ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the members of the Administrative Service as the elite section of the Singapore bureaucracy. The Civil Service was viewed and mobilized from the start as a vital instrument through which the People's Action Party (PAP) would achieve its objectives of development. The technocratic prong in governance was further promoted in the 1970s with a drive throughout the bureaucracy to be efficient. It was reflected in the strategic choice of recruiting technocrats into the higher bureaucracy. Claus Offe's “three-tiered” concept of bureaucratic rationality is a way to put a handle on this discussion about the role and mindset of the bureaucratic elite of Singapore. The political leadership expects that the bureaucracy should increasingly be able to empathize with the concerns of people, anticipate their anxieties and accommodate the exceptions within a general framework of the rules and regulations in what they do.