ABSTRACT
SINGAPORE IS ONE of the most affluent and well-governed countries in the world. However, the country's wealth, burgeoning middle class, and increasingly well-educated and mobile workforce have not unleashed significant pressures for greater liberalization. Strong economic growth not only strengthens the state and garners substantial mass support and legitimacy for the perennial party in power, the People's Action Party (PAP), but also underpins the state's authoritarian tendencies. Contrary to many sanguine expectations that social change and a younger, better educated, and more critical electorate would contribute to the gradual but inexorable decline of the PAP, the ruling party increased its electoral support from 60 percent in 1991 to 65 percent in the 1997 general election. In the long run, even if Singapore were to liberalize politically and democratize, that process would most likely be tightly managed by the PAP ruling elite. The outcome could well be a variant of "democracy" but not the Western liberal one.
