Elections In Singapore: May 7!

It's an exciting time in Singapore, where we're gearing up for our most-contested election in many years on May 7. As the chart at right shows, that's not saying a whole lot -- the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) controls 82 of the 84 elected seats in Parliament. Last election, they won 66.6% of the vote, with three opposition parties splitting the rest. The 66.6% figure understates how well they did, as the opposition didn't even contest a large number of the seats, and Singapore doesn't even go through the motions of having elections when there's only one candidate on the ballot.

There are a variety of reasons for PAP dominance. The Singaporean economy has been doing beautifully over the last several decades, averaging 8% annual growth from 1960 to 1999 even after adjusting for inflation. The average Singaporean makes 82% as much as the average American (up from 40% in 1980). Lots of people are content with the progress, and are happy to keep supporting the generally competent technocrats who have delivered these results.

Of course, power can be used to ensure that you'll be in power in the future. The PAP has thrown its weight around in these ways. Among the more benevolent-looking ways in which it's given itself some impressive electoral advantages is the GRC system. Only 9 of the 82 elected MP's are in single-member constituencies. The rest are voted in as a slate of 3 to 6 candidates in "Group Representation Constituencies." To make sure that there are ethnic minorities in Parliament, there's a quota system where a party has to include a certain number of minority members in the slate it puts on the ballot for the GRC. (Singapore is mostly Chinese, but there are large Malay and Indian minorities.) A large and well-organized party like the PAP is always able to make sure they've got enough minorities of the right kind, but a small opposition party might have trouble finding a proper mix of credible candidates.

Among the biggest problems opposition parties face, however, is just the difficulty of operating in a system where historical PAP domination gives everybody the expectation that they'll be in trouble if they take sides against the ruling party. To tell you a story -- some of my students told me that they had a friend in high school who was into opposition politics, and they were all worried about him and warning him that this would keep him from getting scholarships. I have no idea whether this guy really got in any trouble or anything, but the fact that people are worried about stuff like that makes it hard for an opposition party to get a group of talented and ambitious people together to stand for election against the powers that be. The government controls a lot of the Singaporean economy, and people don't want to get on the wrong side of it.

This year's election promises to be more eventful than most. The opposition parties got together to coordinate and avoid three-way fights where they'd be splitting the anti-PAP vote (do this, Canadian lefties) and it looks like 82 out of 87 seats will be contested. I haven't been in town for the other elections, but my colleagues tell me that there's a lot more excitement around this election than there has been in the past. It's unthinkable that the opposition would actually win control of Parliament, given what they're starting from, but just winning a few more seats would be counted as a success. If they got, say, 20% of Parliament, people would be extremely impressed.

Two of the opposition parties (which are somewhat representative of the place as a whole) are the Workers' Party and the Singapore Democratic Party. I've linked their manifestos, which have pretty clear descriptions of their major proposals, and which agree with each other significantly. (The SDP has a better website, so I'll be linking to that one below.) The PAP's manifesto is here [pdf], and as befits a status quo-oriented ruling party it's more about small-bore improvements to infrastructure than about dramatic new policy initiatives.

A lot of opposition proposals look pretty good. For example, the reduction in national service. Singapore currently requires all of its young men to spend 2 years in the armed services, and then to report regularly for reservist training until they're 40. This just seems to me like a terrible waste of talent, especially as Singapore (unlike Israel and South Korea, which have similar policies) isn't in a state of conflict with its neighbors. There's always a risk that instability in Malaysia could lead to something bad happening, but even then, it's not clear that a huge number of ordinary Singaporeans is the kind of army you want. Better to let the young folks go out into the economy, make money, contribute to tax revenue, and then hire a professional military that uses high-tech weaponry. Singapore is buying the technology, but they haven't yet done the thing the SDP proposes -- cutting national service duties from 2 years to 1. I hope that the government will eventually do that and more.

There are a lot of economic proposals that I think pretty highly of too -- minimum wage laws and cuts in the regressive General Sales Tax, and cuts in housing prices. (80% of the population lives in government-owned housing developments called HDBs.) The big thing that I worry about with the opposition is its anti-immigrant sentiment, which now takes the shape of a Singaporeans First policy which would create bureaucratic barriers to keep businesses from hiring foreign workers. Partly, this is my self-interest speaking, but since I'm an opponent of anti-immigrant measures in the US too, I don't feel that I'm doing anything hypocritical.

I'd say more nice things about the opposition's support for civil liberties measures (which is exactly what you'd expect in a one-party state like Singapore) but the department secretary is knocking on my door and telling me I've got to go administer an exam now. More later...

Age Ain't Nothing But A Number

There's a lot of sturmunddrang about the fact that teenagers are searching yahoo and tweeting, asking who this Osama bin Laden guy is. Before you start casting aspersions, I want you to engage in a little thought experiment.




Think of someone who did something that dominated the headlines when you were about six years old. They showed up again on the news when you were about nine years old. Now think about how much you would remember about them if they popped back up when you were sixteen.

Obviously, it's tough to find direct analogues to Osama bin Laden. The best I could do on short notice was Manuel Noriega. If in, say, the late '90s, Noriega had escaped from prison, I'm pretty sure my reaction would have fallen somewhere between "oh I remember seeing him on the front page of the newspaper once" to "who the f*** is Manuel Noreiega?" So, no, I'm not surprised that a decent number of teenagers have little no idea who Osama bin Laden is. Most kids don't pay much attention to the news at all, and certainly not before they hit their teens, and bin Laden just hasn't been much of a force in the U.S. news since the 2004 election. Remember, Nirvana is on classic rock stations these days, so don't go griping about how the kids don't have the same frame of reference for the world as you do.

Wanted: More House Members. Must Be Willing To Feel Less Important Than Current House Members

Watching interviews with MP-elects in the Canadian elections, it's striking how normal most of the winners looked. Partly this was a function of the NDP's motley crew of candidates, including four McGill students, a woman who barely speaks French but represents francophone portions of Quebec, and so forth. But another reason for the plainness of Canadian legislators is that being an member of parliament is a much less important job than being a member of the House of Representatives. And the United States is the real outlier here. Let's just take a look at how.many constituents a member of Congress answers to, and compare that to their counterparts in Canada, as well as some other large democratic nations

If Congressional districts were roughly the size of constituencies even in Japan, primary elections would be sized such that a challenger could personally meet every likely voter in a six month time span. House members would be roughly important as your State Senator is today. Large legislative bodies tend to strengthen the hand of the leadership, so we would likely have more cohesive parties. It's win-win all the way around!

Tripling the size of the House would put our districts at a size somewhere between those in Germany and Japan. Capitol Hill architects would have some trouble finding space for 870 new members, but I'm sure there's a way to work it out. Update: as people commenting my twitter feed point out, such a change would likely have salutary effects on D.C. urban planning issues.

This Headline Ought to Inolve Hockey, or "Eh", or Tim Horton's Donuts, etc.

So, the Conservative party's share of the popular vote rocketed from 36.27% to 37.65, with all other parties and somehow Canada goes from a Conservative minority government to a Conservative majority government? That makes Bush v. Gore look like a triumph of democracy.

Anyway, I think the major lesson from yesterday's Candian election is that choosing an ex-pat as your party leader is a really bad move, something that I don't think applies in many cases. I'm not exactly sure how Michael Ignatieff managed to works is way to the top of the Liberal party, but whoever thought it was a bright idea to let him stay there ought to do themselves a favor quit politics altogether.

1.Kill Bin Laden 2.Cut Defense Budget

It's good to see that Leon Panetta, as CIA director, is getting some recognition from the success of the operation to kill Osama Bin Laden. While I can't tell if this came before or after Bin Laden's death, former Panetta skeptic Dianne Feinstein is now calling him "the most skilled person in government."

Panetta is Obama's pick for the next Secretary of Defense, and he's the sort of guy who will want to cut the military budget. I'm hoping that cred gained here can be used to eliminate funding for unnecessary weapons systems. Or even better, promote a cheaper and less aggressive global defense posture.