Designed Development in an Island Nation
The Role of Central State Authority and Modernism in the Progression of Singapore
This piece was originally submitted to the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In order to more fully understand the multi-ethnic, vibrantly cosmopolitan, developmental anomaly that is Singapore, it’s crucial to consider the distinct ways in which the city-state has planned its relationship with governance and economic growth. Singapore is a jewel in the world of international development studies: it has been able to successfully transform itself from a small area of island swampland, once dotted with sleepy fishing villages and kampongs at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, into a glittering and hygienic modern metropolis with high economic output largely within the timespan of a single generation. This monumental shift — in particular, the strategies of state-forward development underpinning it — warrants an observation through the lens of theory and has strong lessons to offer other states undergoing their own transitions.
Core to the success of the Singapore story is its landscape of state institutions and the level of societal control for which they allow; the country’s targeted economic policies and a zero-tolerance attitude towards corruption are illustrative examples of this authoritative dynamic in practice. Yet, Singapore is not entirely unique when it comes to state-forward models of economic and political development. Why does the situation there look so much different than other countries of a similar sovereign age and geographic make-up? Why, for instance, has it been so much more successful — in terms of wealth, happiness, and quality of life — than its larger and immediate neighbors, Malaysia and Indonesia, both of which are fairly abundant in natural resources?
The island begins to separate itself in distinction from the developmental narratives of other countries with its decisions regarding what to do with this high level of control. In this piece, those plans will be described as a form of modernism: a pragmatic pursuit of improving human conditions within a society through forward-thinking practices — in order to achieve a long-term optimization of self-sufficiency, security, and quality of life. In the hands of the Lion City, policy that stems from these types of modernist ideas has led to results that are uncommon amongst smaller developing nations without an abundance of natural resources. Singapore’s population was invested in heavily — its society was shaped by the state.
However, opposing schools of thought certainly exist in explaining why the Singapore story turned out the way that it did. Theoretical perspectives drawing their arguments from neo-liberal ideas would likely criticize the above analyses on the basis that they place too much emphasis on an interventionist state in the explanation of a successful development. These types of views, which like to note the general openness to trade and market-forward economic policy as a delineation of the country’s success, are essential to consider but too simplistic in their overall conclusions. Singapore’s approaches to these kinds of free-market economics are an invaluable piece within a much larger grand strategy. The island nation has certainly “gotten the economics right,” but crucially has done so within established frameworks of state oversight — frameworks without which we would not be able to see the same results.
On State Authority in Singapore: Establishing the Guardrails of Economic Growth
Central to the discussion of Singapore’s political and civil structures in both contemporary and historical contexts is the prominence of their architect, Lee Kuan Yew. Lee was the founding Prime Minister of an independent Singapore, and his personal agency in establishing the People’s Action Party (PAP) and executing its policies during a three-decade run as PM is important to understand in this setting. He aimed to secure prosperity for his nation’s citizens via an outsized role of the state and deliberate planning practices in all affairs: economic, civil, judicial, diplomatic. The foundations of central authority that he set in place were unapologetically firm in their control; they gave the government large reserves of calculated power through which to enact policy.
With regard to these foundations regionally, political economist Robert Wade was correct to question the fundamental reasons for the growing economic influence of various East-Asian nations. He noted that the arrangement of the institutions of capitalism and a country’s selective competitiveness towards its domestic industries by way of sensible government planning, rather than sole devotion to free-market economics, was a more useful explanation of success. Following this logic, we arrive at the key driver of Singapore’s improved position in the past half century. The nation’s deployment of specific economic tools — tax incentives to develop local markets by including global participants (in the case of financial services and maritime trade); direct state investment in domestic industry to drive exports (such as pharmaceuticals and IT); and distinct foreign import subsidization (via free-trade zones and duty exemptions) — all exist within a framework of state networks that have allowed such policy to prosper under a keen and panoptic government eye. In so doing, Singapore has integrated itself into an increasingly-global world by attracting foreign capital. These actions join together to form a highly-planned landscape of economic policy that have driven growth because of the state’s intervention, rather than being obstructed by state intervention.
“Singapore has integrated itself into an increasingly-global world by attracting foreign capital… [its] highly-planned landscape of economic policy has driven growth because of the state’s intervention, rather than being obstructed by state intervention.”
However, in order to help economic growth rather than hinder it, a state must be efficient in the extreme, and free of corruption. History can readily provide examples of admirable intentions within a political economy that ended up being destroyed by corruptive practices — consider Nigeria and Venezuela, to start. Singapore, by contrast, ranks third-best among all nations on Transparency International’s Global Corruption index, standing just below New Zealand and Denmark on this podium of respectability. Lee Kuan Yew was ruthless on the subject. In an address given for the African Leadership Forum in 1993, the Grand Master remarked: “Our first goal in Singapore was to shape the government into an effective instrument of policy. This requires strong, fair and just leaders…corruption, which we regarded as a cancer, must be eradicated immediately after detection.” As a sound economic strategy was encouraged to flourish by an attentive state, the state was encouraged to flourish by the absence of corrupt and extractive practices causing friction within the political system.
The Primacy of Modernism: Cultivating Human Capital Through a Strong State
In a lecture (titled “East and West, the Twain Have Met”) given at Cambridge in 1971, less than a decade after Singapore became an independent nation, Lee Kuan Yew remarked that industrialization in the developing world could only be achieved “if new value systems and behaviour patterns are grafted on the old.” He noted the necessity of securing high levels of individual prosperity for his people, going on: “…it requires bold and determined leadership to eradicate those values which hamper the advance of a people into the higher sciences. It requires strong will to force the adoption of values and attitudes which can quicken the pace of change.” Lee understood that the long-term development of Singapore ultimately rested on the personal development on Singaporeans themselves, and that a healthy pool of human capital achieved by prioritizing security, self-sufficiency, and tuition were the keys to a strong nation — sometimes to come at the expense of personal liberties as prioritized by the “West.” The means to these ends were evaluative and planning practices, almost scientific in nature, considered modernism. Just as an engineer could study and optimize the systems of a machine, so too could governments calibrate society to their desires. In Singapore, society was — as the economy was — to be shaped through the state.
Yet human records are littered with failures of such righteously ambitious plans as above; anthropologist and political scientist James Scott, in his book Seeing Like a State, detailed many: Le Corbusier’s urban planning theories in Brasilia, agrarian collectivization in the Soviet Union, the “Great Leap Forward” through rural industrialization in China. Scott observed these cases within his own theoretical frameworks, which emphasize the necessity of considering both state and society together at once, and he argued that high-modernist ideologies and a willingness to use authoritarian state power to effect large-scale interventions were common conditions to failures of central planning. While he is correct to place importance on a more comprehensive view of state theorization, his conclusions regarding modernism are too narrow. The positive developmental results from Singapore challenge these ideas directly — primarily for reasons of scale and government efficiency — although to dive into this conflict is beyond our scope. The key is that unlike other failed cases — Singapore, by setting its political institutions firmly in place over a small population, had created an environment where modernist strategy was set to succeed and a vision for the future could be realistically imposed.
Examples that demonstrate the priority of healthy human capital accumulation and the basic needs of a society are plentiful in Singapore— this was, after all, a life’s work of Lee Kuan Yew. Accessible and excellent public health systems, modern infrastructure, efficient public transportation, a beautiful and well-maintained park network, a world-class airport, and a modern military that was built from scratch come to immediate mind. Still, education and public housing are perhaps most illustrative. The Singaporean government invested extremely heavily in education immediately following independence; about 50% of the population had zero formal schooling in 1966. Today, over 65% of the population has post-secondary credentials, and the system as a whole is consistently ranked amongst the world’s best. The fact that this occurred within a half-century is stunning. Bilingual abilities are emphasized from an early age and student quota systems ensure that every school represents diversity in race; financially, more public funds are expended on education than any other single sector of the economy. On housing, Singapore’s oft-lauded public scheme via the Housing and Development Board (HDB) has generated the conditions making it possible to provide over 80% of all citizens — nearly 100% who desire it — with affordable shelter, leased from the government on 99-year contracts at prices below market rates. Since the state ultimately owns the land, urban planners have the ability to tear down old structures and replace them with new ones. Le Corbusier and his proclivities towards modern urban housing development would have likely approved. The actions taken by the government of Singapore on education and housing amount to an unceasingly modernist approach towards society that smartly, and justly, emphasizes the long-term well-being of individuals.
The strategy has additionally created a sort of self-energizing cycle by opening state employment opportunities to a well-educated and highly-informed citizenry. Not only is Singapore’s labor market regarded for being advantageously porous between the public and private sectors, it also promotes strong individual incentives for careers in civil service. Unlike many other developing countries (as well as more firmly-established countries), government employees in Singapore are well-compensated (earning salaries competitive with highly-skilled private-sector jobs), largely respected, and recruited from a pool of talent that actively seeks these employment opportunities.
Coda: Economics Alone Are Not Enough
Neo-liberal economists would welcome a market-forward explanation of positive developments in Singapore. They argue that the country’s general openness to free trade, competitively-priced goods, and high savings rates were primarily responsible for growth. As we’ve now seen, economic policy is an important piece of the Singaporean success story. However, crucially, these meticulously-planned policies were a means rather than an end, and must be viewed as such. To observe their results in a vacuum, excluding the state actions that guided such policies and kept them within strict guidelines, would be to stop short of the point.
Any visitor exploring Marina Bay is sure to notice the ocean liners hanging just off coast; they are plentiful, tagged by countries from all corners of the world, and hard to miss. It is doubtless that the exponentially growing forces of globalization and world trade connectivity have been a boon to Singapore, and these developments are an important piece of the puzzle. But the alluring simplification that free trade alone is what has allowed Singapore to grow falls short, as it only scratches the surface of larger forces at play. This piece has asserted that high levels of central state authority and a carefully-planned approach towards modernist practices were the essential factors in Singapore’s successful developmental journey thus far. It is, in fact, the institutional foundation and keen decision-making of the government that allowed an environment of successful economic development to arise — just as planned.
/S
London, August 2021
