IntroductionThough economists may disagree about whether globalization today is unprecedented compared with an earlier period a hundred years ago, there is broad consensus that the trend in the new millennium is towards greater integration of national economies across factor and product markets, fuelled by the rapid developments in information and communication technologies.

Globalization and the information and communications revolution, and their effects on Singapore and the city-state's responses to them, dominate discussions on the country's economic future. They are the key external challenges. This chapter examines three aspects of this debate — financial liberalization, attracting foreign talent, and the role of government intervention in the Singapore economy.

Financial Liberalization

Global Casino

These two quotes exemplify the two worries on the globalization of capital markets for national economies — the capriciousness of capital and its capacity to wreak havoc with national currencies and domestic stability. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has, for instance, denounced the volatility of capital as a Western conspiracy to destroy the country's economy. He has likened foreign speculators to “rogues” and “scoundrels”. The Soeharto government in Indonesia at the height of the Asian crisis had accused foreign speculators of subversion, a crime that it pointedly confirmed was a capital offence. This sentiment was also shared by the Chavalit government in Thailand, although, unlike Indonesia, it did not make clear that speculators ought to be hanged.

Introduction

A small country has a natural and inherent sense of insecurity, as the historical record of nation-states in both the modern and classical worlds has attested. And so it has similarly proven to be the case with the state of Singapore since it was expelled from the Federation of Malaysia on 9 August 1965. Since that time, against all odds, Singapore has succeeded in not just surviving but prospering in Southeast Asia — a region with a myriad of geopolitical cleavages that have not infrequently erupted into conflict of one form or another, both intra-state and inter-state. How has Singapore survived and prospered within that environment and despite an acute sense of insecurity and vulnerability, is one of the questions this chapter will address. How Singapore will continue to survive and prosper in the new millennium, as its threat perceptions evolve and changes occur in the Southeast Asian geopolitical environment, is another question that will be addressed.

Singapore's security can be examined at three systemic levels. The first of these levels is the domestic, in terms of general regime and state (or internal) security. The second is the external level, in terms of threats to national security emanating from the external environment. And the third and final level is that of the region, in terms of the region's (or ASEAN's) security being indivisible from that of Singapore's. In the current absence of identifiable threats to internal security (which were pervasive in the past — especially the 1960s — but are now no longer apparent), this chapter will examine the second and third levels of security. It will also ascertain how Singapore's threat perceptions will likely evolve in the first two decades of the new millennium. But before all that, it is important to set out the sources of Singapore's sense of insecurity and how the city-state has attempted to minimize that insecurity.

Sources of Singapore's Sense of Insecurity

The sources of Singapore's sense of insecurity derive from two separate categories that are related. One category constitutes structural sources of insecurity; they are sources that are ingrained in the body-politic and physical nature of the nation-state.

The world of the new millennium is a very different place from that which Singapore found itself in during its first three decades as an independent nation-state. Singapore's socioeconomic development made impressive gains during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. A confluence of factors were responsible for that salubrious state of affairs. Internal stability, engendered by the dominance of a single political party with generally authoritarian ways, ensured a peaceful and harmonious domestic socio-political environment. Externally, the regional environment was also stable. This was due, in the first instance, to the to the stand-off between the superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — during the Cold War years, which paradoxically provided some semblance of constancy and stability in the Southeast Asian geopolitical construct. Subsequently, in the wake of the end of the Cold War, the steady eradication of the ideological divide in Southeast Asia was to see the expansion of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to encompass eventually the whole of Southeast Asia. Singapore had positioned itself well during those two phases.

Smallness in size has been an advantage to Singapore, simply because the city-state has been able to react far quicker to international developments than could other larger countries. The lengthy tenure in power of the People's Action Party (PAP) also meant that while the country could quickly adapt itself to any rapidly evolving geopolitical or geoeconomic situation, it still had a long-range vision of itself. Long-term plans and programmes could be formulated without any fear of a change in government, which could otherwise derail such plans and programmes. Additionally, the PAP Government's traits of consistency, predictability, and relative incorruptibility have been the sorts of credentials that have made Singapore a highly attractive location for foreign direct investment. This has been particularly apparent in contrast to much of the rest of Southeast Asia, where governments have been known to be far less consistent, predictable, and incorruptible. The Asian economic crisis of 1997–98 showed the extent to which Singapore was different from other affected countries in Southeast Asia.

It is notoriously difficult to grapple with a subject such as the challenge posed by modernity. It is a rather large and slippery subject, as the bewildering array of interpretations on the meaning of the terms, “modernity”, “modern”, and “modernization” guarantees that the battle to make sense of the conceptual map is lost before it even begins. But, as the linguist Alfred Korzybski pointed out, since the map is not the territory, I shall carve out the relevant terrain of discussion.

Broadly, the chapter begins by examining modernity and its derivatives, and then uses the insights gleaned from this examination to study the implications of “Western” modernity for non-Western societies such as Singapore. It argues that Singapore is redefining modernity in keeping with its own “historical moment” and, through the Government's present policy initiatives, is engaged in the process of negotiating with both the dilemmas of modernization and the paradoxes of post-industrial society as it moves into the new millennium. The chapter then considers a few aspects of how Singapore has thus far responded to the challenges posed by modernity in its bid to be a city of the future.

Introduction

It was Marshall McLuhan who once proclaimed, in the electric age, that we live in a shrinking world, coining that most useful, if now banal, phrase, “the global village”. No doubt, at the turn of the twentieth century, our world displays a rich welter of diverse, often conflicting, strands and tendencies; yet, beneath the turbulent panorama of world wars, Cold War, regional wars, and North-South conflicts, a dominant trend or undercurrent can readily be detected: the process of globalization, the emergence of a “global city”.1 Occasionally deflected and sometimes nearly eclipsed by the din of armed struggle, this strand has the earmarkings of a relentless and near-providential force: seemingly disconnected events or episodes appear to coalesce almost mysteriously or fortuitously into a larger design.

However, although powerfully pervasive, this trend is not entirely self-propelled or akin to a natural force majeure: overtly or covertly, its movement is backed up by political and economic strategies as well as intellectual trajectories of long-standing.

There is a problem in thinking about the future of politics and civil society. This is so both generally in much of the world, and specifically in Singapore. Intellectual thought in the late twentieth century has lost the polarity that characterized the decades after World War II, between democracy and capitalism on the one hand, and socialism and totalitarian systems on the other. The end of the Cold War has not been the end of history, as Francis Fukuyama suggested in his End of History and the Last Man. But the neoliberal programme of democracy and free markets has become the dominant set of arrangements in most thinking about politics.

The dominance of the idea of democracy and free markets has been resisted by some, not only in Asia but also in the United States and Europe, among both conservatives and progressives. There has been talk of a “third way”, both in Europe and the United States. Some, such as Etzioni, Sandel, and Putnam, have also suggested the need for communitarian democracies. Much of this, however, seems a rearguard defence of socialist democracy, and a nostalgia for community. Thinking about political futures has, in this context, fallen prey to new forms of determinism and fatalism. This is especially the case in most political predictions about Asia's future.

In the late 1980s and after, some suggested that the new rich in Asia would necessarily bring democracy. South Korea and Taiwan were seen as examples of this trend, moving away from “soft authoritarianism” to true democracy. There were some who predicted the same would inevitably come to pass in Singapore and other countries that resisted this trend. This set the context for the “Asian values” debate that seemed, in the mouths of some, to argue for essentialized differences in perpetuity.

Introduction

Governance, or the art of government, traditionally evolved along with contractual or consensual government in Western political thought. Accordingly, together with the democratic belief that state sovereignty is ultimately vested in citizens, governance has conceptually focused on the twin pillars of accountability and responsibility. Accountability is typically a reference to the conduct of public officials and the policies that they implement. Both of these must serve the public good or interest. A narrower focus on fiduciary matters is commonplace in many countries, since public officials are entrusted with public resources in the fashioning and discharge of policies. Responsibility, on the other hand, is typically a reference to public officials undertaking policies to meet, within permissible limits of legality and morality, the demands of the citizenry. Hence, the traditionally articulated twin pillars of governance — centred on responding to public demands in a transparent and acceptable manner.

More recently, the literature on governance has tended in the direction of what has come to be called capacity-building. This newer notion of governance entails elements of a proactive approach while preserving the spirit of accountability and responsibility. Capacity-building, in turn, may be in one of two forms. The first is a structural-functional understanding of the term and is a reference to vertical or horizontal organizational growth to better cater to citizen demands. The second, which is sometimes termed empowerment, is a reference to human resource development — the introduction or facilitation of higher-order skills. Over and above capacity-building, the literature on governance has also encompassed strategic planning, which is essentially a reference to proactive forecast planning to meet public needs in a variety of areas, from the provision of utilities to health and educational opportunities for future generations. In this regard, governance has increasingly gravitated in the direction of pre-emptive planning.

Finally, governance has also increasingly appropriated market principles to achieve a certain efficiency and seamlessness. Whereas this is not a new development since public choice theory has been in existence for almost half a century, the enthusiasm and rapid spread of this approach is only some two decades old.

Self-Image and Others

The policy options for how a small state like Singapore relates to its neighbours and the wider world are fairly well defined. They are based on the assumption that a small state is constrained and vulnerable vis-à-visits larger neighbours and major powers. Its susceptibility to risks and threats are set at a much lower threshold than its larger neighbours. The small state is disadvantaged and weak in a self-help world. The challenge for a small state is how to offsetits vulnerability by increasing its national capacity and international presence. This challenge of being a small state was thrust upon Singapore on August 1965.

Prior to 9 August 1965, Singapore had always been part of a larger entity and related to the world as part of that entity. In 1824, Dr John Crawfurd made Singapore a territory of the East India Company when, as the Company's second Resident Administrator succeeding Colonel William Farquhar, he persuaded Sultan Hussain and his Temenggong to jointly sign away Singapore to the Honourable Company. Before that, Singapore was a part of the Johor-Riau sultanate based in Tanjong Pinang and, earlier, up the Johor River. Even earlier, in the fourteenth century, the Majapahit Empire, from its centre in east Java, claimed Singapore. Singapore became part of the Straits Settlement, together with Pinang and Melaka, starting in 1826, following the dissolution of the East India Company — the nucleus of a British Malaya in an expanding British Empire. In 1942, Lieutenant-General Tomoyuki Yamashita renamed Singapore Syonan, or “Light of the South”, in Japan's Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere. The British eventually reclaimed Singapore as one of its crown colonies and excluded it from the Malayan Union which was to succeed the old British Malaya.

INTRODUCTION

Extremist acts and extremist movements often appear mysterious, frightening, and irrational. One reason for this is the apparently single-minded passion of their leaders. The examples of the contemporary militias in the United States, of Japanese religious cults, or of the radical right in France, Germany and other European countries come readily to mind. And while the leaders of these movements often appear dogmatic, perhaps even more frightening is the oft-observed fanatical loyalty of their followers.

As these examples illustrate, one of the most important sources of extremism is conformity. De Tocqueville in particular observed that the United States was the most conformist society he had ever seen (quoted in Kuran 1995). Yet Americans are typically thought of as the most rational of peoples. Another feature of many extremist movements is the phenomenon of charismatic leadership. This was particularly emphasized in the studies edited by Appleby (1997) on extremist fundamentalism in the Middle East.

In this chapter I will argue that extremist behaviour can be understood using a rational choice approach, and that all of the aspects of extremism just listed – passion, conformity, the importance of leadership and loyalty to it – are in fact perfectly consistent with rational choice. Moreover, although extremist preferences playa role in generating extremist behaviour, they do not, in the model to be described, play the main role, and in fact are not necessary to explain such behaviour. So the approach to explaining political behaviour taken in what follows is very different from that of Downs (1957), who essentially used the preferences of the population to explain political behaviour in different political systems.

INTRODUCTION

Jeremy Bentham remarked that religious motivations are among the most constant of all motivations. And, although such a motivation need not be especially powerful, it can be among the most powerful. Because of the constancy of the motivation, “A pernicious act, therefore, when committed through the motive of religion, is more mischievous than when committed through the motive of ill-will” (Bentham 1970: 156). He explains this conclusion from fanaticism, which, of course, need not be religiously motivated and in the twentieth century has been as destructively motivated by ideological and nationalist sentiments as by religious sentiments. This is Bentham's explanation:

If a man happen to take it into his head to assassinate with his own hands, or with the sword of justice, those whom he calls heretics, that is, people who think, or perhaps only speak, differently upon a subject which neither party understands, he will be as inclined to do this [at] one time as at another. Fanaticism never sleeps: it is never glutted: it is never stopped by philanthropy; for it makes a merit of trampling on philanthropy: it is never stopped by conscience; for it has pressed conscience into service. Avarice, lust, and vengeance, have piety, benevolence, honour; fanaticism has nothing to oppose it.

INTRODUCTION

Political extremism is a multidimensional phenomenon. It can be taken to refer to, for example, the tail ends of the distribution of worldviews and beliefs held by individuals in a society, the kind of objectives sought, the means used in the pursuit of those objectives, or the preeminent position accorded to one specific issue over all others. In this chapter, we focus on a particular dimension of extremism – namely the intolerance, unwillingness to compromise, and rejection of evidence contradicting one's beliefs that are often associated with the phenomenon.

We look at the forces, within a social environment, that can contribute to the development of the above attitudes (Section 2). We then look at mechanisms that help reinforce and diffuse extreme positions (Sections 3 and 4). Much of what we say in these sections applies to all forms of extremism – whether religious, social, scientific, cultural or political. We focus on the last.

Political extremism becomes a socially relevant phenomenon when it involves the mobilization of individuals and the formation of groups that pursue objectives and make use of means that impose external costs deemed to be unacceptable.

INTRODUCTION

Political extremism is a multi-faceted, perplexing phenomenon. To gain some understanding, a useful first approach is to look at it dispassionately from a positive, as opposed to normative, standpoint: before asking whether extremism is good or bad for society, a preliminary question is whether and why it is good or bad for the extremists themselves. In this vein, this chapter views political extremism as a policy choice that a political organization, given appropriate circumstances, may find rational to make in the pursuit of its self-interested aims. This working definition' carries a number of implications that are worth stressing. First, the focus of analysis is not on individuals but on a particular kind of organization which, within the existing institutional framework, pursues political goals, and which will be called a political enterprise. Secondly, extremism is viewed as an observable form of behavior that is instrumental to some ends, not as a personality trait or a description of special individual preferences. Thirdly, no attempt is made at identifying a substantive content of extremism, or classifying policies (or platforms, or goals) into extreme and moderate categories. Rather, a turn to extremism may be thought of as redefining the (vector of) characteristic(s) of political activity in the direction of increasing its disutility to those engaged in it – by making its ends more difficult to achieve, or more distant in time, or by making the effort required more risky or more disagreeable.

INTRODUCTION

To give a sense of the politics of extreme parties, the Appendix lists all candidates in u.s. presidential elections who won at least half a percent of the popular vote. For each election year, the table lists candidates by my reading of their ideology, with the most conservative candidate listed at the top, and the most liberal candidate listed at the bottom. Candidates not belonging to one of the two major parties are shown with an asterisk after the party affiliation. Also shown is the percentage of the popular vote each won. The data begin with the election of 1832, the first election in which virtually all states chose presidential electors by popular vote.

Ordering parties by ideology entails some subjective judgment. A principal difficulty is that for much of the nineteenth century slavery and the consequences of the Civil War were the main issues, whereas in the twentieth century economic issues can distinguish parties. I classify Republicans as more liberal than Democrats through the election of 1872. From 1876 (when Reconstruction ended) and thereafter I classify Republicans as more conservative than Democrats.

Two features are of note:

1. • Third parties, even popular ones, rarely become major parties. Indeed, only one minor party, the Republican Party, ever became a major party.

2. • Most small parties have extreme ideologies, in the sense of not lying between the ideologies of the two major parties. Of the 41 elections, 28 had small parties which won at least 0.5 percent of the vote. Of these 28 elections, only four had a moderate party.[…]

Political extremism is a complex and difficult subject. Indeed, the very concept “extremist” sometimes makes people uncomfortable. Is not extremism always relative to some set of values, whose rightness is open to debate? As citizens of democratic countries, we often find extremism inside our polities distressing. On the other hand, when extremism occurs in non-democratic settings it often appears to many of us as liberating. Thus, we are often forced to distinguish between the “decent” extremism of those “fighting for political liberation” and the “indecent political brutality” of domestic extremists. And even when we are sympathetic to the aims of the latter, we are often led to wonder why human rationality is unable to eliminate the social waste implicit in the violence and disruption often associated with extremist activities.

As is widely acknowledged, we owe our political liberties today to some extremists of the past and too much conformity is a danger to our intellectual life and to social progress. At the same time, the conformity often observed within extremist movements is sometimes even more remarkable and disconcerting than the conformity within the wider society to which such movements sometimes set themselves up in opposition. Thus, another contraposition is that, in some ways, extremism and conformity are opposites; in other ways they are simply different aspects of the same phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION

Although the literature on political extremism tends to be structured around monographical descriptions of national experiences, a number of interesting regularities do emerge. I will treat as established facts the following ones. First, successful extremist movements and politicians (as well, of course, as extremist governments) generally stress several issues that are only loosely connected. Second, these movements or politicians often – but by no means always – adopt extremist positions on most or all of these issues. Third, when polled, supporters of extremist movements or politicians typically express moderate views on many issues. Fourth, many supporters of moderate parties hold views or adopt positions that are extremist with regard to some issues. This is especially true in countries such as the United States or Britain, in which there is no successful extremist party, but it can also be observed in countries in which one such party exists and defends these views. Fifth, it is often the case that people who support an extremist movement sincerely do not feel responsible for most of the positions adopted by this movement. This extends to the retrospective sentiments of many people with regard to their or others' past support of extremist movements, governments or regimes. Sixth, assessments of extremism vary over time. This applies in particular to retrospective assessments.

INTRODUCTION

Extremism is a label covering a variety of behaviors characterized by goals and methods not shared by the majority of the people. Extremism is a matter of freedom in terms of personal choices and it becomes a social issue when it generates externalities. Progress in many areas, from science to politics, is due to people challenging the common values of their times (think of the abolition of slavery and of the extension of political and social rights). That raises the question as to whether the long-run interests of a community are better served by conformist or by critical individual attitudes. Too much conformity makes the lemmings' trap inescapable, 1 but systematic criticism generates uncertainty and can undermine the cohesion of the community. In the political case, democratic societies are supposed to reduce both risks while fostering open confrontations of ideas and modulating conflicts through adaptable rules. Yet, the relationship between domestic political violence and political and economic freedom is not univocal (Muller and Weede, 1990) and Hardin (1997) calls into question the ability of democracy in dealing with major conflicts.

Extremism, interpreted as a challenge to the existing rules and values of politics, is a phenomenon that features in any constitutional order, democratic or non-democratic alike, and its evolution. We circumscribe our analysis, however, and submit that in a more or less democratic setting the presence of extremist leaders posits a problem in so far as they show apparently steadfast attitudes and an unwillingness to compromise.