Description
Singapore is frequently – and often breathlessly - described in exceptional terms: an island nation unique for its wealth, its rapid socio-economic development, its political structure, its status as a global city-state, its ethnic composition, the genius of its “founding fathers”, its apparent geopolitical and strategic vulnerability. These narratives have long been promoted and bolstered by Singaporean foreign policy actors and state managers themselves. Even when aspects of the Singaporean experience have been regarded as having broader relevance – seen in claims of a “Singapore School” or a “Singapore Model” for economic growth and political development, for instance – these have been caveated in ways that both present the seeming difficulty of replicating Singapore’s “unique” characteristics and which foreground the specificity of Singaporean approaches. Despite their potential to overcome such limitations, critical and postcolonial readings of Singaporean politics and diplomacy have also tended to focus on domestic matters or state managerialism, rather than considering the ways in which Singaporean materials might be of broader utility for scholars and theorists of international relations and foreign relations. This paper explores the extent to which Singapore can – indeed, should – be of interest to scholars and theorists of contemporary foreign policy and transnational politics. Singaporean materials, it is argued, draw our attention to a range of factors – ethnic difference, wealth disparity, rapid industrialisation, the rise of a politically and economically risk-averse middle class, cultural isolation within a region – that are of interest in contexts well beyond archipelago SE Asia. In excavating these points, the paper contributes to a broader call both to decolonise and to broaden the ontological basis of international relations thought.
