Authoritarianism And Economic Modernization In Singapore

The developed countries are the leading runners. After long-term development, their modernization has already gone into mature stage. Many less developed countries and regions, though latecomers in modernization, have also gained remarkable results. Especially the Asian "four tigers" are the representative to achieve economic take-off, and Singapore is widely recognized as the most successful economy in the world, even in comparison with other members of "three tigers", the spectacularly successful, newly industrializing regions and countries of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea. Within a short span of time of about 40 years, Singapore changed itself from a backward place of frequent upheavals and economic straits into newly industrializing countries after its independence. In the World Bank classification, Singapore is listed in the "higher-income economies" group with a per capita gross national product (GNP) even higher than some developed nations, such as Ireland, New Zealand and Spain. And this makes Singapore's modernization model enjoy high reputation internationally. This thesis seeks to identify the reasons for Singapore's economic success. The country has adopted authoritarian regime due to the influence of the East Asian political heritage and traditional civilizations and challenges to the survival of the state. The regime has exercised state power in accordance with a system of restrictive rules and regulations. This system or mode of administering state power governs the daily lives of all Singaporeans for a stable political environment, which plays an important part in ensuring the success of economic modernization. In fact, the state in Singapore is paternalistic in its attitudes and actions towards both capital and labor. Many developing countries , which were independent after the Second World War, applied extensively state interventionism, but failed to achieve good results, what made intervention work so well in Singapore? There are many subjective and objective factors, it is argued in this dissertation that it is not state intervention per se that distinguishes Singapore from other less developed countries but it is the effectiveness of state intervention and quality of interventionist measures that made the crucial difference in results. Distinguishing features of genius of Singapore's interventionist government-and so ultimately its quality-are their personal integrity and a high level of formal education. High administrative capability of Singapore's political leadership rests on the following factors: government autonomy from interest groups; stability and the ability of good economic judgement and sound policy choices. Although government intervention in Singapore is fairly extensive, the interventionist measures do not distort market efficiency. In line with macroeconomic objectives, the government policies have been directed toward the promotion rather than the regulation of enterprises, and have been "market-friendly" rather than "market-repressing". It is argued that Singapore adopted a "balanced" combination of market and efficient government and its economic philosophy. And this has brought about the success of economic modernization in Singapore.