The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in Singapore: Structural and Situational Opportunities in an Illiberal Regime

Abstract

Political opportunities have been considered as crucial in explaining the rise of social movements especially in authoritarian regimes. However, the concept has remained vague. This article demonstrates that it is possible to distinguish between two types of opportunities: structural and situational. While both enable mobilisation, the former consists of factors affecting social activism in general while the latter are events that enable mobilisation because they become part of the strategic repertoire of activists and generate emotions that motivate people to join the movement. This is illustrated in Singapore’s anti-death penalty movement which has grown significantly in recent years despite the increasingly sophisticated attempt to achieve “calibrated compliance,” an approach which combines coercion and concession. A situational opportunity emerged with the case of Yong Vui Kong which galvanised the movement and led to pressure from Malaysia. In this context, the government decided to slightly modify its mandatory death penalty for some offences including drug trafficking in 2012. After a successful last-minute reprieve of one death row inmate, activists decided in 2020 to consolidate their activities in the Transformative Justice Collective before, in 2022, a protest attracted an unprecedented 400 people against a planned execution.