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SINGAPORE: Identity, Brand, Power. Politics and Society in Southeast Asia. By Kenneth Paul Tan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 74 pp. CAD$20.95, paper. ISBN 978-1-108-46046-0.
When Singapore makes an appearance in print, be it in the social sciences or the media, it is often in highly caricatured form. At times it is cast as a de facto Disneyland with the death penalty, where behind a thin façade of glittery cosmopolitanism lies a draconian, harshly repressive, and authoritarian state. At other times, Singapore is offered as the paradigmatic benevolent dictatorship, in which, freed from the strictures of democratic consent, an elitist leadership has single-handedly leap-frogged the country into unprecedented wealth and prosperity, in the process defying modernization theory and demonstrating an alternative model for political order.
There is no question that the city-state's compact size invites facile characterizations of a kind that would not so readily be thrust upon larger countries. Another factor is the relative dearth of resources that provide an accessible, comprehensive, and objective overview of the country. Kenneth Paul Tan's Singapore: Identity, Brand, Power goes a long way towards filling that gap. The short book-one of the first in the new Cambridge Elements - Politics and Society in Southeast Asia series-provides a much-needed broad-based yet critical introduction to the country that will appeal to generalists and specialists alike.
Tan argues...