China has CHANGED since Mao.
Mao cannot not live forever.
No Man can.

China will continue to evolve as its leader come and go where change is the only constant.

Who will be as regarded or well received as LKY after LKY in the internationl community?

You get my point.

Please stop discrediting Bryan Caplan’s reasoning on the basis that he is perceived as a PAP man. He is an academic. I deem this as a personal attack against his credentials. If this goes on, some comments may undergo moderation. Let’s have a proper debate. He has been nice enough to engage the TOC community. Let’s be nice to everyone.

Cheers
Donald
Deputy Editor
The Online Citizen

I’m starting to wonder if many of the people here actually travel around the world or just complain like “singaporeans” stereotypically do.

When general public criticise PAP to be exact you all agree and want reform.

When Objective acedamic (An establish acedemic has to be as objective as possible) tries to study and explain the sucess of the government. You all not happy cos you want to hear how he/she should criticise PAP’s bad governance.

So hard to please. you all want to hear what u all like to hear.

This place is hardly for acedemic discussion. so one sided.

By the endless support for last 50 years, can i say the people ACCEPTED ALL their policies?

What say u?

Caplan does indeed address indifference/apathy to some extent in Explanation #3 (see below)

All I’m suggesting is that he’d probably not disagree with you, and that the effects you’re talking about have been noticed!

“While the deference story does fairly well, there is also considerable evidence that resignation matters, too. Singaporeans’ unusually low professed interest in politics is telling. Only 3.2% of Singaporeans say they are “very interested,” and another 32.8% say that are “somewhat interest”; in the U.S., the corresponding numbers are 18.3% and 47.2%.[xlii] Mutalib (2004: 358) reports that three decades worth of studies of National University of Singapore undergraduates judge them to be “politically unaware, disinterested, and apathetic.” The World Values Survey consistently finds that compared to Americans, Singaporeans are extremely reluctant to engage in even low-level political participation, such as signing a petition or attending a rally.[xliii] The stereotype of the apolitical Singaporean appears to have much basis in fact.”

I agree with the other commenters above, that Caplan dismissed the authoritative argument a little too fast. Esp in terms of the media. For Median Voter model to work, it assumes that everyone knows the contesting parties’ position. Right now, the problem is people are not too sure what the opposition stand for. Part of it is due to media constraints and part of it is due to the lack of clear, coherent opposition positions. His casual reference to mass media does not give sufficient weight to the current information asymmetry.

But let’s put it this way, it is academic convention to put down the current thought before putting forth a new argument. By focusing on how poorly he put down the current thought- i.e. the dictatorship argument, misses the point that he has a new argument to make.

His new contribution to the debate is his third point. Ok, people have preferences, loyalty and apathy are not new arguments. But his point is SMALL places such as cities tend to exhibit these symptoms more than BIG places. Using US as an example, he says that there is some kind of social psychology reasoning that make people more loyal/apathatic in small elections than big elections.

In other words, the reason for the current situation is structural. AND we are stuck in it, because we can never change the size of our country. (short of war.)

Now, i personally don’t think his argument is true. If it is a small country/ city-state psychology at play, it will be consistent. However, we see a trend of votes going the other way. Is our country growing bigger? (by 1 million and a few more sq km) but i don’t think we changed our status as small/city state. SO that will be my rebuttal of his argument.

Nevertheless, despite my disagreement with his idea, i still give him points for the novelty of idea and for trying! =)

I saw SDP members at Yishun – Chong Pang hawkers center last Saturday and trying to sell their newsletter from table to table, only 3 persons ( including myself ) bought it. Many of them don’t even bother about them. Poor CSJ spoke on the loud hailer telling the peoples about rising cost of living, bad PAP policies and blah blah……., so what. Nobody seem to care. I really pity him and he looked haggard. I like to see him vote into parliament to challenge the Papies policies but will it be a dream come true. Only we the citizens of Singapore can make this happen.

I also believe the PAP’s success was due to the stunning economic growth of the past. The party which wants to defeat the PAP must emulate them in the first place. It is in everyone’s aspiration for the best and brightest to lead the nation.

As long as corruption is contained, human rights is not violated and jobs are aplenty, the PAP can be assured of success. But that success happened between 1965-2006. Singaporean’s needs now are at the Social level in Maslow’s hierachy of needs. This is where the PAP will falter based on it’s recent policies with regard to immigration, pace of life and social justice.

Mr Caplan’s Explanation#3, which he considers to be the most likely one, posits that “deference” – a belief in one party’s superior competence and/or intentions or “resignation“ – out of the thinking that other political parties have no chance of winning; are the underlying reasons behind the consistent voting patterns.

My contention is totally different. What I said was that the phenomenon has nothing whatsoever to do with the electorate’s assessment of PAP’s competence or their judgment of opposition chances. The way we vote is the result of a deeply ingrained cultural habit of political ignorance and indifference, sense of insecurity and immovable self-interest.

The inevitable conclusion is that if the PAP can continue to capitalize on these cultural weaknesses of ours, they will dominate the political scene for many more decades to come, no matter how unpopular their policies may be and no matter what the opposition does in the future.

I’ll have to agree with you there. Kaplan’s starting point is that Singapore should be examined as a democracy (and he argues it in explanation 1) but the problem is it’s rather difficult to classify Singapore’s political system.

Some call it a benevolent dictatorship. The more cynical ones see it as a constituitional monarchy ruled by the LEE dynasty. I see it as a totalitarian democracy.

At the end of the day, most readers appear to be so turned off by the PAP that they see anything defending the PAP as propaganda and rhetoric.

The paper does have its academic value and frankly, I think this article could be used in political science classes as a paper to critique.

While some (people like Shanmugan) may think that Mr Caplan’s twisted views can be used to debunk criticisms of Singapore’s Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the PAP (the communist equivalent of the dictatorship of the communist party that rules the country), I honestly think that his views though not entirely flawed are twisted and biased towards the PAP. Why? Because:

1. Through his own admission, his views were mainly based upon the inputs given to him by the 80% of his time spent with top civil servants. These civil servants, as Singaporeans know, are either secret PAP members, pro-PAP, pro-government (which cannot be otherwise because they are working for the govt and their paymaster is the govt), pro-establishment, under bondage, relatives of those PAP members in power, or beholden one way or another to at least one of the people in power, or a by character balls-carriers and sycophants. Most important of all, these civil servants have not experience the sufferings and problems Singaporean commoners and opposition politicians have been suffering.

2. He is a foreigner and have not stayed in Singapore for a prolonged period of years. By visiting Singapore a few times does not qualify him to speak authoritatively about the politics, the social well beings, etc. of Singapore. He can think and think and think, and come out with conclusions – his conclusions – but these conclusions cannot be taken wholesale in any way as being conclusive because he cannot feel how the local people feel. As an observer, he could only use his eyes and ears, he cannot use his heart to feel for the people. In other words, he is just like those PAP ministers and top civil servants living in ivory towers, totally out of touch with the ground. Mr Caplan therefore cannot and never will be able to understand the fear in the hearts of each and every Singaporeans (except those who hold the power of course).

3. By comparing or equating Singapore with/to cities in the US, he was actually comparing an apple with oranges. Cities in the US has a country, while if Singapore is just a city, where is its hinterland, its country? Malaysia?

4. In addition, the political parties in the cities of the US do not have the full compliments and establishments of government organisations and machineries, ministries and statutory boards like the PAP is having in Singapore.

5. Moreover, the cities in the US do not have the power to make use of their national police, secret police and detectives, internal security agents, and national armed forces to the extent that the PAP has been enjoying in Singapore over the last 50 years.

6. The governors in the cities of the US cannot amend the US Constitution and National Laws at will like the PAP has been doing to the Singapore’s Constitution and Laws at its whims and fancies, any time.

7. Last but not least, if what Shanmugam has utter were to be uttered by a US lawmaker, he would have been immediately arrested and charged in court or at least face serious protests in the streets for his outrages remarks that “Singapore is not a country”. As a Law Minister, he should know better the impact and subsequent repercussions that such a public statement would bring. (By going ahead with making such a statement, shows how arrogant, callous and ruthless a person can be). Just imagine what if a US Senator were to tell the US lawyers, judges, solicitors, advocates, etc. that “The US is not a country!”??? I think he would be clobbered or shot.

Why are the MM, SM, PM and other Ministers keeping quiet, not responding to the Law Minister’s statement that “Singapore is not a country”? Can we take it that silence means consent.

If the Ministers were to continue to turn a deaf ear and pretend that nothing serious has happened, without refuting the Law Minister’s statement that “Singapore is not a country … but just a city”, that means they are condoning and agreeing with that statement. If so, then we Singaporeans should from now on take Singapore as not a country but just a small city. Therefore, anything to do with a country or a nation, we shall all ignore and not take them seriously, for example the national constitution, national flag, national anthem, national leaders, national service, national policies, national education, nation-building, etc. Is that what the Keeping-Silence Ministers and lawmakers (MPs) want all of us to do? They are not able to see the implications? This really baffles me no end.

Come on, say something men! Don’t forget that you are being paid the world’s highest salaries by Singapore’s taxpayers! Don’t you want to correct wrong perceptions that the Law Minister’s statements have cast? Don’t you want to uphold our Singapore’s Constitution? Don’t you want to avoid or prevent future chaos and confusions?