Emerging Asia can teach the West a lot about government
30th March 2011
The Economist is always worth reading.
Singapore. That’s all you need to know.
WHEN people talk about Singapore’s education miracle, they normally think of rows of clever young mathematicians. The hair-design and beauty-therapy training centres at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) are rather different.
Singapore is important to any study of government just now, both in the West and in Asia. That is partly because it does some things very well, in much the same way that some Scandinavian countries excel in certain fields. But it is also because there is an emerging theory about a superior Asian model of government, put forward by both despairing Western businesspeople and hubristic Asian chroniclers.