996 display entitled "My Singapore, My Home,"
featured a "Singapore Epic" penned by leading poet and former Dean of
the National University of Singapore's Faculty of Arts, Edwin Thumboo.
Songs, dance and spectacular laser displays tell the Singapore story: a
predictable three act drama consisting of a pre-colomal idyll; brutal colonial
exploitation; and the Utopian dawn of nationalism and development inspired
by the PAP.3 Thumboo's epic, of course, reflects the government sponsored
version of Singapore's history.
The fact that Singapore's history effectively began with Stamford Raffles'
entrepreneurial acumen is evidently inconvenient. The History of Singapore,
assembled by state licensed academics at the National University, devotes
less than 50 of its 428 pages to Singapore's history pnor to 1945 (Chew
and Lee (eds.), 1990) . The city of the future, moreover, sustains a modern
Asian identity based on the myth of an ancient Temasek, or as Thumboo
puts it:
"having dealt in diings, surfeited on them, their spirits yeam again for
images."
However, these images must conform to the changing needs of the

organizationally dictated future.
Yet despite the investment in engineering both past and present to
promote a cohesive society, the shared values that cement it remain distinctly
inchoate . Prime Minister Goh's 1994 National Day rally speech reflected
the curious mutability of Singapore's "values." Singapore, Goh argued,
must preserve "traditional moral and family values." Without this Asian
social glue, Singapore would endure the economic, moral and political
disintegration that the nation building press depicts as the current condition
of the USA. Yet paradoxically, Goh and fellow members of the technocratic
elite never miss an opportunity to congratulate themselves on their
enlightened pursuit of market friendly policies. Policies, in fact, designed
to attract the decadent western MNE's largely responsible for the
136
consistently High growth rates that sustain the PAP's extensive machinery
of social and economic control.
Curiously, the Singapore technocracy has promoted a defensive screen

of Asian values at the same time that it promotes the city as a model of
WTO membership and a global city "reaching out to the world." The
evident contradiction in simultaneously promoting both a non-liberal
communitarian ideology for domestic consumption and an economically
liberal external trade policy would seem to intimate an inevitable
liberalization of social and political controls. Here again, however,
contradiction promotes the interests of one party rule. Interestingly, the
pro-actively technocratic second generation leaders of the PAP briefly
proposed a state sponsored "civic society" (Straits Times, June 21,1991).
In the context of the "Next Lap" strategy of 1991, the new Prime Minister
Mr. Goh contrasted his new "caring and consultative style" with that of
the more autocratic former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who had
"stepped down" whilst nevertheless sustaining a role as "Senior Minister"
in order to facilitate the new strategy. Next Lap enthusiasts claimed that
the second generation of PAP leaders would "prune back the banyan tree"
of the state (Government of Singapore, 1991; Straits Times, June 21,1991;
Hill and Lian, Chapter 9).
The state technocrats, however, did not foresee that consultation and
constructive criticism might also entail disagreement with their master plan
for a more inclusive political consensus. Elections held in September 1991
to widen "the circle of participation" (Straits Times, June 21,1991) saw the
PAP unexpectedly lose four seats in the 81 seat parliament. The threat of
even limited competition to the PAP's political monopoly abrupdy ended
Singapore's brief flirtation with liberalism.
In order to fill the ideological vacuum created by the unintended
consequences of the state licensed "civic society" strategy (B.G. Yeo, Straits
Times, July 21,1991) the technomandannate had strategically to revise and
clarify a vocabulary of significandy attenuated Asian values. This required
the formerly "consultative" prime minister Goh reinventing himself as a
Confucian "elder brother" persuading Singaporeans to "accept the house
rules of the family" (he Monde, October 19,1994). At the same time, the
Ministry of Communications promoted suitably technocratized traditions,
notably those encouraging deference and filial piety, in order to promote
social cohesion. These traditions centrally disseminated, metamorphose
into a set of ritual practices governed by rules which inculcate "certain
values and norms of behavior by repetition" (Hobsbawm and Ranger,
1983:1). Furthermore, the norms so inculcated do not attempt to revive a
137
past golden age, but, rather, as another National Day song expresses it,
guide the building of a "better tomorrow."
Total Defense and Asian Communitarianism

Engineering a monolithic Singaporean nation is, however, an immensely
difficult task given Singapore's uniquely synthetic elite culture. The island
state exists in an Islamic Malay world. There is no common indigenous
language, religion or unifying ethical understanding. Undaunted by such
unpromising resources, the PAP technocracy nevertheless single mindedly
pursues a policy of nation building, people bonding in an attempt to
institutionalize a "non-liberal communitarian democracy" (Chua,
1995:Chapter 9).
Central to this endeavor is a garrison mentality that requires continual
mass mobilization against an external threat (Brown, 1985:989). In the
sixties, seventies and eighties, the palpable threat of communism and
communalism constituted the horrors against which loyal Singaporeans
united. In the nineties, however, the external threat became disconcertingly
diffuse. It was convenient, therefore, to discover in western individualism
a new occidental menace. Depicting the west or, to be precise the USA, as
the source of all decadence, whilst leaving the content of Asian values
deliberately vague, allows Singapore's technocrats to improvise upon the
theme of the loyal Singaporean. Technocratized patriarchalism in particular,
constituted the basis both for guidance by various members of the PAP
elite posturing as wise uncles, fathers and brothers and for a corporatist
image of the state as a family that needs constant immunization against
external danger.
Inoculation of the frail body politic demanded "Total Defense."
Announcing the 1994 Total Defense Mass Communication Program,
Minister of Defense, Dr. Lee Boon Yang advised Singaporeans to adopt
"a constant state of preparedness" for total war. In Defending ourFuture, the
Ministry of Defense handbook, descnbes "Total Defense" as "the logical
response to the threat of total war" (Mindef, 1994:13). This carefully
"premeditated strategy" is "predicated on the assumption that an aggressor
can be expected to wage political, economic , social, and psychological
warfare to destabilize the country before a military attack. Total Defense
demands total participation by every citizen and every organization" (13).
The state controlled media reinforces the message. For Deputy Premier,
Lee Hsien Loong, the primary function of the local press is "to mold
Singaporeans" by "constructively supporting national campaigns." State
controlled SBC TV is similarly required to support and explain national
goals and "foster national unity and consensus" (Quah, 1990:23).
138
However, the all abandoning faith in technocratically modeled citizens

has actually fashioned a peculiarly anxiety ridden national character.
Singaporeans are anxious people even when they are enjoying themselves
at National Day. They know from their socialization that the wrong reflex
brings inevitable retribution. The internalization of the correct response
becomes all important. Singaporeans consequently display an obsessive
preoccupation with the precise observation of rules.
Indeed, so successfully have the political experts inculcated the need to
avoid punishment that the fear of failure has generated its own perverse
code. Singaporeans have come to consider acceptable using any means to
secure their ends provided they are not detected. This is to be kiasu
(Hokkien-afraid to lose). In other words, the most identifiable Asian value
promoted by communitarian Singaporeans commends self— serving
duplicity. Significantly, the editor of The Straits Times views kiasuism as
synonymous with "a duty to care" (Straits Times, August 19,1992). Kiasuism
explains some further characteristics of the model Singaporean citizen.
Accustomed to unquestioning acceptance of the latest directive,
Singaporeans appear lost without guidance. What they seek is a manual
delivering instruction on every aspect of existence. A need that matches
well the techno—mandarinate's penchant for fine tuning and upgrading.
The Management of Success and

The Problem of Asian Constitutionalism
From the perspective of total defense, and the kiasuist self disclosure it
has promoted a pluralistic, participatory constitutional order is evidently
redundant. A party elite of wise planners possesses all expert knowledge.
Efficient management, adumbrated by Asian values, authorizes rule, and
citizenship consists in the digitally precise performance of an allotted role
in an unfolding master plan. Such rightless duty permits only feedback
on the success of the latest initiative. However, even here Singaporeans
must be constructive and express themselves in an appropriate manner.
The government, as Mr. Goh pointed out in parliament in January 1995,
reserves a "right of reply." Minister for Information and the Arts, B.G.
Yeo explained, "debate cannot generate into a free for all where no
distinction is made between the senior and the junior party" (Straits Times,
April 18, 1995). This understanding reflects an interesting synthesis of
the western management philosophy of "theory Y" leadership (Schein,
1996:239) with a traditional Chinese understanding of legalism.
This managenalized legalism requires continuous rectification of both
the citizen and the law to meet new circumstantial exigencies. In the
139
administrative state administrative law rather than the rule of law prevails.
The PAP term this "fine tuning." The constitution, inherited from the
former colonial power, has been extensively fine tuned. In 1969, the
government abolished trial by jury, in 1991 it passed a law institutionalizing
religious harmony; and in the same year amended the unicameral
"Westminster model" parliament (Chan, 1993:16) introducing a directly
elected president. The qualifications to stand for president are restricted
to those either approved by, or in the higher echelons of the PAP. The
primary responsibility of the first President elected under the new rules,
Ong Teng Cheong, consists in maintaining Singapore's fiscal probity in
the event of a "freak" election result overturning the PAP's parliamentary
majority.
There is, however, little likelihood of such a freak. After J.P. Jeyeratnam,
a prominent PAP critic and founder of the Workers Party, was returned
for the Anson constituency in a 1981 by-election, the party-state went to
considerable lengths to curtail freedom of speech both inside and outside
parliament and to alter constituency boundaries to prevent further
unforeseen outcomes. In 1988, the Group Representation Constituencies
(GRQ amendment to the Constitution and Election Act amalgamated 39
single member constituencies into 13 GRCs. The scheme blended the ten
most marginal PAP seats in the 1984 elections with 10 safe PAP seats.
None of these amendments to the constitutional structure was the subject
of a popular referendum. Consequently, although the PAP vote at general
elections fell from 75.5 percentin 1980 to 61.76 percent in 1988, the party
nevertheless retained all the seats in parliament. To avoid any further loss
of seats, in elections held in January 1997, the Electoral Boundaries Review
Committee dispersed constituencies, like Eunos, where the PAP had come
perilously close to losing and carved the electoral map of Singapore into
15 GRCs of between three to six members and reduced single member
constituencies to nine. Returned with an improved 65 percent of the vote
and 81 seats in the 83 member parliament, Prime Minister Goh contended
that "Singaporeans had voted against the western notions of liberal
democracy and more personal freedoms" (Straits Times Interactive, January
3,1997).
Furthermore, judicial control in the form of the extension of the
Internal Security Act after 1989/ to widen the power of arrest and detention
without trial (Frank, Markowitz, McKay and Roth 1991; Seow 1994:173
195) and a broad interpretation of defamation has enabled the government
to restrict severely the expression of dissent and bankrupt opposition
leaders who appear electorally attractive. As former first generation leader
140
Goh Keng Swee observed in 1988, the most important prerequisite for
Singapore's success was "an efficient secret police" (Chew, 1994:942). In
May 1987, the Internal Security Department arrested sixteen young
Singaporeans in "connection with a clandestine communist network" (Seow,
1994:67). In the 1988 general election, their lawyer, former Attorney General
Francis Seow, was returned as an M.P. Accused of tax fraud, he fled the
country (Seow, 1994: Chapter 12; Tremewan, 1994:213ff). In the same
year, parliament disbarred Jeyeratnam for his "treasonable" allegation of
judicial interference. Analogously in 1992, when National University of
Singapore lecturer, Chee Soon Juan, stood as an opposition Social
Democratic Party (SDP) candidate in a by-election held in the Prime
Minister's Marine Parade constituency, he subsequently lost the by-election,
his job and $260,000 dollars (Singapore) for defamation. More recently,
the opposition SDP in general and Chee in particular were found to be in
contempt of parliament over a mistaken figure in a report on health care
subsidies and fined $51,000 dollars after a prolonged interrogation by a
Select Committee on Parliamentary privileges (Straits Times Weekly,
November 30, 1996). Such ritualized humiliation of "dangerous"
opponents, it would appear, damages their electoral credibility, whilst the
PAP strategy of threatening to withdraw public services from constituencies
that vote against the PAP no doubt plays upon the kiasuist fears of the
Singaporean electorate (Z. Ibrahim, Straits Time Interactive, January 3,1997).
Meanwhile, Minster of Home Affairs Jayakumar considers the
continuing use of Emergency Powers utility maximizing in the control of
more conventional criminal activity. Over 1,000 Singaporeans suspected
of vice related activities currently languish in indefinite "preventive
detention" under these provisions.5 The lawyers appointed by the bar of
the City of New York to investigate the decline of the rule of law in
Singapore since decolonization considered the continuing use of the
Internal Secunty Act to detain non-violent dissenters, restrictions on
freedom of speech and the independence of the judiciary significant
violations of human rights (Frank, Markowitz, McKay and Roth, 1991:6).
What emerges from the recent highly publicized cases of Michael Fay,
Chris Lingle, and Philip Bowring is the extent to which the judiciary
facilitates more efficient, technocratic rule. In the submission of the
Attorney General during the recent tnal of the International Herald Tribune
for defamation Singapore recognized itself to be the only country in Asia
where the government routinely bankrupts opposition politicians for what
it decides to consider defamatory (Straits Times, January 18, 1995). From
the standpoint of the Anglo American tradition of jurisprudence such an
141
assumption is rebarbative, but for the Singapore constitutional model, law

constitutes an instrument for implementing the rule of reason not
protecting "esoteric" rights (Tan, 1990:5).
Conclusion
Significantly, Singapore's sage ruler, Lee Kuan Yew, predicted that in
twenty years East Asia would coin "its own political vocabulary" (Straits
Times, February 6, 1995). In many ways Singapore already has and Lee,
in particular, as the city state's leading political theorist, has done much
to fashion it. It offers an East Asian version of enterprise association
reflected through a prism of attenuated Confucianized rationalism. Asian
values founded on the family and the organic community replaces civil
association and the rule of law. Government consists in highly paid
technocrats pro-actively managing all aspects of socio-economic life.
Rational decision making merely requires feedback from respectful and
rightless subjects in order to maintain harmony, and balance. Finely tuned
laws ever more precisely adjust the population to the latest technocratic
initiative and the incorporated body politic moves smoothly towards the
latest growth target.
The Asian model described in this techno-managerial vocabulary,
however, requires judicious doses of fear and post hoc legislative
rationalization to achieve the desired party directed consensus. The total
defense mentality rests on the contestable claim that the Party engineered
economic growth and transformed a fragile, resourceless island in Southeast
Asia into a miracle of socially cohesive development. In order to maintain
this illusion can what Asiaweek terms "new Asian thinkers," (Asiaweek,
October 10,1994) like Kishore Mahbubani (Mahbubani, 1994:6-8) obscure
a number of related incoherencies: Singapore is a fragile Third World
developing country, yet economically and morally superior to the fast fading
west; Singapore directly manages economic zones m China and Vietnam,
but condemns the liberal colonialism that made it commercially feasible;
Singapore volubly promotes the WTO yet denies a free market in
information; Singaporeans practice Asian values that uphold family and
community yet applaud self serving kiasuism, the Singaporean judiciary is
not compliant, but to prove its case against The International Herald Tribune
demonstrates that it is; finally, its "transparent legal system" systematically
erodes civil rights. Paradoxically, only by recourse to such irrational devices
can efficient technocratic rule be sustained.
142
ENDNOTES
Officially, Singapore dates its independence from its humiliating expulsion

from the Malaysian Federation in August 1965. Hence the 31st anniversary
of the new nation will be celebrated at the National Day parade on August
9th, 1996. However, the PAP's dominance of Singapore dates from 1959,
when die British government granted the crown colony "full internal self
government" (see Turnbull, 1989:253-259).
The Wodd Bank 1993 identifies five stages dividing the period 1973-90 into
three and giving no attention to die external wing strategy begun in 1989. By
contrast C. Tremewan identifies four stages, depicting the period after die
1984 recession as a return to low wage export production. A somewhat partial
assessment diat flies in the face of available economic data (Tremewan,
1994:39).
The government, or more precisely die Ministry of Defense, invested five
million dollars (Singapore) in the 1996 endeavor to induce "people bonding"
(Straits Times Weekly ]\uie 15,1996).
The Internal Security Act dates from the colonial period and was introduced
by die British colonial administration in an attempt to curtail the terrorist
activities of die Malay Communist Party during the Malay Emergency 1948
1960. After 1989, die Act was exempted from normal constitutional safeguards
(see Fran, Moarkowitz, McKay and Rodi, 1991:36).
Jayakumar observed die need for such preventive detention in cases where
"die premiss of die legal system—diat a judge decides on die basis of the
evidence—cannot be realized" (Straits Times August 7,1992).
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Department of Sociology, Humboldt State University

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, ASIAN VALUES AND THE POLITICAL ORDERING OF

Department of Sociology, Humboldt State University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,

There exists a current fascination with the Singaporean model of political

This capacity to volatize academic and journalistic discourse is cunous

Daring to Dream, Singapore Inc.—The Economic Model

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To realize Lee's vision of a technocratically engineered Utopia and build

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

suppression of communism and communist front activities (Schein,

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

manpower training meant that Singapore's attraction to MNE's henceforth

of 1.6 percent Significantly, the technocratically designed strategy of

The 1984-5 recession, however, was shortlived. Althougjh its immediate

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

management. MAS financial innovation facilitated the Singapore

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Johore and Batam. More spectacularly, in 1993 the government secured a

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oversee socio-economic development (see Chua, 1995:Chapter 6,

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

Clearly, the success in engineering economic growth through the

The Limitations of the Singapore Incorporated Model

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although the subsequent abolition of political opposition certainly eased

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

accounts almost entirely for Singapore's growth. Astonishingly, in

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

Yew "transplants" Singapore managerial software to India, Vietnam, South

Asian Values and the Nation Building State

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

Singapore. Moreover, it was in the process of development that the problem

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

However, these images must conform to the changing needs of the

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

Curiously, the Singapore technocracy has promoted a defensive screen

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

Total Defense and Asian Communitarianism

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However, the all abandoning faith in technocratically modeled citizens

The Management of Success and

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Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

assumption is rebarbative, but for the Singapore constitutional model, law

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Officially, Singapore dates its independence from its humiliating expulsion

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Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

. 1995. "Economic Outlook 1996 ASEAN Region," in H.C. Chan (ed),

Ow, C.H. 1992. "Development Strategies, Economic Performance and Relations

. 1994. "Political Consequences of Rapid Economic Development," in S.

1996. "The Internationalization of Ideological Conflict: Asia's New

Tremewan, C. 1994. The Political Economy of Social Control in Singapore. London:

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

. 1992. History oj Singapore 1819-1988. Oxford, UK: Oxford University

Vennewald, W 1994. Technocrats in the State Enterprise System of Singapore. Working

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations — Volume 23, Numbers 1 and 2

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