Beyond technocratic statecraft: contentious politics and Singapore’s third leadership transition

ABSTRACT

The bowing out of the designated successor to the leadership of the long-ruling People’s Action Party, Heng Swee Keat, and thus the prime ministership of Singapore in April 2021 led to a sense of political crisis in the illiberal state. This article argues that this troubled third leadership transition was preceded and conditioned by the similarly troubled protracted first leadership transition in the 1980s and 1990s. The technocratic statecraft that framed the first transition is ill-adapted to tackle the new contentious politics that have gathered pace since the 2011 general election, thus engendering the sense of crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Singapore
• political succession
• illiberal democracy
• technocracy
• statesmanship

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank James Chin for his guiding questions and my research assistant Shai-Ann Koh for her comments. There are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests associated with this article. The author was elected as Workers’ Party Non-Constituency Member of Parliament in the 13th Parliament of Singapore, from February 2016 to July 2020 and he remains a member of the Workers’ Party, but has retired from active politics since July 2020 and does not hold any office or participate in any political activities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. These two sentences mime Marx’s opening words in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, published 1852.