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Neo Boon Siong and Geraldine Chen's Dynamic Governance: Embedding Culture, Capabilities and Change in Singapore (Singapore: World Scientific, 2007) is undoubtedly the most important study of the Singaporean civil service published thus far. It makes considerable original contributions to knowledge by citing hitherto unaccessible documentary sources and elite interviewing; futhermore, it offers a clear and interesting conceptual framework that tackles one of the key problems of using the concept of 'culture' to explain both constants and changes.
At the same time, despite of my admiration of this book, my comments will often be harshly critical and/or nitpicky - but this should be taken as a sign of how enriching and stimulating this book has been for me.
Taking a leaf from the authors' catchy framework of thinking ahead to prepare for the future, thinking again to improve current performance, and thinking across domains to learn from others' [p.433, emphasis added], I feel that the ideas and arguments in this book can be further built upon by thinking back for a better appreciation of historical contingency, accidents and disruptions, thinking against other case studies of less-than-dynamic policy making and implementation by the Singaporean civil service, and thinking beyond management studies and economics to sharpen the saw with insights from political science, anthropology, sociology and, of course, public policy studies.
Thinking Back For the Future
Thinking about this mystery of our success, I am in a way reminded of the well-known children's story of the five blind men who were asked to describe the Elephant. One touched the tusk and said the Elephant was like a needle; the second touched the ears and said it was like a fan; the third touched its trunk and said it was like a hose; the fourth touched the legs and declared the Elephant was like a tree trunk, and the fifth touched the tail saying it was like a fly whisk. Each saw one element of the Elephant and mistook that for the whole. Similarly, the search for an answer to our transformation can be expected to continue in order to gain a more complete picture.Speech by President S.R. Nathan, at the launch of Dynamic Governance, 23 July 2007, 4pm, at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS (archive)
DG is about coping with and preparing for the future, especially an uncertain one. The book considers future orientated thinking of public service leaders to be an important attribute of dynamism needed for effective public policy. However, it could benefit from exploring how the past - when it was the future for past policy makers - was also uncertain. The success of various policies and policy innovations examined, like HDB, CPF or road pricing, seems inevitable, something that is to be taken for granted because its success is obvious, common sensical and all too evident in the present and the material world.
Avoiding teleology, we may learn even more by thinking back, from back to front, back to the future rather than from front to back, from the future to the past. The authors have a goldmine consisting of the selectively published (and thus largely unpublished) interview transcripts of the creme de la creme of the public policy elite. Most of these interviews were conducted over the past few years - thus, in keeping with the very basics of the tradition of historical research, the interview material should be more thoroughly cross-checked and cross-referenced with the archival record to minimize the benefit of hindsight, overcome inevitable cherry-picking and fill in lapses in memory, reviving dormant memories of the tedious and frightful exhilaration of feeling, touching, stroking, grabbing in the dark.
With a better description of the uncertain, the unintended and the unexpected of the past and how public policymakers took calculated risks and gambles with whether something was a leg or a tree trunk, we could draw inspiration to face these same forces now and in the future rather than mistakenly think that past policy makers did also not have to desperately grope without the perfect knowledge of full sight at all times.
Thinking Against Negative Demonstrations
According to a Popperian philosophy of science, falsification is the key test of whether a hypothesis stands or falls. In a less strict interpretation, how well a theory or an explanation is accepted depends on how it manages to account for abnormalities and negative examples. whether a theory is falsifiable is the minimum requirement for it to be scientific. However, one negative case or abnormal result does not necessarily invalidate the whole theory if it is able to account for it. [My thanks to Huichieh for pointing out my earlier clumsy phrasing.] The case studies used have all been about success, showing how dynamism was created, institutionalized, embedded and reproduced.
While the authors acknowledge that dynamism was not even across all agencies or policy issue areas, I found it frustrating how the critical views of Ngiam Tong Dow (listed on p.448, including the over-long time it took to change the anti-natalist drive of population policy which I have also written about elsewhere, the dangers of meritocracy leading to elitism, inversion of the public finance pyramid, wasteful duopolies, perverse land pricing policy) were summarily dealt with in less than a page, not in terms of substance but describing them as specific policy examples which are not intended to be addressed by the systemic approach of DG. If so, what makes the successful policies studied systemic rather than specific? Also, specifics often become important when one asks the question of how system and/or structure results in behaviour and material outcomes - in this case, negative outcomes. Being able to think against and tackle policy failures within the framework, rather than resorting to a level-of-analysis objection, would strengthen the generalizability and robustness of DG.
Being an ex-farmer civil servant, the level-of-analysis problem within DG itself is looms large in my mind. The strategic level of DG's study almost seems to lead inevitably to privilege elite roles, something further inclined by citing works like Edgar H Schein's Organizational Culture and Leadership (San Francisco: Josey Bass, 1992) which asserts that culture is the product of founding leaders that are imprinted on future generations. At the same time, DG emphasizes policy execution rather than policy making [p.190] - this makes the elite focus slightly incongruent because policy makers (Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries etc.) are also rarely directly involved in implementation and execution on the ground.
Careful attention to what happens on the ground may yield totally different or even counter-intuitive conclusions, as one of the classics of public policy analysis, J.C. Scott's Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, reminds us, strict implementation of policy plans have often resulted in disaster and mass human suffering while it was the many of the quirks and workarounds on the ground that top policymakers find frustrating that could are actually the things that make a policy work (or less disastrous in impact). Likewise Julia Strauss' Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927-40 shows us that even with very weak government, effective institutions can still exist and execute their functions effectively.
Besides getting the macro picture through careful study of archived records and elite interviewing, a more intimate and realistic micro picture can also be drawn from field work methods such as non-participant observation and non-elite/focus group interviewing as employed by some of the contributors to Lai Ah Eng's edited volume, Beyond Rituals and Riots: Ethnic Pluralism and Social Cohesion in Singapore (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2004).
Also at the core of the framework appears to be a curious tension that thinking against which could further refine the arguments and concepts of DG. The authors argue that dynamic change is change without a crisis through elite-led learning, adaptation and innovation versus normal causation of path-breaking change brought about by external pressure and crises [p.433]. Given how the ruling party tends to present most major policies in terms of a 'Change or Die' discourse, the modus operandi sounds very much like the latter rather than the former, in keeping with Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift. I concede that the authors are correct that many policy changes are not made in the face of an actual existential crisis where there is a clear and present danger to the survival of the state and the population but these changes are often justified in terms of an existential threat if they are not implemented, i.e. the ruling party continuously claims that Singapore in a perpetual brink of a crisis - something most eloquently noted by anthropologist Yao Souchou: 'Behind all this and the shopping malls and smooth traffic, and tough laws and efficient government, lies an anxious national ethos that makes Singapore tick.' [Singapore: The Culture and the culture of excess (Oxon, Routledge: 2007), p.47]
Thinking Beyond Management, Economics and Pragmatism
As my introduction and citations have implied, the ideas of DG could by further stretched and built upon by contrasting and comparing them to other disciplinary approaches as well as to other country cases.
From political science, DG cites and contests Ho Khai Leong's claim in, Shared Responsibilites, Unshared Power (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2003), that the civil service has been effectively politicized but, again, there appears to be little appetite for sustained engagement of this prickly topic. Much less taking on the more red tooth-and-claw accusations of Ross Worthington's Governance in Singapore (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002) which argues that the senior political and civil service leadership effectively form a 'core executive' that maintains a neo-Gramscian hegemony.
Of particular interest to me is how it could relook at and problematize the concept of pragmatism. DG repeatedly praises the pragmatism of the Singapore civil service elite, unproblematically using the term to denote doing what 'works'. But DG also asks the important, almost sacriligeous question:
Does the principle of pragmatism justify all means in order for the desired ends to be achieved? For more than 40 years, many hardheaded decisions and policies have been explained and defended on the basis that Singapore has to accept realityand take the world as it is, and not the way it wishes it to be. But the ingrained pragmatism is so deep that even the commitment to integrity is sometimes justified, not for its own sake but on the basis of avoiding the corroding effects of corruption on the business and social environment. [p.454]
Alas this was towards the end of the book and not something that was tackled from the beginning. Indeed, it was surprising that this question was not raised earlier, given that it is hardly a novel concern and was elucidated by prominent sociologist Chua Beng Huat in his famous work, Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore (London: Routledge, 1995) which argues that pragmatism is not free of ideology and is, in fact, an ideology par excellence. What 'works' is necessarily predicated on settled answers to 'works for who?', 'works for what?' that are predicated on moral and ethical values which ultimately may have no utilitarian content. Yao (cited above) goes further to argue that the 'tragedy of the PAP State is how it continues to hold on to an outmoded model of economic practicality in a different, more peaceful time. In the process it is in danger of slowly frittering away the moral credit that used to provide legitimacy and popular support.' [p.182] Could this be one of those blind spots that Dynamic Governance - the concept and the book - rooted in the seemingly inescapable grip of a particular political ideology, which conflates the good of the ruling party with the good of the polity and population, has failed to be pragmatic about?
"...But those other elements are things you can't sell. And in this pragmatic world of ours, things you can't sell don't count for much."
"Is the world such a pragmatic place?" ...
"I don't know - the word just popped out," I said. "But it explains a lot. It makes work easier, too. You can play games with it, make up neat expressions: 'essentially pragmatic,' or 'pragmatic in essence.' If you look at things that way, you avoid all kinds of complicated problems."
"What an interesting view!"
"Not really. It's just what everybody thinks."Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes
Comments (15)
I read the book, and I wish the authors could have push the thinking more to answer this question
Will the current DG model be as relevant, effective and sustainable as the situational context changes rapidly? Singapore in the 1960s-1980s is different from 1980s-2000s and 2000-2020s. Specifically, how will the current DG model evolves when the political situation changes (within Singapore), and external regional/global environment changes (outside Singapore).
Posted by Sze Meng | August 22, 2007 1:12 AM
Sze Meng, interesting that you brought up the domestic political situation as the book is very explicitly predicated on 'Dominant single political party since 1959' as a key part of Sg's unique context and constraints (see Table 1.1 on p.27). I am not entirely sure that it is as immutable as the other two context/constraints factors of 'Small, resource-scarce, vulnerable to external trends' and 'Diverse cultures and ethnicity, threat to internal harmony'.
Posted by ringisei | August 22, 2007 8:30 AM
Hey ringisei, do you think those two factors are really that immutable? Those two factors are the basis for the point that you have brought up quoting Yao Souchou, where policies are often justified, unnecessarily and hyperbolically, on the external and internal existential threats to Singapore.
On the first factor, being flexible (small), human-dependent (resource-scarce) and plugged into (vulnerable to) external trends seem more and more like advantageous characteristics in a global capitalist system that is built on network flows of capital and information with the important nodes being global cities such as Singapore. This factor may be a constraint in a low-level industrializing country, but it is an advantage in a global knowledge-based economy.
On the second factor, similarly, in a cosmopolitan capitalism, cultural diversity is a plus point. Besides, there is no evidence that ethnic conflict is a major threat in Singapore. The 2 riots that are often cited as evidence are way too simplified in official history, represented as arising from natural racial enmities and feelings. The 1950 Hertogh custody riots was an anti-colonial riot, with the rising tide of Malay nationalism driving Malay groups to attack Europeans. Often forgotten is the fact that many Chinese groups joined with the Malay groups to attack Europeans. The 1964 riots took place in the context of the tiff between UMNO and PAP over which direction the Malaysian nation should take in terms of political multiracialism. It happened months after PAP's Devan Nair won the seat in a suburb of KL and UMNO starting to exercise their influence in Singapore. Bottom-line: it is not natural ethnic hatred, innate ethnic ill-feelings against each other that cause the riots, but the institutionalization of politics along racial/ethnic lines. This raises questions about some of the policies, for example, concerning GRCs and ethnic self-help groups.
Now, if these are mutable, then what about the first factor? DG rests on sandy assumptions (perhaps it has stilts to survive flooding).
Posted by dansong | August 22, 2007 11:07 AM
Ack, you got me there, dansong. What I should have said was that all are mutable to a certain extent but the political project may be more mutable than the social construction of geographical position or inter-ethnic relations.
Hmmm... there might be an interesting mutual constitution between the two sets - PAP political project requires threatening inside/outside therefore inside/outside threats require PAP political project. I will have to re-read my notes on David Campbell's Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity which makes this type of claim very elegantly.
Posted by ringisei | August 22, 2007 12:52 PM
Nice review! Some points that you might have added:
It's always worth looking at the context in which the book was written. In return for obtaining permission to interview top civil servants, Neo & Chen probably had to sign a fairly severe "vetting & approval" contract, where the govt (perhaps MICA) would have examined the book and edited/censored it. So, it would be difficult for them to ask more interesting questions.
Secondly, it's quite probable that the book was the result of a series of projects they were asked to do by various govt agencies. These agencies would have wanted an external party to record the "story" of a particular project, analyze their activities, and perhaps provide some suggestions for future projects. Thus, the focus of their work would be on the implementers & planners, not the "clients" being served.
Thirdly, their backgrounds are as faculty in business schools. They would not have received training in historical methods, and thus, it is not surprising that they do not engage in much cross-referencing with archival sources. Qualitative research in business schools is quite weak in teaching historical research methods, although case writers are often encouraged to triangulate their data by using multiple sources. Here, it is possible that
a) they did do so, but that the material they used was classified/secret and thus could not be published in the book,
b) they did not do so, as the material was classified/secret or that they realized that material in the public domain may not be the best indicator of what these civil servants actually think (i.e. it's well-burnished propaganda)
Posted by harminder | August 22, 2007 2:22 PM
Thanks for the review, quite technical and pertinent.
I browsed through a copy they had lying in the Arts House, it wasn't exactly an easy read. My impression of it is that they are trying to sell this 'new' concept of dynamic governance, if it was a buzzword, I would remember reading them somewhere else. They brushed aside the tradition or at least the conventional depictions of policy making/execution, so it was a bit of a disconnect for me. This makes it more tedious for me to try and understand what they are trying to push across. The bits I found interesting was the case studies or examples.
And I suppose it would be required reading for ALL intakes of the LKY School of Public Policy. Heh.
Posted by ted | August 22, 2007 4:08 PM
harminder, I agree with your setting out of the context and lay out the considerable constraints that Neo & Chen probably had to work with. It probably also says rather a bit about the organizational maturity of the civil service, or lack thereof.
ted, I'm surprised there are browsing copies lying around! When it was first released, the bookshops rapidly ran out of stock (memories of Defending the Lion City running out of stock...) The case studies certainly added empirical flesh to theoretical bones but it's the silences that were also most intriguing - case studies that were not cited and interviewees that were not quoted.
Posted by ringisei | August 23, 2007 9:38 AM
Taking a critical position on their conceptual framework, one element is seriously missing: the people. Ringisei, I think you have pointed to a most apt metaphor: the people is the elephant here, the object of governance rather than the subject to be served by the civil service. Is this not a recipe for dynamic bureaucratic dictatorship, adaptable to ensuring the elephant happily eats the peanuts, now imported with many global varieties? How does the (formally) democratically elected political leadership (i.e. parliament) fit into this framework? How does political representation through various institutional means (from grassroots to civil society) fit in here? Does not the elephant think (ahead, again, across)? This reminds me of the white elephants in Buangkok.
Posted by dansong | August 23, 2007 11:24 AM
Ringsei:
I humbly submit that I like to search for places that are not always popularly frequented by people. And it so happens that the AH holds a decent size collection of Singapore related books - Music, Culture, FOOD, Politics, History etc. And there's always browsing copies available. Best of all, you can just pop down at the seats and sip your coffee or tea reading it...ahhh. Reminds me of some of my favourite cafes in Sydney...sobs.
In fact, it would make a nice meeting place for the SingaporeAngle group, should we do this before you leave? :p
Posted by ted | August 23, 2007 12:16 PM
Besides the problem of "reading back history" as Ringsei talks about and the issue of "State-based narrative" Dan singled out, I think is high time we also expand the concept of "governance" in Singapore - if we are really interested in the social reality of Singapore's "governance". If governance refers to the way a polity is influenced by elites, there's more than the government both in historical and contemporary terms.
I have been reading Visscher's fascinating book on the "Business of Politics and Ethnicity - A history of the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry." Frankly, it is the most interesting book I have been reading on Singapore so far. Although it focuses on the Chinese Overseas elites in Singapore, it still shows a dynamic play of individuals within the diverse Chinese community in Singapore. We like to think of the SCCC and the government as static bodies over time - but in reality, competition for the specter of wealth and power is real - lest to say the battle for the hearts and minds of Singaporeans.
There's a lot more research topics in Singapore "governance." For example,
1) PKMS - It seems that there is a general underplay of the "governance" PKMS provides to Singaporean Malays in Singapore - with Mutalib's book as a prime case in showing the divisions with PKMS. My own conversations with my Malay friends in Singapore seems to show a more nuanced picture though. However, a study of PKMS and its "real" relationship in a regional perspective OVER TIME could prove to be really insightful into understanding governance in Singapore.
2) The Catholic Church - Another hot potato, but the inside and detailed story of the Archibishop and the Catholic Church during the Marxist Conspiracy in the 1980s (before and after too) deserved to be told if not now, then the next generation of historians and social scientists should try to do so - if only to show Singaporeans that there were tensions, cooperations and issues between the Church and the State over time.
3) The Singapore Armed Forces - How do the experiences of National Service mirror/play into/affect both the political elites (who many come out from the SAF) in "governing" in Singapore. Could not a work along the lines of "Colonializing Egypt" be written on the Singapore Armed Forces and its soldiers in Singapore?
Just throwing out some ideas =)
Posted by Wayne Soon | August 23, 2007 2:18 PM
Nice review ringsei, with all the 'thinking' termininology thrown about, I would be satisfied if the civil service are willing to simply 'think' i.e. demonstrate independence of mind.
Given that much of our institutional history can be traced back to our Commonwealth heritage, I wonder how it is that there seems to be a wide disparity between how civil servants act in the UK as opposed to those in our island-nation. Apparently respectful dissent is encouraged in the UK, where civil servants take pains to discredit ministers' pet projects/theories (with logic and reason if I may add), and react with glee each time one of these grandoise ventures falls flat ;-)
If I may go even further back in time, imperial China during its golden days allowed, in practice, for a similar desire for scholars, ministers and generals to spar with one another, and even the with Emperor himself, all with the common purpose of taking the Middle Kingdom towards the next level of development. The results are evident in the many cultural and scientific advances attributed by historians all over the world. Yet it seems that this positive aspect of history is left as a footnote in the Singaporean psyche, in deference to the pragmatism of the day.
Back to the elephant that is citizenship -- it is enough that there are far too many blind men with limitations (obvious or otherwise) taking liberties with this gentle (sleepy?) giant. Here what we have is imho some intellectually brilliant, strong-willed, and vocal blind people telling (or maybe shouting at?) the elephant that it cannot think because the world out there is not safe, that it should watch its diet and take (foreign) medication because racially-rich elephants tend to die of cardiac (riot) attacks, and that it is pointless to believe otherwise because somehow five heads are better than one (notwithstanding the point that these are blind heads we are talking about). What really takes the (peanut) cake is that some blind men claim that the grey elephant is in fact genetically white, and should be treated as such.
So I say unto the blind men, stop outraging the modesty of this elephant; leave it well alone... the international animal community frowns on such undesirable behaviour, if you would see it as such lol ;-)
Posted by spursfan | August 23, 2007 7:20 PM
If I may go even further back in time, imperial China during its golden days allowed, in practice, for a similar desire for scholars, ministers and generals to spar with one another, and even the with Emperor himself, all with the common purpose of taking the Middle Kingdom towards the next level of development.
Not so much that I'm disagreeing with the principle of what you are saying but the above is more of an unrealised ideal than reality, even at the best of times.
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August 23, 2007 7:50 PM
Huichieh,
If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that it would be an unattainable ideal for our island-nation to emulate what has been described. Yet that is precisely Ideal's purpose: for one to aspire towards ;-)
Perhaps the words of our pledge and my favourite national song are just that -- words. Yet it may be worthwhile to ponder upon the message and not be distracted by the messengers viz. a late politician, and a popular musician/songwriter.
Posted by spursfan | August 23, 2007 9:07 PM
dansong, just to stretch the elephant metaphor even further, I'm reminded of that story about the zookeeper who was suffocated to death by the outpouring of a previously constipated elephant. Perhaps that could be a possible result if an over-zealous keeper continuously and dynamically tries to make the elephant do what he wants right now. Of course, the issue of the people and democratic institutions in relation to the civil service would have arisen if there was more sustained engagement with the critiques by Ho Khai Leong or Ross Worthington.
Wayne, certainly would be interesting to see more research published in those areas you mentioned - though I suspect they'd come more from the historians, sociologists and anthropologists rather than management, econometrics or public policy studies. What your suggestion reminds me is to ask: What are the interfaces and relationships between civil service and civil society? How have these changed (or not) over time?
spursfan, thanks for your comments. Interesting that you characterize the temperament of the elephant to be gentle as the blind elephant fondlers might argue it has a capricious and stubborn demeanour. ;) And I think what Huichieh meant was that the image of imperial China you mentioned was more unrealised ideal than reality. But at the same time, it is a powerful ideal which does mould expectations of how, even an imperial government, is expected to behave/govern. I'm quite fascinated by the possibility of this ideal fusing with the British ideal (again more an ideal than a reality, esp since the Blair years) producing some sort of hybrid norms and expectations of what makes for just and effective governance.
Posted by ringisei | August 23, 2007 11:38 PM
spursfan: ringisei was right: I was talking about ancient China. But sure, it's an ideal to which one might aspire. Except that I'm not sure I'm all that crazy about the "emperor" part. :)
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August 24, 2007 8:30 AM