As the article points out, Lee Kuan Yew did not believe that democracy meant that his (or any other party in power) should also help opposition parties politically thrive. While such political philosophies can be abused by authoritarians (and Lee was an authoritarian) in a democracy, I do see the wisdom in it. For example, Nehru - India's first Prime Minister - invited even some opposition leaders into his Cabinet as his party got an absolute majority in the first election post-independence. That was a rare departure from the convention of a Parliamentary Democracy, where only members from the ruling party or coalition form the Cabinet. Nehru however wanted to promote democratic values in India and since his party didn't really have an opposition, he invited some into the Cabinet to ensure their voice would have prominence in the media and the public. But he later abandoned this practise because the political ideological differences made this untenable in practise.
I have no idea and probably not, but it is a bit more complex than that. There isn't any particular rule saying that the only functional democratic model is multi-party democracy. One could imagine a successful democratic model with one party allowing diverse internal factions, for example. It is really hard to get a read on China, but their success raises some interesting questions of how exactly their internal party decision making is set up.
That being said, I would assume that a one party state isn't very democratic. It'd be an unstable democracy.
From what I've read (and this may very well be outdated), Singapore is generally democratic, but the PAP does such a good job of running the country that people don't vote for other parties.
PAP has exploited Singapore's strict libel laws to bankrupt opposition parties by suing for defamation. It is not so difficult to retain power when the opposition has no money for campaigning.
That's largely PAP propaganda. The sentiment on the ground is divided into these groups:
1. (an increasingly smaller portion) The PAP has done this well thus far and brought us to the first world
2. (a large portion) The PAP has too much power and can silence all its opposition - I don't want to suffer the consequences it has historically delivered upon its detractors by voting against them
3. (an increasingly larger portion) The PAP is good but it has too much power and has been allowed to engage in rampant authoritarianism and ivory tower bullshit - the opposition politicians would do a better job
4. The PAP is unequivocally bad and should never be in power (due to their historic actions like underpaying the Malay population for their land, operation Coldstore, etc.)
Additionally, the government blatantly engages in any tactics they can to get more votes, with documented widespread gerrymandering, holding snap election dates right after major PAP wins to capitalised on increased positive sentiment without giving opposition parties time to prepare, silencing/deplatforming opposition politicians, and enacting laws that prevent anyone but their chosen caste to be elected to positions of power
The PAP has ruthlessly gerrymandered their way into winning an overwhelming number of seats in recent elections. Most constituencies are Group Representation Constituencies (GRCs) [1], which mean that many new PAP candidates can enter by riding on the coattails of a higher-profile veteran.
In 2025, the PAP emotionally blackmailed Singaporeans into voting for a Deputy Prime Minister [2] who was shifted to an at-risk GRC, with promises to navigate Singapore through the US tariffs that came to naught (my eyes are rolling so hard at writing this statement).
The PAP effectively controls the electoral boundaries, because the chairperson of the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee [3] is the Prime Minister's secretary, and the other members are all career civil servants who are incentivised to not rock the boat.
If the opposition had been allowed to contest in 2025 again with 2020's electoral constituencies, they would more likely have had far better results [4][5].
Yeah we've heard that before from people who turned out to be filthy liars. Not saying it is impossible, the Singapore numbers are borderline plausible, but if the leading party gets more than 60% of the vote I'm going to assume shenanigans unless I've seen some pretty strong evidence beyond what a propaganda department would put out. People don't agree with each other all that much.
Opposition can literally just converge to the PAP positions over time. Or internal factionalism causes a schism and leads to 2 parties forming from one overwhelming ruling party. In political settings there are enormous incentives to set up roughly 50-50 coalitions.
It’s interesting. They’re “cheating” a bit at least. They have these things called Group Representation Constituencies: multiple people represent a single constituency but you vote once for the team. So they’re clearly using this to up-weight areas they guarantee and to release ethnic cohesion voting (each team must have minority members in it). Interesting tricks that don’t require ballot stuffing etc.
It seems that Singapore/PAP figured out that policy control could effectively keep power without the violence traditionally associated with authoritarianism. I wonder what other dark arts they employ.
been in China for decades, benevolent dictatorships allow long term planning, elections every 4 years favor short term decisions, populism and waste a huge percentage of time in after elections and pre-elections
China and Singapore showed democracy is not necessarily the most productive way to run a country
The election happening once in a while helps ensure if the long term planning is still aligned with the population, because, new people will be born and some others will ‘age out’, the original long term planning might no longer represent the voice of this new set of population.
Merit remains the foundation of its ruling style, the other, whatever suits the mood of the ruling power behind democratic labels and institutions that ultimately have violated its own constitution.
People throw out the word democracy like they know what it is.