Lily Zubaidah Rahim

Singapore in the Malay World

This study examines the factors that have contributed to the persisting socio-economic marginality of the Singapore Malay Community. It proposes that this problem requires a national solution as it is organically connected to the social, economic, and political challenges confronting the multiethnic island republic.

The Political and Educational Marginality of the Malay Community

The Singapore Dilemma

Lecturer Department of Economic History Lily Zubaidah Rahim

Relations between Singapore and her immediate Malay neighbours have been perennially fraught with tension and misunderstanding. In making sense of this complex relationship, Lily Rahim explores the salience of historical animosities and competitive economic pressures, and Singapore’s janus-faced security and foreign economic policy orientation and ‘regional outsider’ complex. Focusing on Singapore’s relations with Malaysia, the book also examines the Indonesian dimension in bilateral relations. It highlights the paradoxical similarities in the nation-building approaches of Singapore and Malaysia. The author reflects critically on sensitive issues such as the rhetoric and reality of meritocracy and multiracialism in Singapore, and analyses the city-state’s weak regional soft power credentials and reputation as a political laggard despite its economic achievements. Incorporating perspectives and frameworks from the disciplines of comparative politics, area studies, international relations, political economy and history, this multidisciplinary study offers groundbreaking insights into the way in which the neighboring states of Singapore and Malaysia see themselves, each other, the region and beyond. This book will be of particular interest to keen observers of Southeast Asian politics.

Building and Breaching Regional Bridges

Michael D. Barr

This book delves into the limitations of Singapore’s authoritarian governance model. In doing so, the relevance of the Singapore governance model for other industrialising economies is systematically examined. Research in this book examines the challenges for an integrated governance model that has proven durable over four to five decades. The editors argue that established socio-political and economic formulae are now facing unprecedented challenges. Structural pressures associated with Singapore’s particular locus within globalised capitalism have fostered heightened social and material inequalities, compounded by the ruling party’s ideological resistance to substantive redistribution. As ‘growth with equity’ becomes more elusive, the rationale for power by a ruling party dominated by technocratic elite and state institutions crafted and controlled by the ruling party and its bureaucratic allies is open to more critical scrutiny.

Lily Zubaidah Rahim

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