ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on the findings of the 2018 Bertelsmann Study of Social Cohesion in Asia which found Singapore to score relatively high scores with a strong level of social cohesion. It locates these relatively high levels of social cohesion in Singapore as a product of careful management and control by the strong state in Singapore. Through a meditative analysis of the nature of the state and its hegemonic impulses, it argues that the state views race and religion as potential points of fracture and carefully manages relations between ethnic and religious communities through policies of “hard multiculturalism” and “muscular secularism”. Having done so, it highlights key challenges to the state in its approach and contends that increasingly new challenges such as inequality, immigration as well as increasing demands for a less muscular, interventionist approach by the state have both complicated the management of social cohesion as well as affected the level of social cohesion in Singapore.
