Small States Success: Singapore and Switzerland’s Shared Playbook

• Conditions underpinning past success in Singapore and Switzerland are eroding, with geopolitical tensions, economic fragmentation, technological disruption, climate challenges, and the US-China rivalry (intensified by the AI race) creating new risks for small states. 
• Both nations attribute their success to investing in their people and building cohesive, high-trust societies. The groundwork for resilience included strong institutions, long-term thinking, education, and research. 
  
• Rather than competing on size, both nations compete through ideas and world-class universities. The key lesson is an attitude rather than a policy: small states survive by being responsible, dependable, and willing to collaborate broadly. 

Chaired by LKYSPP Dean & Wang Gungwu Professor in East Asian Affairs, Professor Joseph Liow, the session looked at common challenges, strengths, lessons, and paths forward for both countries. “The international environment has become more uncertain, shaped by geopolitical tensions, economic fragmentation, technological disruption, and climate-related challenges, among others,” Prof Liow remarked, laying out the situation.  

The view was echoed by Ambassador of Switzerland to Singapore Alexandra Baumann, pointing out that ‘old certainties’ like open trade, predictable alliances, and the rules-based order are eroding, while exchange and collaboration give way to ‘strategic competition’. 

Add to this, the US/China rivalry – juxtaposed with the AI race and small states’ prospects – seems even more challenging.

Speakers from both countries were clear that there is no single formula for success, but Professor Reto Steiner, Dean at the ZHAW School of Management and Law, told a story that evoked a common origin. One of ten children, his father was born in rural Switzerland in the 1930s. With only a primary school education he became an apprentice shoemaker at age 15. He shared that his father believed he could achieve great things through hard work, and he eventually became the head of the world’s largest shoe company at that time. This achievement was also due to Switzerland’s technological advantage and the fact that free trade was part of its ‘DNA’. 

Prof Steiner recounted that his father also believed in giving back to society, and he served as a member of the local council, president of the local school board, and was active in other village associations. “This is exactly what Lee Kuan Yew referred to when he said that Switzerland shall become the role model for Singapore,” he noted.  

Indeed, Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s impact was felt at the event. Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, said the country had been ‘blessed’ by its founding leaders such as PM Lee, as well as Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Goh Keng Swee, and Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam. He also credited the country’s success to ‘MPH’ – meritocracy, pragmatism, and honesty.  

Ambassador Baumann said that the two countries both have a voice on the world stage and that they are backed by ‘something solid’, namely cohesive societies that trust themselves and their institutions. She highlighted that Switzerland and Singapore both made the ‘same bet’ to invest in the one resource each country did have: its people. A bet that has paid off in innovation, top-ranked universities, and the ability to attract talent from around the world.  

Given that Singapore and Switzerland cannot compete through size or population, the small states compete through ideas, said Ms Carmen Walker Späh, President of the Government Council of the Canton of Zurich. That is why the two countries should learn from each other, she emphasised, and that while the changing world has created new risks, it has also created new opportunities. 

The question is how to prepare. Ms Walker Späh shared the Canton of Zurich’s approach: resilience starts with strong institutions and long-term thinking. Governments cannot predict the future, but it can create the right conditions for success. This means investing in education, supporting research, innovation, and creating stable frameworks that give companies the confidence to invest for the future. 

Prof Liow proved this point with a concrete example: Singapore and Switzerland have proven that tertiary institutions can remain at the technological frontier without being pulled into a binary competition between the US and China.  

“Both countries have built universities that connect fundamental research very closely with industry and with national economic capabilities,” he said. Singapore’s universities have developed deep expertise working with global companies and translating this research into commercial and industrial applications. Switzerland has a complementary model based on excellence in deep scientific specialisation as well as international collaboration. 

Importantly, both models depend on openness combined with strategic focus. The real competitive advantage is not so much technological neutrality but technological trust. “In an increasingly fragmented world,” Prof Liow pointed out, “researchers and companies need places where they can collaborate, where they can exchange ideas, where they can build technologies with confidence that these institutions are predictable, transparent and internationally connected.”  

That complementarity is precisely where the two countries can learn from each other. Singapore can study how Switzerland sustains world-class basic research without losing international connectedness; Switzerland can study how Singapore embeds universities in industry ecosystems and scales commercialisation.  

Yet perhaps the most important thing the two countries can learn from each other is not a policy or an institutional model, but a disposition. Prof Steiner invoked Max Weber's distinction between two paths: the ethics of conviction or the ethics of responsibility. For small states without large armies, nuclear arsenals, or the power to set the terms of global trade, he argued, there is no viable path but the second. Core values such as zero corruption, openness, and the rule of law are necessary but not enough on their own. They must be paired with the willingness to collaborate with other mid-sized powers, to engage even with those whose politics we ‘don’t like’. 

Singapore’s MPH and Switzerland’s tradition of neutrality in service of dialogue are two expressions of the same underlying ethic: that small states survive not by being pure, but by being responsible.  

The opportunity for the future, then, is to remain dependable, trustworthy parties in a world where reliability is scarce, and carry the torch of open trade and peace while larger powers have other priorities. 

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