Singapore: Emerging Tensions in the ‘Dictatorship of the Middle Class’

Singapore's economic expansion in recent decades has been dramatic. Since 1960 its per capital GNP has increased seventeen-fold and now approximates that of New Zealand. The inter-related objectives of employment creation and economic growth through industrialization have long given way to more ambitious aims. For at least the last decade, economic policy has been oriented towards securing technology-intensive niches in the international economy in a range of service and manufacturing industries