Singapore and South Africa shred our democratic certainties, Robert Kaplan contends. Singapore’s success is frightening, he says, yet it must be acknowledged:
Lee Kuan Yew’s offensive neo-authoritarianism, in which the state has evolved into a corporation that is paternalistic, meritocratic, and decidedly undemocratic, has forged prosperity from abject poverty. A survey of business executives and economists by the World Economic Forum ranked Singapore No. 1 among the fifty-three most advanced countries appearing on an index of global competitiveness. What is good for business executives is often good for the average citizen: per capita wealth in Singapore is nearly equal to that in Canada, the nation that ranks No. 1 in the world on the United Nations’ Human Development Index.When Lee took over Singapore, more than thirty years ago, it was a mosquito-ridden bog filled with slum quarters that frequently lacked both plumbing and electricity. Doesn’t liberation from filth and privation count as a human right? Jeffrey Sachs, a professor of international trade at Harvard, writes that “good government” means relative safety from corruption, from breach of contract, from property expropriation, and from bureaucratic inefficiency. Singapore’s reputation in these regards is unsurpassed. If Singapore’s 2.8 million citizens ever demand democracy, they will just prove the assertion that prosperous middle classes arise under authoritarian regimes before gaining the confidence to dislodge their benefactors.
Meanwhile, democratic South Africa has become one of the most violent places on earth, outside of outright war zones:
The murder rate is six times that in the United States, five times that in Russia. There are ten private-security guards for every policeman. The currency has substantially declined, educated people continue to flee, and international drug cartels have made the country a new transshipment center. Real unemployment is about 33 percent, and is probably much higher among youths. Jobs cannot be created without the cooperation of foreign investors, but assuaging their fear could require the kind of union-busting and police actions that democracy will not permit.
From Was Democracy Just a Moment? (1997).