Singapore Perspectives 2013 "Governance"

Singapore Perspectives 2013 will take place as IPS turns 25. For this special quarter-century edition of our flagship conference, we turn to the raison d’être of the Institute’s existence, which is governance in Singapore.

British cultural historian Raymond Williams describes any cultural system as being composed at any one time of a set of relations among dominant, residual and emergent forms: The “residual” being practices “effectively formed in the past, but is still active” in the present; the “dominant” being the effectively pre-eminent “system of meaning and values” governing our lives now; and the “emergent” being “the new meanings and values, new practices, new relationships” that are being created.

Applying this tripartite system of analysis to governance in Singapore, this conference will first examine what bearing Singapore’s political history has on governance today. It will then turn to the structures and processes of governance that are still current. What are the guiding principles of governance now? What might be said of their adequacy in the light of the growing complexity of our society and economy today? What should be retained and what should be re-shaped? Finally, the conference will turn to the shape of things to come. We will review the output of a year-long project that engaged the public for its views of how Singapore should be governed over the next decade and we will discuss what might define a resilient and responsive system of governance in 2022.

Speakers at the conference include Professor Chan Heng Chee, Professor Kishore Mahbubani and Mr Donald Low. Member of Parliament Ms Sylvia Lim, civic activist Mr Nizam Ismail and IPS Academic Panel member Mr Lee Tzu Yang. Acting Minister Lawrence Wong and Guest-of-Honour, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong complete the stellar line-up of speakers.

Please click here to view the programme.