The scholarship of Stephan Ortmann and Mark R. Thompson has confirmed that Singapore’s ruling elite consciously presents itself as a governance model, suitable for emulation. This paper critically assesses Singapore’s role as a possible reference for China’s leadership in particular. The paper considers both potentially transferable ideological elements of the ‘Singapore model’ – meritocracy, technocracy, selected aspects of Confucianism, and ethno-nationalism – and the techniques by which the Singapore elite disguises arbitrary, personalist and authoritarian governance as impersonal bureaucratic modernity.

Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS)

The University of Adelaide

Friday, 19 May 2017

4:00 – 5:00 pm

Stretton Room, Level 4 Napier Building

All welcome: No registration required