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Aligning Media Policy with Executive Dominance

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The Limits of Authoritarian Governance in Singapore’s Developmental State

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Abstract

This chapter describes Singapore’s media system, with an emphasis on features that help account for its resilience. It argues that the path blazed by Lee Kuan Yew found a third way, in between liberal democratic media freedoms and the classic authoritarian model characterised by nationalisation of mass media, routine blocking and filtering of online political speech and routinised human rights abuses against writers and artists. Singapore’s policies have instead centred on co-optation of media and artistic elites and calibrated coercion of dissenters. The overriding goal has been to preserve the system of executive dominance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong

    Cherian George

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  1. Cherian George
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Correspondence to Cherian George .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Lily Zubaidah Rahim

  2. College of Business, Government and Law, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Michael D. Barr

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George, C. (2019). Aligning Media Policy with Executive Dominance. In: Rahim, L.Z., Barr, M.D. (eds) The Limits of Authoritarian Governance in Singapore’s Developmental State. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1556-5_10

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