Middleman Minority Nation: A New Conceptualisation of the State in Singapore

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Singaporean state is often conceptualised as neoliberal, but I argue that this conceptualisation is mistaken. While Singapore embraces the neoliberal ‘all you have is yourself’ ethos, I contend, the state does not apply this ethos to individuals and families, but to society as a whole: to the relation between Singapore and ‘the world’, rather than to the domestic realm within Singapore. That is, Singapore is a communalist and not an individualist society – a society in which the group is paramount, and in which the rights and responsibilities of individuals are subordinated to group interests. I introduce the term ‘middleman minority state’ (MM state) to capture this social phenomenon, whereby the state scales up the tactics of the classic middleman minority to the level of a small nation-state. I argue that the uniqueness of Singapore as a polity is not fully reflected in 20th-century economists’ views on society and economics, which provide only a partial map of Singapore. Instead, we must look to Singapore’s history as a centre for middleman minorities, whose values and behaviour patterns were transformed into a successful state strategy as the country became an independent nation-state in the 1960s.