A union of gender equality and pragmatic patriarchy: international marriages and citizenship laws in Singapore

As a patriarchal society, government policies, societal norms and government regulations in Singapore mirror that normative ideal. Citizenship status and rights along gender lines, manifested in the legal recognition of children of international marriages, reflected this reality for much of Singapore's independence. However, the onslaught of globalization, the rise in international marriages, disconcerting declining birth rates, and an acceptance of ‘foreign talent’ have given the economic imperative and demographic impulse to grant citizenship (by descent) to a person born outside Singapore whose father or mother is a citizen of Singapore, by birth, registration or descent. Previously, such a person would be granted citizenship only if his/her father was a Singapore citizen by birth. This paper examines the background and contextual realities leading to the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore (Amendment) Act 2004. It argues that the landmark constitutional amendment was motivated by pragmatic considerations of demography, economics, and political governance. The paper contends that state sovereignty, while seemingly challenged by international marriages, is still preserved rather than negated. It suggests that the state's ideological apparatus vis-à-vis the family is adaptable, enabling the continued institutional influence, if not control, over the family as the basic building block of Singapore society.     

Militarizing civilians in Singapore: preparing for ‘Crisis’ within a calibrated nationalism1

The Singaporean polity has created the ‘militarized civilian’. This policy phenomenon beckons the question: How is this cross-fertilization carried out in Singapore's civil–military relations? Militarization is in the first sense meant to inculcate a calibrated dual personality within the civilian whereby being an effective soldier requires indulging in simulated military suffering as a badge of pride; at the same time, the citizen soldier has to believe that military and civilian values are perfectly interchangeable and contribute equally to the maintenance of peace. In a second sense, militarization is equally about permanently ritualizing sacrifices for a communitarian defence. We argue that while mostly successful, militarization also produces the tension arising from the need to appear pugnaciously vigilant while avoiding the casualties that must logically arise from heightened simulated combat. This tension is explained through two dimensions of ongoing crises: the parameters of a politically dramatized National Service ritual; and the constant propaganda of geopolitical dangers threatening the Republic.     

State intervention and neoliberalism in the globalizing world economy: lessons from Singapore's regionalization programme

The recent 1997-98 Asian economic crisis has thrown Asia's divergent pathways to development into serious question. Protagonists of neoliberalism argue that their agenda is now becoming a global orthodoxy when several ailing Asian economies have accepted IMF packages which come with neoliberal economic programmes. Drawing on lessons from Singapore's regionalization programme, this article contends that it is far too early to conclude that Asian developmental states are giving up their governance of domestic economies. Instead, there is evidence that these Asian developmental states are re-regulating their domestic economies to ride out of the economic crisis. The article first starts with the debate between neoliberalism and state developmentalism in our understanding of global political economy. It then examines the political economy of Singapore's regionalization programme through which Singapore-based transnational corporations are strongly encouraged by the state to regionalize their operations, followed by a critical discussion of the impact of the recent Asian economic crisis on the re-regulation of the regionalization programme by the state in Singapore. Some lessons for Asian emerging economies are suggested in the concluding section.     

China's reform,internal trade and marketing

Abstract

This article analyses Macau's casinos as an example for accumulation by dispossession, in which they serve to transfer wealth from Mainland China to Macau and the casinos' foreign investors. They also represent a model for economic development and this model has migrated to Singapore, where it also operates as a form of accumulation by dispossession. By requiring citizens to pay an entrance fee, Singapore's casinos explicitly appropriate other people's money. The efficacy for the use of casinos as economic development is interrogated here because Macau's casino experience has emerged as a model for economic development in Asia beyond simply Singapore.     

Sustaining excellence in government: the Singapore experience

This article describes PS21—a programme for adapting Singapore's public service to the needs of the twenty-first century—against the backdrop of Singapore's recent history, including the challenges posed by the island's small size, its sudden independence and its multi-ethnic population. The ability to sustain four decades of economic adaptation and public service adjustment is seen to be intimately linked with the goals of governance and the quality of leadership in the Republic. (© 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)     

Organizing interfaces between government institutions and interactive governance

Initiatives to encourage the involvement of citizens and NGOs in decision-making can be seen in a wide variety of countries. Interactive policy-making, citizen panels, citizen charters, new forms of participation and other forms are being used to increase the influence of citizens on decision-making. An important issue in scientific debate is the relationship between citizen participation and existing democratic institutions. The main question for this article therefore is: what are the possibilities and difficulties in creating interconnections between interactive governance and existing democratic institutions? We have conducted an action research project to organize this interconnection between an interactive governance project (Around Arnemuiden, Living with Water) and existing democratic institutions. We describe and evaluate the interface arrangements we created: political, executive, professional, and policy interface. The executive, professional, and policy interfaces turned out to be weak or moderate, while the political interfaces was strong. Executives and professionals are reluctant to actively involve and commit to interactive processes. The organization of the interconnection between interactive processes and existing representative democratic institutions is very difficult and needs constant maintenance.     

The Virtuous,the Critical and the Trustworthy: Citizen Ideals and Forms of Democratic Participation

A vibrant democratic society requires continuous innovation to actualize and encourage democratic ideals through participation, but no universal answers exist as to which kinds of participation are best suited to achieve this. This article demonstrates that different types of participation correlate with different citizen ideals, implying that the remedies to democratic deficits depend on which ideals need to be strengthened. Citizen survey data is used to examine the relationships between two types of citizen participation – in voluntary associations and workplaces – and three empirical citizen ideals: the virtuous citizen, the critical citizen and the trustworthy citizen. The results suggest that voluntary associations make space for all three ideals, while workplace participation tends to be characterized specifically by the critical citizen's ideal of reason‐giving and critical reflection. The article ends by discussing the implications of these results: new democratic designs should be more effective if tailored to address context‐dependent weaknesses in democratic practices.     

When citizen deliberation enters real politics: how politicians and stakeholders envision the place of a deliberative mini-public in political decision-making

Policy Sciences - In the wake of the increasing use of deliberative citizen assemblies in the public sphere, this article studies how traditional policy actors receive a mini-public as...     

Digital citizenship and neoliberalization: governing digital citizens in Denmark

Digital citizenship is becoming increasingly normalized within advanced democratic states. As society and governmental institutions become reliant on digital technologies, citizens are expected to be and act digitally. This article examines the governance of digital citizens through a case study of digitalization efforts in Denmark. Drawing on multiple forms of data, the article showcases how digital citizens are governed through a combination of discursive, legal and institutional means. The article highlights the political, but also institutional work that goes into making citizens digital. Providing this case study, the article contributes to current critical perspectives on the digital citizen as a new political figure. It adds new insights into digital citizenship by connecting this figure to wider processes of neoliberalization and state restructuring, pushing for a more pronounced focus on governmental practices.     

The Singapore Mutiny (1915) and the Genesis of Political Intelligence in Singapore

This paper describes how political intelligence evolved in Singapore and the establishment for the first time of a political intelligence bureau, the forerunner of the Singapore Police Special Branch and the present-day Internal Security Department (ISD). It is an example of British imperial practice as the early roots of intelligence in Singapore owed much to the experience gained earlier in British India in dealing with intelligence matters. The establishment of an intelligence bureau in Singapore came about as a direct result of the Singapore Mutiny (15 February 1915), and in the following year the newly-established bureau was renamed the Criminal Intelligence Department and absorbed into the Straits Settlements Police. In September 1933, it became the Singapore Special Branch, the forerunner of present-day Singapore's Internal Security Department.     

Rehearsing Citizenship: The Governing of Juvenile Delinquency in Colonial Malaya

This article traces the sudden problematisation and governing of juvenile delinquency in British colonial Malaya in the decade preceding independence in 1957 whereby a juvenile court system, a network of institutions for delinquents, and a series of training and disciplinary practices were set up to rehabilitate the delinquent in order to turn him into a responsible citizen. Drawing on the analytics of disciplinary and ethical practices conducted by Michel Foucault, it is argued that the governing of juvenile delinquency in colonial Malaya may be seen as a fundamental element of a wider assemblage of normalising techniques seeking to recast subjectivity from that of immature individuals into active and responsible self-governing ones, and that these techniques were highly dividing in that they produced not only what is taken to be good citizens but also delinquents. It is shown that Malaysian independence, far from leading to a break with these power-laden practices of citizenship, instead leads to their further development, dispersal and institutionalisation.     

Making political citizens? Migrants’ narratives of naturalization in the United Kingdom*

Citizenship tests are arguably intended as moments of hailing, or interpellation, through which norms are internalized and citizen-subjects produced. We analyse the multiple political subjects revealed through migrants’ narratives of the citizenship test process, drawing on 158 interviews with migrants in Leicester and London who are at different stages in the UK citizenship test process. In dialogue with three counter-figures in the critical naturalization literature – the ‘neoliberal citizen’; the ‘anxious citizen’; and the ‘heroic citizen’ – we propose the figure of the ‘citizen-negotiator’, a socially situated actor who attempts to assert control over their life as they navigate the test process and state power. Through the focus on negotiation, we see migrants navigating a process of differentiation founded on pre-existing inequalities rather than a journey toward transformation.     

Introduction: the body as a site for politics: citizenship and practices of contemporary slavery

This special issue of Citizenship Studies brings the meaning of citizenship into dialogue with recent work on the body and with practices of contemporary slavery. In bringing the concepts of citizenship, bodies and slavery into collision, we highlight the need to couple slavery with possibilities of citizenship as an alternative to the way in which, as Paddy McQueen below puts it, ‘citizenship and slavery are mutually exclusive: one can be either a citizen or a slave, not both’. Recent ideas about the body as a site for politics, where the body is understood in terms of embodied relationality in a situation – a necessarily social category – are a means for bringing about a richer encounter between the concepts of citizenship understood as political subjectivity (as developed in the work of Engin Isin), bodies and slavery. Practices of slavery deny relationality, based instead on a binary master/slave logic of power relations. This introduction connects citizenship with slavery, by identifying citizenship as embodied political subjectivity and slavery as one of the conditions in which the very possibility of this is denied. Taking embodied relationality into account, recognising the necessarily social embodiment of concepts and abjuring an abstract, disembodied sphere of concepts, thus disrupts the standard understanding of slavery as rights violations.     

In Search of Society? The Limitations of Citizen‐Centred Governance

Democratic governments have spent much of the last two decades attempting to recalibrate their governance systems around a single focal entity: the citizen. The all‐pervasive rhetoric of citizen‐centred governance has seen policies conceived, delivered and evaluated in terms of the satisfaction levels achieved by individual ‘citizens’. This article argues that by disaggregating societal interests down to the smallest available individual unit – the citizen – policy makers have created unrealistic expectations of individual participation, leading to public distrust when ‘citizen‐centred’ rhetoric does not match reality. Simultaneously, the focus on individual outcomes has narrowed the policy‐making gaze away from wider society‐level measures that could create more robust policy options in the face of ‘hard choices.’ The result – paradoxically – is that the more government focuses on pleasing the individual citizen, the less trusting those citizens are of government's ability to deliver meaningful outcomes.     

Singaporean foreign policy and the Asian Values Debate, 1992–2000: reflections on an experiment in soft power

Between 1992 and 2000, the international order witnessed a clash of discourses not seen since the height of the Cold War when both superpowers engaged in propaganda offensives to assert the superiority of their respective governing ideologies. However, unlike the Cold War, the Asian Values Debate did not involve a supporting cast of armed occupations, insurgencies and the preaching of revolution. It involved instead statements of difference couched in intellectual and material terms, and also relied heavily on persuasion by words and symbolic deeds. This article seeks to evaluate Singaporean foreign policy in the Asian Values Debate by using the concept of soft power as described by Joseph Nye. However, soft power, as the ability to obtain foreign policy ends through attraction or convincing rather than through coercion, is itself vulnerable to instances where the ideas propounded diverge from the practices they purport to inspire. Singapore’s role in the Debate will be examined through three events at its zenith between 1992 and 2000: the clash between Asia and the West at the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna, the Michael Fay Caning Affair which directly pitted Singapore against the US in 1994, and the fate of the Asian exceptionalist argument in the face of the 1997–99 Asian Financial Crisis. The conclusion suggests that Singaporean foreign policy’s experiment in soft power has had its successes, but it remains qualified in its applicability to other Asian foreign policies by certain limits inherent in the Singaporean discourse.     

Educating for active compliance: discursive constructions in citizenship education

This article examines the discursive construction of ‘active citizenship’ within recent civics curriculum documents across three provinces in Canada. New secondary school civics curricula have emerged across liberal democratic states since the year 2000, presumably in response to the perception of youth as disengaged from political involvement. Many of the new curricula subsequently emphasize ‘active’ engagement within the polity. The central task of this paper is to better understand what such ‘active citizenship’ actually means, via the methodological tool of discourse analysis. Engaging a theoretical frame that incorporates Foucauldian governmentality theory and cultural theories of the role of the state in creating subjectivities, the paper ultimately argues that the ‘active citizen’ of contemporary civics curricula is, in fact, a deeply neoliberal subject. The article then draws on feminist theories of citizenship in order to assess the forms of exclusion that the curriculum documents inadvertently create, arguing that they ultimately participate in a long tradition of devaluing such elements of citizenship as relationality and emotional ties. We conclude that one of the fundamental goals of citizenship education – to expand access to citizenship participation for all – has failed.     

Democratizing the Administrative State: Connecting Neighborhood Councils and City Agencies

Citizen participation in government decision making, especially at the local level, has received heightened attention with regard to its promise for improved governance. The overarching administrative ethos of the administrative state creates barriers to citizen participation in governance. Developing and nurturing citizen participation in the presence of the administrative state is a significant challenge. Drawing on the literary tradition of public engagement and learning, this article models a developmental strategy of participation that offers one avenue for achieving meaningful partnerships between city agencies and neighborhood councils in a metropolitan environment. We present a model of citizen participation that brings neighborhood councils and city agencies together in a collaborative partnership. This model is based on the literature on citizen participation, which focuses on the significance of interactive processes in building trust among participants and creating mutual understanding and agreement.     

Emotions and voting behavior in self-determination referendums: the case of New Caledonia in 2018

In this article we examine the impact of emotions in an independence referendum. New Caledonia – a French Pacific territory with 270,000 inhabitants – held a self-determination referendum in November 2018, in which 56% of the voters opted to remain a part of France. We conducted a post-referendum survey with 1496 respondents that included a specific battery to measure emotions as well as control variables. We find that experiencing anger with the national status of the territory increases the probability of voting for independence, while experiencing pride reduces it. These results remain after controlling for partisan, ethnic and national identification, expected effects of independence as well as sociodemographic factors. Moreover, emotions and identity interact and increase the effect of (the lack of) national identification. Beyond the effects of the traditional control variables, the results suggest that knowledge about voting behavior in independence referendums is transferable to decolonization in Pacific Islands.     

Global governance and communicative action: a study of democratic participation during planning for the Lyon–Turin rail link

Organisation–stakeholder engagement during planning of a high‐speed rail link between France and Italy is described and analysed in this paper. Conceptualising organisation–citizen engagement as a form of deliberative democracy, the study's theoretical framework draws upon literature from communication, social and political science. Following a review of governance for transnational organisation–stakeholder engagement, communication methods used by one transnational organisation, Lyon‐Turin Ferroviaire (LTF), to engage in ‘discursive legitimacy’ with affected parties, is studied. A qualitative case study approach examines whether LTF's engagement with stakeholders provides opportunities for democratic participation rather than creating a democratic deficit in the public sphere. Results point to a lack of mechanisms through which transnational policy makers can be held accountable‐leading in this case, to a legitimacy crisis for institutions involved, threatening their ability to justify the economic and transportation viability of the project. This article is of interest to academics in communication and social sciences, managers working in an international context and communication professionals. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The burden of (homo)sexual identity in Singapore

This article explores issues that arise out of the confluence of homosexual rights as human rights in the context of the Southeast Asian city‐state of Singapore. The refusal of the Government of Singapore in 1997 to register the nascent, indigenous, gay, lesbian and bisexual group ‘People Like Us’, underscores the position Singapore has taken in relation to the wider public discourse about the difference between Singaporean (Asian) values and those held by the West. The battle of values as explicated by the Peoples Action Party,¹ has relied heavily on a reverse ‘orientalism’, indeed an ‘occidentalism’, which, laden with references to the colonialism, perceived relative economic and moral decline and imperialism of the West in contrast to the majestic rise of the material success of post‐colonial Singapore, has deployed the issue of homosexuality as a defining aspect of Western culture and society, thereby sustaining an imagined state where the purity of family life is entrenched and safe. Homosexual activity, although not persecuted endemically, and despite its social and cultural presence, is illegal in Singapore, carefully monitored and contained. Homosexual identity, particularly in terms of the gay or lesbian identified person, is also perceived to be a Western construct and import, and is officially demonized to assist in the formation of a barrier between the so‐called East and West. In this sense, homosexuality is part of an imagined border where cultural and social mores are specifically defined and positioned in terms of difference.