Why Singapore’s Growing Political Diversity Matters

Since the watershed election of 2011, one major trend in Singapore politics has been the growth of alternative political forces to the long-dominant People’s Action Party (PAP). General elections now resemble those in democracies, with all seats contested, rallies well attended, and election coverage widely followed across a range of media platforms. While the PAP remains dominant, since the 2020 election it has become expected that the opposition will match or beat its previous seat performance, currently at 10 elected parliamentary seats. Civil society has also grown in size and significance since 2011, and “activist” is now less of a dirty word. A plethora of advocacy groups, many led by a new generation of activists, now actively champion and gain support for numerous causes such as political literacy, climate justice, death penalty abolition, media freedom, LGBTQ+ rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and justice for Palestine. As a prominent recent example, the work of environmental activists has helped increase public opposition to the government’s proposed developments at Maju Forest and Gillman Barracks in the name of environmental protection. These developments have all occurred despite a more challenging legislative environment over the last several years. There is, however, a related second trend in Singapore politics that demands equal if not more attention than the first. This is the fact that the growth in size and significance of political alternatives to the PAP has come alongside the pluralization of these alternatives. While the opposition parties used to be discussed primarily in terms of their common goal of providing a check on the PAP, they now have more distinguishable ideological positions as well as perceived levels of competence and credibility amongst Singaporeans. Alongside its growth, civil society has also experienced pluralization in a variety of ways. Besides the diversity of issues tackled, there is now a distinct division between formal registered civil society organizations and informal groups whose main form of institutionalization is their social media presence. This difference also somewhat overlaps with divergent views on the best way to engage in activism in Singapore. While formalized groups are more likely to utilize the more cautious path of “pragmatic resistance,” which involves strategic engagement with the state, informal groups are often more willing to treat the state as its adversary and confront it with sharper language and civil disobedience. Discourses within civil society have also noticeably diversified. Communitarian ideas about the good of society and liberal rights-based framing remain prevalent, but younger activists are now much more comfortable adopting leftist frameworks and proposals. There are also clear differences of opinion in terms of what democracy really entails and, in turn, how much more democracy Singapore needs. In some states in the region, like China and Thailand, there is a fear that the people have been “getting old before getting rich,” with aging populations potentially putting the countries at risk of stalling into a middle-income trap. Singapore, of course, faces no such concern about its standard of living. However, for proponents of a more politically open and competitive Singapore, there is a potential concern that the country may be “getting plural before getting democratic.” Paradoxically, greater political pluralization may make it more difficult to coordinate and build the type of broad coalitions required to pressure the ruling party into adopting political reforms. Real disputes have indeed already emerged between civil society activists over these differences, including on how to protest the Singapore government’s ties with Israel in light of the genocidal massacres in Gaza. This debate is but one example of how diverse perspectives have also become more commonly expressed on matters of foreign policy. Recent anonymized interview research that I conducted with 12 Singaporean activists suggests that there is also significant diversity when it comes to civil society’s views on Singapore’s relations with other countries as well as global affairs more generally. As countries across the globe look to Southeast Asia for new partnerships amidst the breakdown of the old international order led by the United States, it is important to get a sense of what these emerging voices think of foreign engagement with their countries. This includes their views on foreign support for the pro-democratic and rights-based work of civil society, a matter that remains highly sensitive to Singapore’s PAP government. The PAP has always been averse to foreign “lecturing” and has long held the position that any foreign engagement with its domestic politics is “an absolute no.” In a July 2025 statement that is becoming increasingly commonplace in regional political parlance, the PAP was firm in its suggestion that “politics should stop at the water’s edge.” In the interviews I conducted, it was unsurprising that Singapore’s civil society activists, who were selected for their pro-democratic and reformist orientations, have a different view from the PAP when it comes to foreign engagement on matters of human rights, social and environmental justice, and democracy. In fact, 10 out of 12 interviewees suggested that there is some role for foreign states to support their work on these issues. Only two participants took a firm line of completely rejecting foreign engagement on these matters, a position resembling the Singapore government’s own. What was more revealing was the diversity of views on the ways in which foreign states can legitimately engage with Singapore on these issues. The responses of the 10 interviewees clearly fell along a spectrum between strong cosmopolitan or internationalist views on the one hand and more self-determination or anti-colonial positions on the other. The three participants at the self-determination end of the spectrum strongly disagreed with foreign states bilaterally pressuring the Singapore government on matters of human rights and democracy. Western states in particular were singled out for their hypocritical stances on these matters considering their own human rights issues and polarization within their political systems. That said, these respondents still saw value in foreign states providing support to Singapore civil society through grants to attend overseas conferences and workshops for knowledge-sharing and capacity-building. They also encouraged foreign embassies to provide a space for civil society actors to gather, discuss, and meet with potential collaborators. In the middle of the spectrum, four interviewees also argued against foreign states “naming and shaming” Singapore, albeit for different reasons. While the self-determination group argued against bilateral pressure in principle, the middle group of participants argued that such an approach would simply not work with the PAP in power. Instead, foreign governments would find more success working constructively with the Singapore government, exchanging alternative policy proposals with evidence of effectiveness and making their own commitments to upholding human rights and environmental standards when investing. In terms of engagement with the ground, this group suggested that foreign states ought to go further, providing funding to civil society for specific projects and meeting with activists directly for information-sharing purposes. The three participants on the internationalist side of the spectrum countered the PAP’s position on bilateral pressure most squarely, stating that foreign governments not voicing their concerns about rights and democracy legitimizes authoritarian structures, emboldens autocratic behavior, and gives a green light to human rights abuses. In addition to backing the aforementioned ways that foreign states can support Singaporean activists and advocates, this group argued that foreign embassies ought to vocally and visibly defend the already limited space for civil society when it is threatened by new repressive legislation or the embassies are pressured to cancel their events. With such diversity in the political alternatives to the PAP, the next major breakthrough in Singapore’s political evolution may well depend on the extent to which these diverse actors are able to suture a common front capable of providing an effective counterweight to the PAP’s dominance. Part of this process will depend on finding sufficient commonalities, and perhaps even a common program, beyond the low baseline of wanting change. One interesting point of convergence, at least within civil society, may be shared ideas regarding Singapore’s own foreign policy, including its relations both with its closest neighbors and the wider world. Remarkably, all 12 interviewees, including those who took a firm self-determination line regarding foreign engagement with Singapore, suggested that their own government must aim to be a better neighbor to its regional peers and a more principled actor on the world stage. For the former, many interviewees called into question destructive sand-mining practices in Indonesia and Cambodia driven by Singaporean demand as well as Singaporean investment into a Myanmar economy dominated by the brutal military regime. For the latter, almost all participants wished to see a much stronger stance on Israel for its military actions in Gaza and beyond. One interviewee went as far as to state that: “I’m starting to get the sense that besides just pure economics and trade deals, there is a growing appetite for Singapore to have a spine and for Singapore to be on the right side of history.” The Singapore government has already taken note of this shift. In response to Singaporeans’ reactions to events in the Middle East, Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan admitted that “foreign policy now has domestic salience.” Should this salience increase, the desire for a more principled foreign policy may well be one of many threads that stitch together the more vibrant, plural civil society and political alternatives to the PAP.