Singapore's success story has increasingly been recognised but few have told it from the perspective of an insider. As a senior civil servant and "mandarin" from 1959 to 1999, Ngiam Tong Dow served with the founding generation of political leaders and contributed to the country's economic growth. In this book, he reflects on these experiences, sharing personal anecdotes and perceptive insights of Singapore's early decades. He also boldly questions some of the policies of government and emerging trends in the country to suggest how Singapore must change to survive and thrive in the future.
Singapore was ranked first for the competence of its public officials from 1999 to 2002 by "The Global Competitiveness Report". This book intends to provide a detailed study of public administration Singapore-style.
One of the main economic players responsible for Singapore’s economic success is its small and medium-sized enterprises or SMEs. Their overall success has helped propel the country and its people forward. From economic policies to politics, Singapore is a planned and regulated economy. Singapore’s economic success story is actually the result of a form of capitalism carefully calibrated and controlled by the government. An important element or aspect of good critical success factors (CSFs) emerges from the role being played by the government. The existence of good government or public policies that are pro-business is vital for the success of firms. Despite the fact that government policies and CSFs are widely studied in areas around the world including in Singapore, there is no comprehensive prediction model available to test if firms have potential to be successful or are more prone to failures. Much research investigates the non-financial factors contributing to success versus failure of small firms, but empirical tests of the predictability of these factors are less common. This book, which is primarily quantitative/ positivist in nature will attempt to fill this gap.
Using rich ethnographic data and first-hand experience, Ball presents a detailed account of Australia’s attempts to incorporate behavioural insights into its public policy. Ball identifies three competing interpretations of behavioural public policy, and how these interpretations have influenced the use of this approach in practice. The first sees the process as an opportunity to introduce more rigorous evidence. The second interpretation focuses on increasing compliance, cost savings and cutting red tape. The last focuses on the opportunity to better involve citizens in policy design. These interpretations demonstrate different ‘solutions’ to a series of dilemmas that the Australian Public Service, and others, have confronted in the last 50 years, including growing politicisation, technocracy and a disconnect from the needs of citizens. Ball offers a detailed account of how these priorities have shaped how behavioural insights have been implemented in policy-making, as well as reflecting on the challenges facing policy work more broadly. An essential read for practitioners and scholars of policy-making, especially in Australia.
Singapore and Asia- Celebrating Globalisation and an Emerging Post-modern Asian Civilisation TK Ti and Edward SE Ti This book examines the history of the global economy and how cultural values have empowered the rapid emergence of Singapore and East Asia. A review of the major world civilizations recounts Western hegemony since the 16th century. With legacies from Classical Mediterranean, Islamic Abbasid and Christian scholasticism, Western civilization created the modern world, pushing the borders of techno-science, rule of law, democracy and human rights. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the greatest impact of global modernization has been in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong Singapore and China. These East Asian countries all share a Confucian heritage of hard work ethics, thrift, love of learning and respect for benign authority. Although democracy has had a lukewarm reception, there has been whole-hearted embrace of techno-science and the globalized economy. Singapore, a miniscule island state fighting for survival following its expulsion from Malaysia in 1965, showcases how uninterrupted innovative governance and modernization has created an efficient, livable and global port-city, top financial center and host to the worlds largest conglomerate of Multinational Corporations. There is expectation that current research investment would transform Singapore into a mature knowledge economy. In addition to Singapores openness and welcome of global talents and workers, committed governance has achieved rule of law, control of crime and corruption, meritocracy in political and public appointments, trade union support, and racial and religious harmony. Social support, which continues to be enhanced, is not by way of hand-outs but as subsidies in education, healthcare, and home ownership. In the 1970s and 1980s, Asian values was proposed to be driving the emergence of Japan and the Asian tigers. With the current awesome rise of China challenging the world order, it seems prudent to resume the conversation.
This book offers a detailed account of the life and career of William Armstrong, the most influential civil servant in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, and one of the most powerful and significant Whitehall officials in the post-1945 period. He was at the centre of the British government policy-making machine for over 30 years – the very incarnation of the ‘permanent government’ of the country. He was the indispensable figure at the right hand of successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, and a reforming Head of the Civil Service. His role and power was such that he was controversially dubbed ‘deputy prime minister’ under Edward Heath. The book also casts light on wider institutional, political and historical issues around the working and reform of the civil service and the government machine, the policy-making process, and the experience in office of Labour and Conservative governments from the 1940s to the 1970s. ;;;;;;;;;;;
A crucial founding father of independent Singapore, Dr Goh Keng Swee has his distinguished and unparalleled stint in public service hitherto reduced to dates and designations. The book is the first to collect and present a broad range of historical material commemorating Dr Goh's public career. This book is not a biography of Dr Goh's life. Instead, it commemorates his public career and attempts to portray a more personal and candid perspective of the principal architect of independent Singapore. This is done by pulling together a variety of historical sources, ranging from Dr Goh's public statements and speeches, and existing and fresh oral interviews with his former colleagues to archival documents and imagery. This book is an important contribution not only to Singapore's history in general, providing valuable historical context to the challenges of ensuring the sustainability and survival of a young nation at the highest levels of policy-making, but also a tribute to Dr Goh — how he is remembered, respected and revered by some of his closest peers and colleagues.
Inception Point: The Use of Learning and Development to Reform the Singapore Public Service fills a gap in current literature on Singapore's modernisation. While the political leadership of the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his People's Action Party (PAP) government were key to Singapore's modernisation, the role of policy implementation was one shouldered by the Singapore Public Service, a story thus far neglected in literature.Inception Point argues that the Singapore Public Service used executive development and training to introduce reforms across the bureaucracy. In so doing, the bureaucracy constantly adjusted itself to help modernise Singapore. In the 40 years between decolonisation in 1959 and 2001, when the training arm of the bureaucracy became a statutory board, training had been used firstly, to socialise the bureaucracy away from its colonial-era organisational culture to prepare it for the tasks of nation-building. Subsequently, civil servants were mobilised into an 'economic general staff' through training and development, to lead the Singapore developmental state in the 1970s and the 1980s. The Public Service for the 21st Century (PS21) reforms in the 1990s was the epitome in harnessing development and training for reforms across the bureaucracy.
The Thucydides trap and a US-China face-off are not structurally inevitable; US-China relations are what the US and China make of them. Phua focuses on the ability to see "US as US" and "China as China" to trigger both countries’ cultural tendencies towards pragmatism. Phua examines China’s arduous journey to fit in the Westphalian system, the deep cultural misunderstandings by the West of Sunzi’s The Art of War, and attempts to offer an inside-out cultural synthesis of classical and modern Chinese thought as a proxy of their operational code, beyond the standard clichés about Confucian and Daoist thought. He builds on Jervis’ perception and misperception as well as Alastair Johnston’s cultural realism. Readers will benefit from a culturally-Chinese, western-educated and politically neutral understanding of "China as China". An essential primer for academics, practitioners and students of international relations, diplomacy and Chinese culture.
Going behind the doors of the Treasury and Number 10, this book explores why successive British Prime Ministers from Callaghan to Blair have been hesitant towards European Economic and Monetary Union. It uses official documents and interviews with former ministers to understand discussions that took place at the heart of government.
