In 1965, when Singapore was expelled from the Federation of Malaysia, the country was little more than a third-world port with no natural resources, a GDP per capita of barely 500 dollars, and ethnic tensions that threatened to collapse any viable political project. Fifty years later, the city-state boasts one of the highest per capita GDPs in the world and has become one of the leading global financial centres. The question is not whether this result is impressive. The question is: how did they pull it off?
The answer has a name: Lee Kuan Yew. Over 31 years as prime minister and another two decades in advisory roles, Lee built a development model that defied Western orthodoxies about democracy and prosperity. His formula was simple in theory but brutal in execution: social discipline, relentless meritocracy, zero tolerance for corruption, and an economic pragmatism that left ideology at the door. They called him authoritarian, paternalistic, even a dictator. And they were right. But he also built a country that works.
Pragmatism as Doctrine
Lee did not come to power with a grand master plan. He came with a reality that admitted no half measures: Singapore had no water of its own, no natural resources, depended on Malaysia for survival, and was surrounded by neighbours who did not necessarily wish it well. In that context, the luxury of experimenting with liberal democracies in the Western mould seemed, at the very least, unrealistic.
So Lee did what any pragmatic leader would do: he identified what Singapore needed to survive and executed it without apology. He needed social stability, so he crushed any threat to racial or political harmony. He needed foreign investment, so he turned Singapore into the most predictable and efficient place in Asia to do business. He needed competent civil servants, so he implemented a meritocratic system that paid obscenely high salaries to bureaucrats to prevent corruption. And it worked.
Lee's obsession with tangible results over abstract ideals set him apart from his contemporaries. While other Third World leaders lost themselves in ideological debates, Lee built his own path. Free markets, competition, foreign investment. State planning, massive public housing and control of strategic sectors. He was not a communist, he was not a liberal: he was effective.
Richard Nixon described him as "a great man on a small stage who in other times and places might have achieved the world stature of a Churchill, a Disraeli or a Gladstone." He was probably right, but Lee never seemed to lament his stage. Singapore was his laboratory, and the world his audience.
Authoritarianism as a Tool
Lee Kuan Yew was not a democrat. He used defamation laws to crush political opposition, jailed dissidents under internal security legislation, and maintained an iron grip on the media. The People's Action Party (PAP) won elections with majorities of 75% or more, not because they were necessarily loved by all, but because Lee made sure any viable alternative was eliminated before it could become a threat.
But here is the nuance Western critics often miss: Lee's authoritarianism was not ideological. He did not seek power for power's sake. He saw it as the only viable tool to achieve what he considered the priority: transforming Singapore from a decaying colonial port into a prosperous nation. And in that goal he was, undeniably, successful.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, he had an absolute capacity to communicate directly with the population and explain, in clear terms, what the country faced and what it needed to do. He did not govern from the shadows. He regularly appeared on radio and later on television to explain complex economic policies in language anyone could understand. This transparency about the challenges, combined with tangible results, gave him a legitimacy that went beyond mere repression.
Inevitable Comparisons: Park Chung-hee and Deng Xiaoping
Lee's model did not emerge in a vacuum. In the same period, other authoritarian leaders in Asia were demonstrating that accelerated economic development did not require liberal democracy. Park Chung-hee in South Korea and Deng Xiaoping in China followed parallel paths, though with different contexts and outcomes.
Park Chung-hee came to power in South Korea through a military coup in 1961 and governed until his assassination in 1979. Like Lee, he inherited a devastated country, in his case by the Korean War, with a per capita GDP comparable to many African nations. Like Lee, Park implemented a state-led development strategy that prioritised heavy industrialisation and exports. He created the chaebols, giant corporate conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai, and used them as battering rams to penetrate global markets.
But Park was more brutal than Lee. Where Lee used the courts to neutralise opponents, Park simply had them arrested or disappeared. His Yushin regime from 1972 onward was a dictatorship without disguises. And though he achieved the "Miracle on the Han River," transforming South Korea into an industrial power, his authoritarianism generated a resistance that eventually contributed to his assassination. The lesson: effective authoritarianism requires a certain level of popular consent, or at least acquiescence. Park lost that. Lee did not.
Deng Xiaoping presents an even more interesting case. After Mao's death in 1976, Deng implemented economic reforms that transformed China from a stagnant planned economy into the factory of the world. But unlike Lee, Deng operated within a single-party communist system with a population of a billion people. His pragmatism, captured in his famous phrase "it doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice," permitted economic liberalisation while maintaining the Communist Party's absolute political control.
It is revealing that Lee Kuan Yew was a direct influence on Deng. Singapore's achievements inspired the Chinese leadership, which saw in Lee's model proof that exponential economic growth was possible without political democratisation. China's Special Economic Zones were, in essence, attempts to replicate Singapore's success on a continental scale.
The crucial difference: Lee built a system that, while authoritarian, maintained a degree of legal predictability. In China, the rules changed with the internal political currents of the Party. Singapore was authoritarianism with clear rules. China was, and remains, authoritarianism with opacity. For investors, that difference matters.
Is the Model Replicable?
Lee himself always cautioned that Singapore was sui generis. A small city-state with a privileged strategic location and a relatively manageable population of 5 million. To attempt to replicate that model in a continental country with massive ethnic, religious and regional diversity is, at best, naive.
But that does not mean there are no extractable lessons. The obsession with meritocracy and competition in the civil service. The massive investment in education and infrastructure. The economic pragmatism that does not marry any ideology. Those principles are transportable, even if Lee's authoritarian execution is not. Realpolitik.
China tried to import the model, with mixed results. It achieved economic growth, but without the predictable legal institutions that made Singapore work. Other Southeast Asian countries looked on with envy but lacked the leadership capable of implementing painful short-term reforms for long-term gains.
The reality is that Lee's model required not just authoritarianism, but competent authoritarianism. And that is the scarcest commodity in global politics. For every Lee Kuan Yew who builds functional institutions, there are dozens of autocrats who simply plunder and make dreadful decisions.
The Legacy
Lee Kuan Yew died in 2015, and more than a million Singaporeans, a fifth of the population, attended his funeral. That figure says more than any academic analysis from a European university.
His legacy is complex. He demonstrated that accelerated economic development does not require liberal democracy, which deeply discomforts the West. He demonstrated that an authoritarian state can be functional and relatively benevolent, which challenges the narrative that every autocracy inevitably leads to chaos. And he demonstrated that ruthless pragmatism, applied with intelligence, can achieve what ideology rarely does: tangible results.
For those who prioritise individual liberties and political pluralism, Lee was an autocrat who suffocated dissent. For those who value stability, prosperity and order, he was the father of a nation.
What is beyond dispute is that Lee understood something fundamental about power and development: that in specific contexts, discipline imposed from above can achieve more than disordered freedom. That truth is uncomfortable for Western liberals, but that does not make it any less true. Singapore exists as living proof.
In a world where so many developing countries fail to build functional institutions, where corruption devours resources and instability frightens off investment, Lee's model offers an alternative. It is not a morally perfect alternative. But it is effective. And in geopolitics, effectiveness often matters more than ideological purity. Lee knew that. And that is why he won.