The Interaction Between Political Value And Political System: A Study Of Singapore 's Political Development

Many countries, whether the early-developed countries or late- developing ones, are recently suffering crisis of political development in the world. Western political development theory has experienced a paradigm evolution from developmentalism to diverse perspectives since the 1950 s, whose attention focused on political democracy and political system. Such researches ignored cultural and value differences and political system itself. While Western countries are suffering a decline of political system, developing countries are faced with binary pattern between exotic modern political values, political system and local traditional ones. How do political values and political system interact? How do developing countries deal with the binary pattern? This paper establishes the patterns of interaction in political values and political system, and uses Singapore as a case to analyze the political development of developing countries.There is a close relationship between political values and political system. Political value is the “software” of the political system, the origin of political concept of the internal levels of the political development, while political system is the “hardware” which is the political structure of the external dimension of political development. East and West countries formed different political development paths in the relationship of interaction between political value and political system. Different from Western countries’ unified interaction model between political value and political system, political developments in developing countries are deeply influenced by Western countries. Eastern countries often face binary pattern of political development, which means they are deeply influenced by not only Western political systems and political values, but their long history of traditional values. We must seriously deal with this binary pattern and make efforts to achieve unified interaction of political values and political system.After the establishment of the theoretical framework and case selection, we divide the Singapore political development into two periods: Lee Kuan Yew Era and post-Lee Kuan Yew Era. We make specific analysis in these two periods. In the Lee Kuan Yew era, in order to keep Singapore’s development and stability, Lee Kuan Yew constructed development-oriented political values, such as survivalism, pragmatism, elitism, and nationalism. Guided by these values, Singapore transplanted parliamentary democracy and constructed the one-party dominant system and elite training and selection system, which centralized authority to ensure the state construction. However, neither modern Western political values nor Confucian political values are the dominant political values; the transplant political systems can only be formal. Centralized power and formal democracy caused a binary pattern between political system form and the actual process. Although developmental political values are suffering the double impacts of East and West values, the rule of law, the elitism, and pragmatism in western political values impact a greater influence which emphasize development and stability. Developmental political values can’t ease conflicts between Eastern and Western, resulting in a binary pattern of political values. These led to a complex interaction pattern of political values and political system in the Lee Kuan Yew Era.A series of changes in domestic and international environment and intergenerational turnover of political power has prompted transition from Lee Kuan Yew Era to post-Lee Kuan Yew Era. In the post-Lee Kuan Yew era, Singapore experienced crises caused by binary interaction, so Goh Chok Tong and Lee Hsien Loong began to adjust the political system and political values. Singapore added systems such as non-constituency members system, elected presidential system, GRC(Group Representation Constituency) system. Political system continues to be institutionalized. A crisis of values in the 1980 s led to the rise of the “Asian value”. In a way Asian value is really an effort to rebuild the country ideology of Singapore. However, Asian values were not aimed to be national ideology, but as “common value” to unite diverse ethnic and political values, and to respond to the decline of traditional values. To some extent, common values attempt to fuse conflicts in political values from east and west in Singapore. Confucian development after Confucian ethics education experiment failed in Singapore is converted to emphasize on the “communitarianism”. Singapore tries to use communitarianism to integrate political values conflict between Eastern and Western. Communitarianism provides “Singapore-style democracy”, “Managed democracy” Goh mentioned, with important political value support. Communitarianism and populism embedded in shared values achieve a fusion of East and West values in the level of political value and political system, turned binary pattern into unified one, and embarked on a modern political development.It’s not easy to maintain a unified interaction between political value and system from Lee Kuan Yew era to post- Lee Kuan Yew era. Since entering the New Normal, Singapore is also facing a series of problems in terms of political system and political values. Singapore’s political elites must adjust the pace of its development, and face issues and development environment in order to drive the political development in Singapore with the key points of reconstructing and consolidating political values, and focusing on the political system, civil society, the relations of political stability and political participation.The political development is overall a complex and open process of continuously interaction between political values and political systems. The problems in political values and political system interaction in developing counties are how to resolve the dilemma of binary pattern and choose what kinds of democratic roads to achieve good governance. Singapore’s revelations are that we must set up the perspective of developing countries, and developing countries should not blindly copy the western models and democracy system but embark on a modern political development by excavating traditional values. In this process, the political elites play an important role.