Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore

by Chua,Beng-Huat

• ISBN13: 9780415120548
• ISBN10: 0415120543
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-07-26
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

While the economic miracle of Singapore is widely known, the ideas that have underpinned it remain to be documented and critically examined. The single political party that has governed Singapore over the past three decades of nationhood has successfully developed different ideas at different times to organize the multiracial population into a relatively unified people who strive collectively to transform their own material conditions. This is the first book critically to analyse the evolution and succession of the above ideas within changing circumstances. In particular, the author charts the rise of "Asian communitarianism", a set of ideas consecrated explicitly as a national ideology. In contrast to foreign critics who readily see developments in Singapore as evolving phases of an unchanging authoritarian regime, the writer, a Singaporean himself, sees them as an attempt to develop a particular form of anti-liberal democratic polity by a highly ideologically conscious political elite.

Table of Contents

Preface	vi
Preface to the paperback edition	viii
Acknowledgements	xiv
Introduction	1	(8)
Ideological trajectory: from authoritarianism to communitarianism	9	(31)
Reopening ideological discussion	40	(17)
Pragmatism of the PAP government: a critical assessment	57	(22)
The business of living: transformation of everyday life	79	(22)
The making of a new nation: cultural construction and national identity	101	(23)
Not depoliticised but ideologically successful: the public housing programme	124	(23)
Confucianisation abandoned	147	(22)
Building the political middle ground	169	(15)
Towards a non-liberal communitarian democracy	184	(19)
Conclusion	203	(11)
References	214	(10)
Index	224