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61 Goh’s Consensus Politics of Authoritarian Rule GARRY RODAN It would be overstating the case to depict Goh Chok Tong as having transformed the nature of authoritarianism in Singapore during his time as Prime Minister and leader of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) between 1990 and 2004. Yet Goh did significantly refine the regime through his “consensus politics”. Goh’s predecessor, Lee Kuan Yew, had presided over the systematic obstruction of political opposition and the decimation of civil society. Against this background, and in the context of the city-state’s deepening economic transformation , Goh understood that Singapore’s growing social pluralism required a political accommodation. Towards this end, Goh and his administration fostered new formal and informal political institutions and updated the ideological rationale for the de facto oneparty state. This included select avenues through which more diversity of views, criticisms and interests relevant to public policy could be expressed. Crucially, though, this generally involved expanding the political space of the state rather than any greater toleration of independent, collective organisations engaged in political competition with, or mobilisation against, the PAP. In other words, there was no dilution of authoritarian rule that, by definition, insulates power holders from genuinely competitive politics. Yet, paradoxically, increased political participation and consultation were integral to the structural and ideological refinement of authoritarian rule during the period of Goh’s prime ministership. This was only the second major refinement to the authoritarian regime since its inception in the 1960s. The first was under Lee, whereby administrative and legalistic techniques assumed vital strategic importance to political control. Recourse to security laws to detain critics and opponents was largely replaced by lawsuits and clever use of administrative law and legislation to constrain political competition.1 This increased sophistication coincided with the changing character of the PAP itself. An acute concentration of power among bureaucratic and political elites had progressively taken place, a process rooted in the integration of state and party in the 1960s but subsequently given impetus by the maturation of state capitalism. Goh, a former civil servant and managing director of the state 5 62 GARRY RODAN shipping company, Neptune Orient Lines, was emblematic of this power concentration and narrowing leadership profile. Indeed, he was at the centre of an emerging powerful group of state capitalists who increasingly occupied political positions or exerted political influence. Importantly, the technocratic world view with which Goh was imbued resonated with the administrative and legalistic instruments of political control Lee had shifted emphasis to. Goh thus consolidated this process. While during his leadership the government embarked on major refinements to authoritarianism, Goh appreciated that the regime was underscored by state paternalism. Since the early 1960s, PAP governments had cultivated heavy dependence on the state for social and economic resources. This relationship blocked independent bases of power, rendered Singaporeans vulnerable to potential political retribution such as through state discrimination in public housing upgrading and maximised the identification of social and economic progress with the PAP. As Prime Minister, Goh unapologetically exploited this relationship, both as a means of political intimidation and of political seduction. In short, Goh’s creative crafting of political institutions to foster new forms of political participation combined with a consolidation of the obstacles to effective contestation against the PAP.Yet in simultaneously prosecuting political change and regime consolidation, Goh did engender in many Singaporeans a sense that the political system was evolving for the better and that further evolution was possible. Expanding Political Space, Restricting Political Pluralism At the 1984 General Election, the PAP suffered a 13 per cent swing against it. In the post-mortem, the ruling party concluded that a more complex and socially diverse society resulting from economic development necessitated new institutional and ideological responses. In effect, the capacity for political co-option needed revitalisation if political competition was to be contained. Although the PAP did not articulate it in these terms, the limited capacity of traditional structures of political co-option—including the PAP-linked National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and grassroots Citizens’Consultative Committees (CCCs)—to incorporate new social forces was a limitation of the existing authoritarian regime. Furthermore, as material inequalities and living costs increased with capitalist development, the incapacity of these organisations either to forcefully represent the interests of lower-income Singaporeans or to placate them effectively also posed a problem for the PAP. Meanwhile, the contradiction between technocratic and elitist o...

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