Britons are feeling nostalgic for empire. 

In response to a 2019 YouGov survey asking Britons to indicate whether countries that were formerly colonized by Britain were better off for being colonial possessions, the plurality of respondents – 33% – answered yes. The second most common response,  I don’t know, was indicated by 28% of respondents. Only 17% of Britons surveyed held the view that colonialism disadvantaged former colonies more so than it bettered them. Taken together, these results demonstrate that most Britons today (over 60 percent!) regard their nation’s extensive colonial history as a source of pride or ambivalence. 

Nostalgia for colonialism is particularly salient in the British context. Britons held far more favorable views towards their country’s colonial legacy than surveyed populations in all other major European colonial powers except for the Netherlands. While domestic factors–such as rising nationalism in the Conservative Party and the exclusion of British colonial history from the standardized curriculum–certainly have influenced Britons’ romantic collective memory of imperialism, a significant degree of fault can be attributed to enduring norms in academia that exalt the benefits of Western European, and particularly British, colonialism. 

The idea that British colonial occupation, as opposed to rule by other colonial powers, improved economic and political outcomes for their former colonies is wide-spread both inside and outside of the United Kingdom. The “Britain effect”, as it’s often called, arises from the idea (built upon the early work developed by 19th century economists Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus) that the national identity of a colonial force exerts significant influence over the types and qualities of institutions that govern the economic, social, and political spheres in former colonies’ contemporary states, and contends that British colonialism in particular has produced the best institutions in the developing world. 

This overly-simplistic and romanticized view of the correlation between British colonial occupation and the development of democracy has become extremely contentious during the last few decades. While the Britain effect is a far less controversial proposition with regard to economic development (most studies indicate a positive and statistically significant relationship between British colonization and enduring liberal economic institutions), scholarly debate concerning impacts on democratization has yielded mixed results pointing to a lack of substantive evidence in the affirmative. 

Amid debates about the extent to which democracy in former colonies can be attributed to historical legacies other than British colonialism, and the longevity and functionality of inherited democratic institutions over time, the case of Singapore stands out: the nation’s political evolution from its democratic colonial origins to perhaps the world’s most enduring electoral autocracy challenges the democracy-via-British-colonialism narrative in nuanced ways. 

Authoritarian institutions in Singapore

The tiny South-East Asian city-state of Singapore is notable for several reasons. The country of 6.8 million boasts a remarkably high GDP per capita of nearly $85,000, is regarded as one of the few Asian Tiger states of rapid economic development, and has the world’s lowest crime rates. The economic successes and high living standards enjoyed by Singaporeans often obscures its repressive and autocratic state apparatus. While having a multi-party parliamentary system and regular elections free from voter fraud, Singapore is essentially a single-party state. The People’s Action Party (PAP) has ruled without challenge since the nation’s independence from Malaysia in 1965, and at any point in time a maximum of 11 parliamentary seats have been occupied by the opposition. Like other competitive autocracies, the Singaporean state (which for all intents and purposes is synonymous with the People’s Action Party) wields all coercive tools at its disposal against dissenters inside and outside of the bureaucracy: the state holds a monopoly over the media, civil society mobilization is permitted only by way of obtaining a legal permit, libel lawsuits are frequently levied against activists and opposition politicians, and electoral rules are determined by and favorable to PAP bureaucrats. Democracy is definitively not an outcome of British colonialism in Singapore. 

The remarkable persistence of these autocratic and repressive institutions blatantly defies expectations about how and when democratization is likely to occur. Slater, a researcher specializing in political change in autocracies posited that that the ‘raison d’etre’ of autocracies is to remain in power, not to remain autocratic. Thus, particularly in situations where an authoritarian party rules (a) past their apex of power, (b) has significant incumbency and resource advantages over other existing political challengers, and (c) has demonstrated a willingness to adopt policy changes so as to maintain or improve legitimacy, there are incentives for those in power to adopt free and fair elections and deliver other democratic or liberal mandates. Singapore under the PAP demonstrably satisfies each of these qualitative components indicating that it is a prime candidate for democratization, and yet the state has become more repressive within the last decade. The “stickiness” of Singapore’s specific kind of authoritarianism is the result of its inheritance and of extractive colonial institutions and governance ideologies from the British.

What eventually became the People’s Action Party of Singapore emerged as a coalition of local elites and the British overlords to resist leftist movements during the period known as the Malay Emergency. British colonial rule over Singapore was halted in the midst of World War II when the Japanese imperial arm assumed control of most of Southeast Asia. Upon the expulsion and retreat of Japan, the British colonial enterprise was challenged by the emergence of strong leftist and labor-oriented social movements in Singapore initiated and strengthened during Japanese occupation. In an effort enhance the ease by which they could extract colonial surpluses from Singapore, the British sought to mitigate social unrest through a process of state-building, and particularly through the establishment of political institutions to reduce the economic and social conditions conducive to leftist resistance and the restrict the mechanisms by which Singaporean civil society (particularly labor unions) could assemble. 

The economically-benevolent yet socially repressive institutions established by the British were legitimized through the creation and propagation of state-specific governing philosophy by colonial overlords in collaboration with local elites. The normative foundations for British state building were based on three central tenets: (1) survival: Singapore’s small size and multi-ethnic population make it inherently vulnerable to internal and external threats; (2) meritocracy: only the most capable are fit to govern, and capability is evaluated based on adeptness with the English language, receiving a British-education, and having Chinese descent; and (3) development: material and economic security is more important than enjoying political freedoms.

This governance ideology, established by the British to legitimize the construction of extractive institutions, persists in the city-state today and has been conflated with and co-opted by the PAP. The conflation of state and party ideology in Singapore has not only served to legitimize PAP politics which curtail civil freedoms; it has contributed to the development of a political culture characterized by self-censorship — wherein criticism levied against the PAP is synonymous with criticism against Singapore — and a population that displays high levels of risk aversion and depoliticization.

All in all, Singapore shows that British colonialism doesn’t always lead to democracy—in fact, it can leave behind a legacy of strong, centralized control that sticks around long after independence. Instead of setting up democratic institutions, the British often prioritized efficiency and order, which ended up reinforcing autocratic tendencies. Singapore’s political system today still reflects some of those colonial roots. This example pushes back against the common idea that British rule naturally leads to stable democracies. It’s a reminder that the effects of colonialism aren’t one-size-fits-all—and that sometimes, the systems it leaves behind are more about control than freedom.

Photo by Rogan Yeoh, “Waving of Singapore flags” (Unsplash), Creative Commons Zero license.