Communitarian Capitalism

Just how "free" is Singapore's free market?

Christopher Lingle from the October 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Despite claims that "Asian values" provide a culturally specific impetus for growth, there are indications that some traditional Asian institutions may eventually impose constraints on growth. For example, "saving face" and guanxi (institutionalized crony networking) result in zero-sum exchanges that could inhibit the efficient use of scarce economic resources.

In sum, Singapore's regime has implemented a system that governs by intimidation, that depends upon a form of crony capitalism, that relies upon the professionalized corruption of a highly trained technocracy, and that operates in the context of a "parasite" economy. In all this it has been successful in co-opting the emergent middle class, thereby distracting it from demanding political liberalization.

But blindness to the shortcomings of its development strategies has left PAP open to a potentially serious crisis. It may not be the forces of modernization that prompt political change in Singapore: A failure in the economic structures may come first. Singapore's economy exhibits the classic symptoms of a property and stock market bubble; the bursting of that speculative bubble is a question of when, not if. When the property and stock markets deflate, other domestic institutions will be forced to contract. One of the most exposed institutions is the mandatory pension accounts controlled by the government, which could be used by the regime to cover shortfalls or to serve its own purposes. Singapore may have one of the world's highest rates of consumption of Mercedes- Benzes or French cognac, but its regime's legitimacy can be expected to disappear with the first whiff of stagnation. Eventually, citizens will realize that economic power granted by a government can be withdrawn at its whim.