Foreign investment,industrial restructuring and dependent development in Singapore

Singapore's industrial development and restructuring are very much dependent on foreign investment. Despite the apparent benefits of foreign investment and Singapore's success in export-oriented manufacturing, there are worrisome aspects arising from the large and growing dependency on such investment in the manufacturing sector as Singapore moves toward a developed country status. This article explores some of the consequences of such dependency. In terms of industrial pattern, foreign investment has created and maintained a dualistic industrial structure in manufacturing. Foreign firms and government industrial policies have suppressed and marginalized local entrepreneurship. Export-oriented industrialization has opened the employment doors for women in manufacturing. However, women are predominantly found in low pay, dead end jobs in the assembly line of Singapore's new industrial order. With the implementation of a new wave of industrial restructuring strategies, new capital and technological intensive foreign investments are welcomed and solicited. However, the local labour supply is unable to meet the increased demands. Foreign labour has been called in to fill the gaps. This inevitably distorts labour market outcomes and heightens the income inequality index.     

Production Politics and Migrant Labour Advocacy in Singapore

Since 2005, NGO activism, calling for greater legal protection for contract migrant workers has been the most concerted challenge to Singapore’s migrant labour regime. Despite a severely restricted civil society space, migrant labour advocacy has delivered small but significant reforms to laws covering migrant labour. The existing literature on migrant labour advocacy focuses on the importance of civil society space in determining the outcomes of organised contention. In the Singapore context, the limitations of advocacy are emphasised and explained in terms of the illiberal nature of the People’s Action Party-state and the strategies deployed by non-governmental organisations. Such an approach is limited in its explanatory potential as it only states what political spaces are not available without examining how spaces for contention are created. In contrast, this article identifies the production politics between migrant workers and their employers as crucial in influencing the extent to which spaces for non-governmental organisation contention can be carved out. Accordingly, this article argues that forms of production politics leading to worker desertion from the workplace, rather than tactical accommodation, have provided non-governmental organisations with the impetus to push forward reform agendas within an authoritarian political environment.     

The Politics of the Minimum Wage in Hong Kong

This article provides an account of the recent introduction of a minimum wage in Hong Kong in 2011. Traditional welfare state theories had their origins in rich democracies. We refine the theoretical arguments in accordance with the semi-democratic nature of Hong Kong. We argue that the legislation was initiated reluctantly by the business-friendly government under unfavourable economic conditions. Any subsequent concessions to labour were not attributable to labour strength or political oppositions, which were very weak. Instead, multiple miscalculations by the politically dominant business side allowed the labour movement to gain limited grounds throughout the struggle. We also apply our arguments to the case of Singapore, illustrating how welfare state theories can be adapted to less democratic systems.     

Party Competition and Reforms of Unemployment Benefits in Germany: How a Small Change in Electoral Demand Can Make a Big Difference

This article shows how party competition has influenced reforms of unemployment benefits in Germany. The existing literature on German labour market policy emphasises institutional factors and predicts policy stability. Consequently, the recent fundamental reforms (‘Hartz reforms’) pose a challenge to previous research. By looking at the spatial configuration of the party system and at policy demand, this article argues that the incremental retrenchments of the 1980s and 1990s were conditioned by centripetal competition and a high degree of welfare consensus, whereas the more radical Hartz reforms were made possible by a limited shift in public opinion in favour of restructuring and the lack of a left-wing counterweight in the party system. Thus, the structure of the party system exacerbated the effect of a demand shift that was only moderate. The analysis is not meant to discard other explanatory factors, rather it intends to demonstrate the relevance of party competition to the study of labour market reforms in Germany and, more generally, to comparative welfare state research.     

Development of Labour Organisation in Singapore, 1800-1960

This paper looks at the long-term development of labour relations in Singapore. Firstly, it suggests a periodisation for the history of the Singapore labour movement. Secondly, the paper examines the shifting nature of industrial relations and the ability or lack thereof for labour to organise. One consistent theme emerges, that is the question of identity and consciousness among labour. Unless workers were able to identify themselves as labour, as opposed to capitalists, it was difficult for them to maintain a sustained effort to press for their own interests. In the nineteenth century, labourers were organised under patriarchal groups based on surnames or lineages. In the twentieth century, unions were part of the political movements for independence. Within the tripartite framework of labour, business and government, labour almost always found itself subordinated by the partnership of the state and capital, or government and business.     

2011年新加坡:政治、经济与外交

2011年,新加坡顺利举行国会大选和总统大选,完成新老领导班子交接,但是大选结果也凸显了民众对政府的不满,赢回民心是新一届政府的首要任务。在经济方面,新加坡经济增长步伐整体放缓,政府逐步出台系列措施进行经济重整,给长期依赖外来劳动力的行业带来阵痛。在外交上,新加坡继续加强与周边国家的良好关系,加深与中美的双边经贸、安全防务等领域的合作,积极推动中美在亚洲地区良性合作的关系。最后,本文对2011年境内外出版的关于新加坡的中文学术研究成果进行简要回顾与介绍。     

Singapore's cultural policy and its consequences

Abstract

This article explores the effects of Singapore's Global City for the Arts project on the local theater industry. It begins by describing the character of the Singapore state and its ability to meet the challenges of globalization. It then shows that while historically global in orientation, the city-state's early cultural policies were resolutely local and insular prior to the economic recession in 1985. From that year on, local arts and culture was driven by an economic rationale — eventually culminating in the birth of a globally oriented national cultural policy: the Global City for the Arts project. The author contends that the Global City for the Arts project has pressured the Singapore state into shedding some of its authoritarian practices in order to conform to international norms. However, the author also illustrates how certain theater companies with the requisite cultural capital for the Global City for the Arts project have benefited from the country's cultural policies while others that do not possess such cultural capital are marginalized. The article concludes by arguing that the Singapore state, in going global, exacerbates the economic disparity by accentuating preexisting inequalities and divisions in the local.     

Crisis Effects on the Electronics Industry in Southeast Asia

The financial crises of 1997–98 and 2008–09 each had a debilitating effect on Southeast Asian market economies because of the dominance of exports and foreign ownership. However, the 1997–98 financial crisis positively impacted electronics exports, production and employment, due to a booming US economy. The contraction in demand in the US during the 2008–09 crisis reduced electronics exports from Southeast Asia with the exceptions of Indonesia and the Philippines, which were shielded by regional linkages with Singapore, Malaysia and China. Foreign labour repatriation and fiscal stimulus packages helped Malaysia and Thailand rebound quickly from the 2008–09 crisis. In the Philippines, the 2008–09 crisis expanded further the casualisation of labour as retrenched workers from Malaysia and Singapore returned home. State grants encouraged upgrading in Singapore and to some extent in Malaysia, but the liberal approach of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand limited them to low-value-added activities. However, Singapore’s and Malaysia’s transnational-based strategy failed to reproduce the technological leapfrogging experience of South Korea and Taiwan. Also, Malaysia’s ethno-patronage policies discouraged upgrading in national firms.     

Global Crisis and Latin America

This essay examines Latin America's experience in the crisis and restructuring of world capitalism from the 1970s into the twenty‐first century, with particular emphasis on the neo‐liberal model, social conflicts and institutional quagmires that have engulfed the region, and the rise of a new resistance politics. The empirical and analytical sections look at: Latin America's changing profile in the global division of labour; the domination of speculative finance capital; the continued debt crisis, its social effects and political implications; capital–labour restructuring, the spread of informalisation and the new inequality; the passage from social explosions to institutional crises; the new popular electoral politics and the fragility of the neo‐liberal state. These issues are approached through the lens of global capitalism theory. This theory sees the turn‐of‐century global system as a new epoch in the history of world capitalism, emphasising new patterns of power and social polarisation worldwide and such concepts as a transnational accumulation, transnational capitalists and a transnational state. Finally, the essay argues that global capitalism faces a twin crisis in the early twenty‐first century, of overaccumulation and of legitimacy, and explores the prospects for social change in Latin America and worldwide.     

Clientelism and Control: PAP’s Fight for Safety in GE2015

Abstract

This article looks at the reasons the People’s Action Party (PAP) secured its decisive victory in the 2015 general election. The discussion examines the impact of the campaign and pre-election period on voting behaviour. While the opposition’s performance before and during the campaign reactivated its core supporters, the PAP’s control of the political narrative, rejuvenation of its grassroots machinery and effective use of resources provided an advantage that was instrumental in their electoral success. Most Singaporeans had decided how they would vote before the campaign began. Despite perceptions that the election was about the economy and the nationalist rhetoric associated with Singapore’s 50th anniversary and the passing of statesman Lee Kuan Yew, the argument in the paper suggests that the 2015 election provides insights into the breadth of clientelist politics in Singapore and how important state patronage and the control of the state are for holding on to political power in the city-state.     

Singapore’s Phantom Workers

In 2009, the Singapore state prosecuted a string of businesses for listing fictitious local workers on their books in order to stretch their foreign worker entitlement. These “phantom” worker scams, prevalent since the 1980s, appear out of place in Singapore – a country with a strong international reputation for its government’s efficiency and strict legal enforcement. This paper examines the state’s prosecutions of the phantom worker scams in the context of the exceptional economic and political stresses in 2009, when Singapore was most severely affected by the global economic crisis, in order to address the employment regime in Singapore. It argues that the belated efforts to tackle the phantom worker scams reflected the pro-business state’s reluctance to tackle illegalities crucial to facilitating employers’ otherwise unlawful access to wealth and resources in Singapore.     

Precarious Work and its Complicit Network: Migrant Labour in Singapore

ABSTRACT

How does precarious work entail social vulnerabilities and moral complicities? Theorists of precarity pose two challenges for analysing labour conditions in Asia. Their first challenge is to distinguish the new kinds of social vulnerability which constitute precarious work. The second is to assign moral responsibility in the social network that produces vulnerability in depoliticised and morally detached ways. In this article, the social and normative dimensions of precarious work are connected through a conceptual investigation into how Singapore allocates responsibility for managing temporary migrant labour. First, it analyses how various management strategies, driven by globalisation and government deregulation, increase worker vulnerabilities. These strategies intensify relations of dependence, disempowerment and discrimination, which the workers may accommodate or resist in limited ways. Second, it assesses why the strategies leave the state, employers, agents and others complicit in producing the vulnerabilities. These actors enable, collaborate with, or condone the production of precarity. Their complicity is complicated by varying support or resistance to reforms. The result is a novel conceptual scheme for analysing the complicit network behind precarious work, which can be used in other sites of precarity where some are complicit in the vulnerability of others.     

Singapore General Election 2015 and the Role of Citizenship Education

Abstract

This article explores the role of education, in particular citizenship education, in shaping the Singapore electorate. An understanding of the history of citizenship education helps to shed light on the contemporary political culture in Singapore. The extent to which democratic citizenship education has been taught in schools since 1958 is explored. Singapore’s citizenship education has consistently stressed the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, patriotism, national identity and moral values—with the goal of nation-building and legitimising the People’s Action Party state. This reflective historical piece on Singapore’s educational history adds a relatively unexplored facet to the discussions on the general election 2015 results as well as Singapore’s subsequent political development. The results of the 2015 general election in Singapore, seen in this light, are not so surprising, as they reflect the success of the state’s citizenship education in shaping the current political culture.     

The puzzle of manual harvest in Uzbekistan: economics,status and labour in the Khrushchev era

Uzbekistan has attracted international criticism for its use of child labour, defined as labour performed by youth under the Soviet legal limit of 16, to harvest cotton by hand. This article argues that manual labour, mostly performed by low-status children and women, became entrenched in Central Asian agriculture during the 1950s, and investigates the possible reasons for its persistence in the face of global trends to the contrary. The timing is a puzzle, because the 1950s were when mechanization of agriculture became a global development goal. The USSR participated in the mechanization trend. To understand better the roots of rural labour patterns in the Khrushchev period, we must consider how economic incentives and disincentives, gender relations, demographics, and state policy worked together.     

Everyday authoritarianism: a political anthropology of Singapore

Observers of Singapore agree that its state is authoritarian. Complicating such accounts of Singaporean authoritarianism, this paper shows authoritarianism is not simply state-driven or top-down as commonly assumed but involves diffuse governing processes. The paper describes a recent high-profile case involving Amos Yee, an eighteen-year-old blogger who made a video mocking Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding prime minister, shortly after Lee’s death in 2015. The teenager was incarcerated for the video, but only after ordinary citizens filed police reports and subjected him to online and physical abuse, suggesting that the people were acting as the state’s partners in punishment. Yee’s case shows that authoritarianism can have an everyday dimension and that it can be reproduced by ordinary citizens who punish fellow citizens perceived to be acting in adversarial manners towards the nation-state. The everyday authoritarianism of recent years is a reassertion of patriotism – a response to the insecurities caused by the rapid movement of people, capital, and ideas in the neoliberal economy. Everyday authoritarianism helps explain the longevity of Singaporean state authoritarianism, how it has managed to withstand multiple democratic challenges, and why it may survive long after Lee Kuan Yew, its chief architect, is dead.     

The veterans’ gala: the use of tradition in an industrial labour conflict in contemporary Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT

Since its privatization in 1995, Kazakhstan’s largest steel mill has been in a restructuring process characterized by workforce reduction, augmented pressure on remaining jobs and labour conflict over wages, work conditions and corporate social responsibility. In 2013, in an attempt to re-establish harmonious relationships with workers, management invited the mill’s former labour aristocracy to join a newly established veterans’ council, a forum resembling traditional aksakal councils, to discuss the company’s difficult situation. In the context of a banquet in honour of the veterans, tradition became the contested terrain over which labour and capital struggled to endorse their own visions of the industrial future. As corporate capitalist visions of efficiency and professionalism, ethno-national concerns for harmony and stability, and practices rooted in the Soviet labour legacy clash, tradition is staged by actors as a practice which can either affirm or challenge industrial leadership in a labour conflict.     

ECONOMIC CRISIS AND RESTRUCTURING IN SOUTH KOREA: Beyond the Free Market-Statist Debate

This paper, which examines the causes of the South Korean crisis in 1997-98 and the nature and consequences of the post-crisis restructuring process, looks critically at the neoliberal position but also at what the authors call the statist position (which celebrated and continues to defend the usefulness of industrial policy and state direction of the economy against neoliberal critics). While there are important differences between these approaches, the authors show that because both ignore the structural causes of South Korea's crisis, neither is able to explain, much less help overcome it. The paper then examines the economic, political, and social effects of the restructuring process, demonstrating how it has left the South Korean economy more dominated by foreign capital and the chaebol, and more dependent on exports and labor exploitation than before the crisis. As a result, South Korea appears headed for a new crisis. The authors conclude by highlighting ongoing worker resistance to the restructuring process and a movement-building strategy for advancing a worker/community-centered recovery and development program.     

Labour Demands,Regime Concessions: Moroccan Unions and the Arab Uprising

This article investigates how public employee unions mobilised to take advantage of Morocco's Arab uprising. Leveraging their positions as operators of public institutions, these unionists exploited the unrest to strategically advance their interests. Two points emerge from this account of state—labour relations in Morocco. First, a spike in labour contestation began in early 2010, presaging the unrest that rocked Moroccan cities in 2011. Second, the unions secured their demands through traditional tactics of labour mobilisation—joining street protests, exaggerating material demands, and threatening negotiation walkouts. This strategy, however, became more efficacious during the Arab uprising. Fearing urban riots that had historically grown from labour protests since the 1980s, regime elites conceded to union demands, many of which they had previously rejected in the 2000s.     

Hong Kong Workers toward 1997: Unionisation, Labour Activism and Political Participation under the China Factor

This essay delineates the three related areas on Hong Kong's labour front, unionisation, labour activism and political participation, which have been transformed by the new China factor of 1997 sovereignty retrocession and economic integration. During the last two decades, the decolonisation-democratisation processes have rapidly politicised organised labour to such an extent that political unionism displaced social unionism as the hallmark of the Hong Kong labour movement. Yet, under the impact of economic recession and restructuring with high unemployment and wage freeze, the struggle for livelihood concerns may become the bedrock for labour activism in China's Hong Kong into the 21st century.