Conference Presentation, "Authoritarian Populism in Singapore", Mapping Global Populism, European Centre for Populism Studies

With its reputation for political stability, social cohesion, and economic wealth, global-city Singapore is very rarely discussed as a case for thinking about populist politics. In his presentation, Kenneth Paul Tan explored what lies behind this reputation and discussed how the Singapore system, led by a government celebrated as clean, meritocratic, and pragmatic, is now showing signs of change not necessarily in the direction of democratization, but towards authoritarian forms of populism, first of the right and then of the left.