Rethinking Linkage to the West: What Authoritarian Stability in Singapore Tells Us

Su-Mei Ooi

doi:10.21315/ijaps2016.12.2.1

Abstract

Rethinking Linkage to the West: What Authoritarian Stability in Singapore Tells Us

Highlights

The notion that democratisation is for the most part a domestic political process exploded when the end of the former Soviet Union corresponded with a dramatic sweep of transitions away from communism toward the promise of democracy (Whitehead 2001)
Regime change in Singapore cannot be understood without locating it at the international-domestic political interface
The theoretical framework provided by Levitsky and Way (2010) does just that. The structural approach they have taken in the conceptualisation of linkages to the West has presented obstacles to a better understanding of why linkage to the West sometimes fails to raise the cost of authoritarianism

Summary

Introduction

The notion that democratisation is for the most part a domestic political process exploded when the end of the former Soviet Union corresponded with a dramatic sweep of transitions away from communism toward the promise of democracy (Whitehead 2001). Efforts to understand how the international environment impacts regime change have since continued, re-animated by the fact that a significant number of post-Cold War, "third wave" regime transitions have led instead to authoritarian transformations. This trend is theoretically significant in that myriad scholarship suggested that the overarching post-Cold War geopolitical environment was significantly more conducive to democratisation, regional factors notwithstanding (Whitehead 2001; Pridham et al 1994). A series of recent scholarship by Levitsky and Way (2005; 2006; 2007; 2010), which culminated in a cross-regional, medium-N case study in 2010, has made such an impact in the field by giving us a framework to approach the complexities of the international environment and its impact on regime change

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion