ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to assert that Singapore’s nation building has been predicated on a consciously planned process that has entailed the planned development of a city state, social engineering of Singapore’s society and a unique political structuring of one-party dominance within a democratic political system. With its separation from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore became an independent country and the process of nation building began. The Government has been involved relentlessly in the nation-building process that has been undertaken in three different arenas: physical infrastructure of the city; social engineering; and political and economic development. The government's communitarian ideology, not only provides a counter-weight to the Western beliefs in individualism and liberation, it also makes it "ideologically possible to rationalise the conflation of state/Govemment/society". If the ideology of communitarianism justifies state interventions in social life as pre-emptive measures for ensuring the collective well-being, then state planning is thus legitimized.
