Internet Governance: Singapore’s Regulatory Influence

Abstract

This chapter details the governance mindset that the Singapore government has applied to managing and mitigating the risks of open internet access. Apart from cyber-security, the authoritarian People’s Action Party (PAP) government in Singapore was—and still is—most concerned about ensuring that it retains political control over its citizens. The approach taken by Singapore authorities has been premised on ensuring that commerce would thrive by embracing the internet and digital technologies, but its collateral, the free-for-all libertarian ideas that accompany an open cyberspace, would be curtailed via the Foucault-inspired discourse of ‘auto-regulation’ that enables surveillance via balanced, light-touch regulatory principles. The chapter concludes by positioning internet governance in Singapore vis-a-vis the nation’s delicate foreign policy approaches. It argues in the final analysis that the Internet is intrinsically hybrid, and that only by thinking about local applications and controls whilst simultaneously recognising the global technology that the Internet represents can one govern the Internet sufficiently, and with potency.