We entered 2024 knowing that it was going to be a momentous year. With 64 elections on the horizon, it was hard to fathom what geopolitics might look like by the end of the year. As we close in on the final weeks of 2024, our editors spoke to five LKYSPP faculty members on their views of what’s changed and what takeaways can be gleaned from this historical moment in time. Here’s what they said:
“That the consent of the governed informs the legitimacy and authority of government is one of humanity's most profound of imperatives. In the popular imagination it is the electoral process that serves up the level playing field where ordinary people provide that consent. Whatever the concrete material outcome of elections, the process itself is meaningful to many.
This is the exercise that we have seen repeated 64 times around our planet this year. The results from all this? The practice and implementation of these ideas remain a grand experiment in economics and political science from which we all continue to have much to learn.”
- Danny Quah, Dean and Li Ka Shing Professor in Economics
“A key focus of the Trump administration’s policy agenda is streamlining the federal government in order to address the ever-growing, unsustainable national debt. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) stands at the forefront of this effort. While the administration’s commitment to reducing waste, fraud, and abuse is commendable, cutting government spending will likely remain a formidable challenge due to Congressional gridlock. One thing is certain — it will generate plenty of interesting headlines in the coming years.”
- Anubhav Gupta, Assistant Professor
“Among the 64 elections across the world that took place in 2024, the one likely to have the most impact on Singapore is the United States.
The incoming Trump administration looks set to shake up America’s foreign policy. Already, the world is hanging on every tweet and statement coming out of Mar-a-Lago, whether from the President-Elect himself or his coterie of advisors.
This new order will certainly heighten the sense of threat and opportunity that Singapore, as a small nation, already faces. With new tariffs and possibly trade wars on the horizon, how can Singapore avoid suffering collateral damage, while seizing opportunities that may arise from trade diversion and the reconfiguration of supply chains? In foreign policy, how can we adroitly navigate relations with rival superpowers while playing a constructive role on the international stage?
Singapore’s domestic context is inextricably linked to our external environment, which feeds into the state of the job market and the cost of living. These will be key issues in an election year. The US and other elections that took place last year will therefore have a bearing on Singapore’s own come 2025.”
- Terence Ho, Associate Professor in Practice
“The effects of AI driven disinformation on democracies vary with voting systems. Since all voting systems are pre-AI, we may have to rethink how to make these systems robust to manipulation and freak outcomes.”
- Eduardo Araral, Associate Professor
“Except for communist states and sheikhdoms and perhaps some failing states, everyone in the world has mass electoral democracy — every woman and man above a certain age of maturity can vote, or in some cases such as Australia and Singapore, must vote.
This is historically unprecedented — and it is very recent. The first mass electoral democracies came about in northern Europe where they first gave women the vote in the early 20th century. It seems unlikely that this global norm can be reversed even if elections don’t always result in either greater freedom or stability.
Electoral democracy delivers greater freedom when it is embedded in a larger political system that has at least three procedural features: the losers accept the verdict; robust adherence to the rule of law; and a functioning set of checks and balances. It also promises stability if the vast mass of voters feel that their political system is delivering substantive democracy i.e. economic betterment including greater equality of opportunity.
In the recent spate of elections, the losers mostly accepted their defeat — though if Donald Trump had lost in the US elections, it is quite likely that the outcome would have been contested. What we need to think about is whether the elections in France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Poland, the UK, and the US — to name just a prominent few — have strengthened the prospects of procedural and substantive democracy.”
- Kanti Prasad Bajpai, Vice Dean (Research and Development) and Wilmar Professor of Asian Studies