Ethos Issue 6, Jul 2009

Singapore’s Political Economy: Two Paradoxes
Bryan Caplan

The picture changes radically if we instead think of Singapore as a city. In the United States, big city politics is often about as lopsided as Singaporean politics. Democratic mayors have won without interruption since 1931 in Chicago²⁰ and 1964 in San Francisco.²¹ While the Democrats have failed to monopolise the mayor’s office in New York City, they have near-PAP dominance of the New York City Council: Democrats hold 45 out of 48 occupied seats.²² Note that in the Median Voter Model, this cannot be explained purely by the liberalism of urban voters. After all, why can’t the Republican parties in Democratic cities simply move sharply to the left?²³

In purely formal terms, the Median Voter Model can account for one-party democracy if you assume that voters have not only policy preferences, but party preferences as well.²⁴ This means that even if two parties were to offer identical policies, some voters would still decidedly prefer one party to the other. This then allows the favoured party some “wiggle room” to deviate from the public’s policy preferences without courting defeat in the next election.²⁵ Well-informed and well-meaning politicians could use this to persistently deliver economically efficient but politically unpopular policies.

Why precisely would voters have these “party preferences”? They might reflect group identification or loyalty. Voters might see one party as being “their party”, just as they see the local sports team as “their team”. Preferences may reflect deference—a belief in one party’s superior competence and/or intentions. This could stem from a successful track record; but voters could also be deferring to politicians’ current traits, such as intelligence and charisma. A final, more pessimistic interpretation is that they reflect resignation. A voter might favour one party over another not because he wants it to rule, but because he feels that resistance is futile. In the US, for instance, people who sympathise with a third party rarely vote for it because “it has no chance of winning”.

Which of these mindsets seem to fit the realities of Singapore? While empirical evidence is scarce, several different sources confirm the importance of deference in Singaporean politics. Singaporeans are markedly more satisfied with their national leaders and convinced of their good intentions than Americans.²⁶

Critics seem to endorse the deference hypothesis, suggesting that the “success of the government in the economy” has lent it a significant “performance legitimacy”.²⁷ Compared to Americans, Singaporeans show little interest in “giving people more say”; just 19.7% make this a top priority, compared to 32.6% of Americans.²⁸

While the deference story does fit well, there is also considerable evidence that resignation is also at play. Singaporeans’ unusually low professed interest in politics is telling.²⁹ The stereotype of the apolitical Singaporean appears to have much basis in fact.

Overall, it appears that the answer to the paradoxes of Singaporean political economy can be attributed to a range of “party preference” factors. More systematic research is necessary to figure out which variants best fit the facts, as well as the relative importance that deference, resignation and party loyalty play in Singapore’s politics and policies.

Once misconceptions about Singapore’s democratic credentials are corrected, however, the city-state looks “curiouser and curiouser”; it seems to contradict everything that experts think they know about democracy: How can any party honestly win election after election—much less a party committed to many economically efficient but unpopular policies?

There is little evidence to suggest that Singaporean voters are markedly more economically literate than voters in other countries. The secret to Singapore’s success seems to lie in its electorate’s “party preference” for a ruling party that takes economic reasoning seriously; this preference gives the party enough slack to implement policies that might not survive a direct popular referendum.

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