Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore: Beng-Huat Chua (Politics in Asia) - Hardcover

Chua, Beng-Huat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415120543 ISBN 13: 9780415120548

Publisher: Routledge, 1995

Synopsis

The economic success of Singapore has established the country as a model for other nations. Yet until now the ideas behind this accomplishment have not been critically examined.
Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore fills this gap. The book outlines the policies the ruling party has adopted over the past three decades. It charts the government's move away from Western concepts towards the evolution of 'Asian democracy'. The author analyses this anti-liberal democracy and the government's motives for repackaging cultural heritage into a national ideology of Asian communitarianism.
This book avoids the polarization that has tended to characterise texts on Asian governments. It neither concentrates on a history of authoritarian repression nor unequivocally praises the regime but critically examines its political success. As such it provides a new and balanced account to the student of Singapore politics.

About this title

Synopsis:

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.

About the Author:

Chua Beng-Huat is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0415120543
• ISBN 13: 9780415120548
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 252