ABSTRACT
The development policies of the government of independent Singapore can be understood in terms of three very broad phases: the response to the traumatic and demanding episode of decolonization; the corporate-centred demands of globalization; and more recently the novel and uncertain circumstances of the current 2020 era of post-globalization. Globalization was theorized via a body of work which both interpreted and legitimated the then-current circumstances, and from the 1980s onwards there was a swelling chorus of materials – scholarly, policy analytic, and political – that celebrated the construction of a global, integrated and rule-governed trading network. The People’s Action Party (PAP) gained power in a war-damaged, run-down, but essentially successful, colonial port-city. Singapore had been devastated by the Pacific War, with direct casualties and displaced people. The PAP elite’s political orientation was shaped by ideas current in radical circles.
