From Palladium Magazine:
There is no authoritarian in modern history as well regarded as Lee Kuan Yew among the Western elite. Henry Kissinger called Lee “one of the asymmetries of history.” Margaret Thatcher once remarked that Lee was “never wrong.” Out west, Netflix executives study Lee’s life in their leadership course. On the East Coast, Harvard Kennedy School pores over the “Grand Master’s insights.”
The Western student of international politics knows to nod approvingly when Lee’s name is mentioned. Frustrated by the sludge of partisan politics in his own country, he sees in Lee’s legacy a kind of exotic escape. If asked, he remarks sagely: Singapore is proof of what enlightened authoritarianism can achieve.
On this alone, the Chinese elite agree with their Western counterparts. For them, early Singapore is proof of the effectiveness of one party rule. Let the West squabble over legislatures and obsess over separated powers, while China moves boldly to reclaim its rightful place on the world stage. Africa is no exception to this consensus. In Rwanda, Paul Kagame styles himself in Lee’s image. In the words of The Washington Post: “to really understand Rwanda is to study Singapore.”
A broad consensus has solidified among elites that early Singapore should serve as a model for other developing nations to study and replicate. At a time when Western democracies are under stress and challengers from Chinese socialism to ‘illiberal democracy’ are ascendant, this consensus deserves to be examined carefully. China in particular has become something like a case study for Singapore-inspired technocracy, and the Chinese Communist Party itself reinforces the link between the two.
What exactly is the Singapore Model? Beyond the crude label of enlightened authoritarianism, what are the philosophical assumptions that underlie the Singaporean approach to governance? What are the limitations of these assumptions? What has happened when foreigners have attempted to replicate the Singaporean model, or when Singaporeans try to export it?
Both official and dissident accounts of early Singaporean history reveal a model with three key elements: high modernism, centralized authority, and weak civil society.
However, these accounts also provide a challenge to the idea that Singapore’s model can be exported. In fact, it was highly conditioned by Singapore’s own context, and how Lee and the People’s Action Party (PAP) responded to the political dynamics of the time. The resulting model is effective in Singapore itself, yet inevitably limited by scale. Large social processes are more complex than any schemata can capture—and yet, authoritarian high modernist states must rely on schemata to make centralized decisions. This leads to its failure in larger geographies, since abstractions and errors inevitably compound as the distance from ground reality increases. Soviet agricultural collectivism, the Chinese Great Leap Forward, and the Le Corbusian projects in Brasilia and Chandigarh are haunting reminders of the limitations of the model.
But the rise of Singapore provides compelling lessons of a different sort, ones which help us understand how the city-state was built in its unique conditions. Today, the new U.S.-China rivalry is playing out in the divergence between different development paths—a divergence which may end the mythos of a universally applicable model. While Lee’s admirers in the art of statecraft cannot import a Singaporean model, they can learn from the ardent pragmatism which drove him to reject the easy solutions of outsiders and build a state which defied all conventions.
The Gospel According to the People’s Action Party
The current consensus around Singapore is the product of careful narrative by the PAP, Singapore’s governing party. This version of history revolves primarily around the figure of Lee Kuan Yew.
The construction of this national narrative begins in Singaporean schools, where every student studies the Singapore story under the National Education program. Students learn that Singapore began as a sleepy Malay village until Stamford Raffles arrived in 1819 to set up a British trading post. Raffles’ colony thrived, attracting hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants, as well as Malays and Indians. But the Japanese subsequently humiliated the British in World War II, captured Singapore, and subjected its residents to trauma and oppression from 1942-1945.
With the end of World War II, Britain returned and set about executing a “painless exit strategy” of gradual decolonization. In the 1950s, Lee Kuan Yew and his colleagues in the PAP outmaneuvered a violent Communist party to emerge victorious in the election of 1959. From 1963-1965, Lee attempted to integrate Singapore into the Malaysian Federation in order to fend off the Communists and maintain economic and political stability. The merger proved to be temporary and by August 1965, Singapore separated from Malaysia and became independent. A short clip of Lee at the press conference announcing separation, overcome with emotion and crying openly, is familiar to every Singaporean.
Miraculously, Lee overcame this setback and took Singapore from Third World to First. Lee built modern flats to replace squalid shophouses and kampongs. He created a conscription army and built an officer corps from scratch. He prioritized education and built a world class education system. He soothed racial discord and social disharmony with smart housing policy and a firm criminal justice system. In the PAP’s telling, the Singapore story is the story of Lee Kuan Yew....
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