Singapore, a Garden City

• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1070496516677365
• Author: Heejin Han
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Singapore, a Garden

City: Authoritarian

Environmentalism in

a Developmental State

Heejin Han

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Abstract

The rapid economic development of Singapore has been attributed to its plan-rational

technocratic elite, according to the developmental state model. However, few studies

have addressed the impacts of the country’s deeply entrenched developmental state

tradition on its environment and environmental governance. This article establishes the

nexus between these two by examining Singapore’s transition into a garden city.

It demonstrates how the Singaporean government has maintained a top-down,

nonparticipatory approach to policy making in line with the postulations of authori-

tarian environmentalism and how this mode of governance is related to the develop-

mental state legacy. While Singapore’s environmentalpolicy resulted in its international

reputation as a model green city with a remarkable expansion of green spaces and

infrastructure, these outputs signify the results of the developmental state’s deliberate

planning and management based on a utilitarianview toward nature rather than on the

outcomes of an organic and comprehensive transition to a green society.

Keywords

authoritarian environmentalism, developmental state, Singapore, garden city,

environmental NGOs

Authoritarian Environmentalism and Singapore

Studies of a few nondemocratic countries have unearthed several common

features in their environmental politics and policy making. These countries

often adopt a nonparticipatory mode of environmental policy making in

which strong central governments dominate the policy process through techno-

crats, while restricting the participation of non state actors such as green

Journal of Environment &

Development

2017, Vol. 26(1) 3–24

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DOI: 10.1177/1070496516677365

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1

National University of Singapore, Singapore

Corresponding Author:

Heejin Han, National University of Singapore, #4-49 11 Arts Link, Singapore 117573, Singapore.

Email: polhh@nus.edu.sg

activists and organizations (Doyle & Simpson, 2006; Gilley, 2012). However, by

concentrating state authority around executive institutions and experts, these

states can generate remarkable policy outputs within a short span of time

(Gilley, 2012; Sowers, 2007). Moreover, they might promote selective groups

of environmental organizations as long as they contribute to the existing

power structures and regime legitimacy (Doyle & Simpson, 2006).

Authoritarian environmentalism (AE) has emerged as a theoretical frame-

work to help analyze such top-down, nonparticipatory environmental policy

making (Beeson, 2010; Gilley, 2012; Han, 2015; Moore, 2014; Sowers, 2007;

Wells, 2007). Gilley (2012, p. 288) def‌ines AE as ‘‘a public policy model that

concentrates authority in a few executive agencies manned by capable and

uncorrupt elites seeking to improve environmental outcomes.’’ Built on the

environmental politics and policy making experiences of authoritarian and

closed regimes such as China, Iran, and Egypt, this theoretical construct has

been applied to such regimes accordingly.

However, AE has proved its analytical utility in explaining the environmental

politics of democratic countries as well. Gilley (2012) postulates that leadership

and issue perception can explain the emergence of AE in democratic countries.

Han (2015) pursues this hypothesis by applying AE to the policy process

surrounding the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project in South Korea and

concludes that various path-dependent legacies from Korea’s authoritarian

developmental state era, in addition to the presidential leadership style and

elites’ perception of environmental issues, have created conditions where

closed, top-down environmental policy making has prevailed in this democratic

country. Specif‌ically, the author argues that such legacies of the developmental

state as the concentration of policy making authority within the chief executive

and governmental agencies and these actors’ instrumental view toward nature

have af‌fected the Korean government’s unilateral implementation of this

controversial river restoration project (p. 824). Based on these f‌indings, the

study posits that similar experiences of environmental policy making can be

observed in other Asian governments that share developmental state traditions,

identifying Singapore and Taiwan as candidates for a comparative study.

Borrowing from Steinberg’s (2015) notion of resonance groups, these devel-

opmental states constitute a group of countries that share similar institutions

and processes, so the f‌indings from one state can be generalized within the

group. Singapore is a member of a resonance group of developmental states

in that its existing interests and institutions remain embedded within the devel-

opmental state tradition (Liow, 2011) despite the continuous trends of deregu-

lation, liberalization, and privatization of its economy. Using Singapore as a

case, this study aims to contribute to the environmental studies literature by

positioning itself within the aforementioned scholarship on AE. In addition to

applying AE to a semiauthoritarian country, this study validates the proposition

that the modes and patterns of policy making institutionalized throughout

4Journal of Environment & Development 26(1)