Singapore was a product of Cold War geopolitics. A city otherwise replete with commemorations of colonial rule and colonial wars when it was a part of British Malaya, Singapore has neither a Cold War museum nor a monument that specifies its role or position during the Cold War. By asserting that Singapore is as much a Cold War city as it is a global city, as is commonly suggested in the existing scholarship, this article highlights the salience of Cold War thinking in the minds and actions of leaders and ordinary citizens in postcolonial Singapore. The article uses the Raffles statue, a local memorial site, as a lens to examine Singapore’s responses to global geopolitics during and after the Cold War. It focuses on the public discussion on the historical significance of the Raffles statue and suggests that during the Cold War, the statue acquired an economic importance for attracting foreign investments and tourists. After the Cold War, geopolitical tensions eased, and the economic and geopolitical value of the statue diminished. The debate about colonial symbolism returned, and Singaporeans questioned the validity of letting Raffles stand where he stands today.

How and under what conditions do autocratic parties democratise through strength'? Prior scholarship suggests that authoritarian parties embrace political liberalisation when there are warnings of their decline. However, Singapore's People's Action Party (PAP) has not ‘conceded-to-thrive’ despite seemingly waning dominance. This paper explains why autocratic parties resist democratisation. Drawing from historical and sociological institutionalism, we examine how established ideas, serving as cognitive filters through which governing elites interpret their environment, become codified in formal institutions. Specifically, we argue how governments respond to political challenges depend on the ‘stickiness’ of the normative foundations of authoritarianism and their manifestations in state institutions. We uncover the ideational and historical contexts of authoritarian institutions and show how they are translated into laws, policies and practices. Using the case of PAP, we consider the microlevel origins and institutional persistence of oneparty dominance and explain how these normative foundations and its subsequent institutionalisation impede political change. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Second edition