Despite its status as one of the most dynamic global economies that is buttressed by a sizeable educated middle class, Singapore has remained a one–party-dominant authoritarian state governed by the People's Action Party (PAP) since 1959. The city-state's authoritarian longevity stands in stark contrast to other comparable developmental states in East Asia, such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, whose democratic trajectories have conformed to the modernization theory of political development. Not surprisingly, the city-state has become a popular destination for senior state functionaries from authoritarian regimes in China, Vietnam, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe eager to emulate the institutional and ideational components of the Singaporean political and economic model.
Instructively, many critical scholarly works that have interrogated the Singapore governance model have been written and published beyond its borders. In this mold, Jothie Rajah's Authoritarian Rule of Law: Legislation, Discourse and Legitimacy in Singapore adds to the growing list of penetrating works on Singapore's authoritarian governance written by Singaporean scholars based overseas. In the preface, Rajah frankly acknowledges the intellectual benefit of writing about Singapore from distant shores: “I have found it invaluable to exit the ideological fortress that Singapore can sometimes be in order to peel off, layer by layer, some of the assumptions embedded in Singapore speak—assumptions that have, until recently, been invisible to me” (xv).
The book focuses on the way the Singaporean state has manipulated the “rule of law” while dismantling the constitutional and civil rights of its citizens through “rule by law” processes. Rajah asserts that the law has been pivotal in legitimizing and consolidating the authoritarian state while subverting the dispersal of power that is inherent in plural democracies. In other words, the “rule of law” has served as a “crucial prop” for the authoritarian state (284). Legislative initiatives have undermined opposition parties (Chapter 3), dismantled the independent press (Chapter 4), and stunted the development of an autonomous civil society (Chapters 5, 6, and 7). These claims, in effect, challenge the veracity of ratings agencies and organizations such as the World Bank Report of Governance, IMD World Competitiveness Report, Transparency International Corruption Perception Index and the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report and expose their uncritical endorsement of the PAP government's “rule of law” claims. These “rule of law” claims are largely restricted to matters pertaining to foreign investment, trade, and the economy, supporting Singapore's reputation as a regional economic hub and commercial center. However, Singapore's “rule of law” pertaining to civil and political rights contradict the principles of liberal humanism, which underpin Singapore's Constitution. This thin “rule of law” regime has obstructed citizens from “considering the possibility of alternative ways of being governed or constituted” (295) while remaining a key pillar of legitimacy building.
Rajah's eclectic framework makes reference to Kanishka Jayasuriya's theorization of the authoritarian dual state—where economic liberalism operates in tandem with political illiberalism and where executive power has dismantled the autonomy of the judiciary in political matters. The book's forensic analysis of “laws that silence,” such as the Press Act, the 1986 amendment to the Legal Profession Act, the Religious Harmony Act and the Public Order Act, has exposed the contradictions of the city-state's “rule of law” credentials. The case studies also highlight how legitimate dissent has been transformed into security threats, which then justify the passage of legislation that curbs civil and political rights—ironically guaranteed by the Constitution. Legislation is systematically employed to silence and remove dissenting social and political actors from the public domain, exclude counter-narratives and maintain the electoral dominance of the PAP.
The insightful case study on the policing of lawyers, in Chapter 5, demonstrates how the authoritarian state has dismantled legal professional autonomy by prohibiting the Law Society from commenting on legislation. Rajah astutely observes that the relationship between the authoritarian state and the Law Society has been metaphorically reduced to that of a parent and a child, with “moments of adolescent-like subversion and rebellion” (218). The Religious Harmony Act, which attempts to separate religion from the political sphere, could have been discussed within a global context by examining the failed attempts of authoritarian regimes in Pahlavi Iran, Kemalist Turkey, the former Soviet Union and China in adopting this approach. This comparative approach would have more clearly exposed the key motive driving the separation of religion and politics—the control of religious actors and institutions by authoritarian secular states. That said, Rajah's eloquently written book is an impressive tour de force, in theoretical and empirical terms, and an important contribution to the academic literature on authoritarian governance.
