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Asian Values and the Constitutional Order of Contemporary Singapore

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Abstract

This essay examines the economic and political developmentof the Republic of Singapore and the implications of its modelof state-led development. Sections 2 and 3 examine the strengthsand weaknesses of technocratically ordered economic growth. Sections4 and 5 consider the impact of technocratically determined macroeconomictargeting upon the management of a goal-oriented organizationalorder increasingly preoccupied with a designated citizen identity.The final section examines the implications of this attempt tomix impersonal rules with bounded governance structures of anEast-Asian provenance for constitutional political economy.

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Jones, D.M. Asian Values and the Constitutional Order of Contemporary Singapore. Constitutional Political Economy 8, 283–300 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009029414202

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