ABSTRACT
Singapore has been described as an ‘administrative state’ (Chan 1975), and its governance as ‘the management of compliance’ (Wilkinson and Leggett 1985). It is a state whose People’s Action Party (PAP) leaders have established a mode of institutional social control – labelled ‘bureaucratic authoritarian corporatism’ by Deyo (1981) – and proclaimed ‘pragmatism’ as their party’s ideology. Since the 1980s there has been a softening of the exercise of social control. For example, Singapore workers who were chided in the early 1980s for ‘job hopping’ (Straits Times 14 September 1981), in the late 1990s were urged to become mobile (Ministry of Manpower 1999).
