This entry is a short summary of Singapore’s national development from being a colony to a young nation, and some strategies used by the ruling political party for nation building. After independence, the ruling party created a sense of national identity among the largely immigrant population. Through policies and different programmes, the idea of a shared national identity was put into place.
Singapore used to be under the British colonial rule and had a previous attachment to Malaya. Therefore, in order to build the Singapore identity, previous attachments had to be given up before the state could be imagined as being tied to the boundaries of the territory.
As Singapore used to be an immigrant state, the different histories and cultures of the immigrants had to be reduced such that the people could feel a sense a shared history and destiny. That was the foundation upon which a nation could be formed.
The People’s Action Party (PAP) marked the beginning of united political power and the process of nation building. When the new government came into power, they were struck with many problems like unemployment, poverty and the lack of education. The PAP gathered the people together, with its calls of national loyalty, and the need to achieve economic progress and racial harmony.
From then on, there has never been another political party that has ruled Singapore. There has been a link of legitimacy to performance and performance to state building and political capability.
Economic development is also used as a nation building strategy. The most powerful ideological tool used by the PAP government is the promise of economic prosperity and the improvement in the standard of living. Their legitimacy to rule has been based much on this reason, and many of the policies formed centre around this factor.
Multiracialism and multilingualism are also used as a nation building strategy. The government has emphasized the need to maintain racial harmony, and there was no longer the problem of having a divided notion of the nation. People were placed in defined racial categories. Geoffrey Benjamin (1976), argued that multiracialism constructed notions of “ethnicity” and “culture” as an unchangeable fact of life and thus maintains the idea of “race” as a category of identity.
Another area of how the PAP uses government policy to build nationalism is the compulsory national service (NS) that all male citizens and permanent residents have to enlist in when they turn 18. Although this is for national defence, the other goal of NS is also to bring together young Singaporeans from all walks of lives and with different racial backgrounds, to enhance the building of the nation.
There are many other government policies where national identity is promoted. In schools, students are taught national education programmes. Even in the previous National Day Rally, married couples were encouraged to have more children and these national campaigns promote nation building as the government plays the “parent” in encouraging the people to have certain kinds of habits and values.
Very few Singaporeans question the PAP’s ability to lead. By providing economic incentives, political stability and social security, Singapore has implemented these polices unchallenged. The path taken by the PAP towards nation-building, according to Chan and Evers (1978) was to create an identity of “ideology of pragmatism” which was consistent with the survival as a small nation with limited resources, and that the Singaporean identity had to be built by persuading Singaporeans to look towards to the future together.
