Singapore
Identity, Brand, Power

Explores nation building and international relations in the small multicultural nation state and cosmopolitan global city of Singapore.

Kenneth Paul Tan (Author)

9781108460460, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 August 2018

75 pages
22.8 x 15.3 x 0.5 cm, 0.14 kg

Contemporary Singapore is simultaneously a small postcolonial multicultural nation state and a cosmopolitan global city. To manage fundamental contradictions, the state takes the lead in authoring the national narrative. This is partly an internal process of nation building, but it is also achieved through more commercially motivated and outward facing efforts at nation and city branding. Both sets of processes contribute to Singapore's capacity to influence foreign affairs, if only for national self-preservation. For a small state with resource limitations, this is mainly through the exercise of smart power, or the ability to strategically combine soft and hard power resources.

1. Singapore's political development through cultural and ideological lenses
2. Ideological sources of Singapore's hegemonic state
3. A multiracial, multi-lingual, and multi-religious nation-state
4. A cosmopolitan global city
5. Civil society and public engagement
6. Nation and city branding
7. The soft power of a small state
8. The future of the hegemonic state.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], Central government [JPQ], Political structure & processes [JPH], Nationalism [JPFN], Ethical issues: censorship [JFMD], Globalization [JFFS], National liberation & independence, post-colonialism [HBTR]