Relations between Singapore and her immediate Malay neighbours have been perennially fraught with tension and misunderstanding. In making sense of this complex relationship, Lily Rahim explores the salience of historical animosities and competitive economic pressures, and Singapore's janus-faced security and foreign economic policy orientation and 'regional outsider' complex. Focusing on Singapore's relations with Malaysia, the book also examines the Indonesian dimension in bilateral relations. It highlights the paradoxical similarities in the nation-building approaches of Singapore and Malaysia. The author reflects critically on sensitive issues such as the rhetoric and reality of meritocracy and multiracialism in Singapore, and analyses the city-state's weak regional soft power credentials and reputation as a political laggard despite its economic achievements. Incorporating perspectives and frameworks from the disciplines of comparative politics, area studies, international relations, political economy and history, this multidisciplinary study offers groundbreaking insights into the way in which the neighboring states of Singapore and Malaysia see themselves, each other, the region and beyond. This book will be of particular interest to keen observers of Southeast Asian politics.

Relations between Singapore and her immediate Malay neighbours have been perennially fraught with tension and misunderstanding. In making sense of this complex relationship, Lily Rahim explores the salience of historical animosities and competitive economic pressures, and Singapore's janus-faced security and foreign economic policy orientation and ?regional outsider? complex. Focusing on Singapore's relations with Malaysia, the book also examines the Indonesian dimension in bilateral relations. It highlights the paradoxical similarities in the nation-building approaches of Singapore and Malaysia. The author reflects critically on sensitive issues such as the rhetoric and reality of meritocracy and multiracialism in Singapore, and analyses the city-state's weak regional soft power credentials and reputation as a political laggard despite its economic achievements.

Incorporating perspectives and frameworks from the disciplines of comparative politics, area studies, international relations, political economy and history, this multidisciplinary study offers groundbreaking insights into the way in which the neighboring states of Singapore and Malaysia see themselves, each other, the region and beyond. This book will be of particular interest to keen observers of Southeast Asian politics.

This book offers a nuanced and muti-layered approach towards comprehending the possibilities of democratization or likelihood of authoritarian resilience in the Muslim world. The volume highlights the complex diversity within Islamist movements and parties- characterised by internal tensions, struggles and contestations. The very existence of this diversity within and among Islamist movements, and their general willingness to partake in mainstream politics, signals an important transformation in the Muslim world over recent decades. It demonstrates that the Muslim world has gravitated from the simplistic focus on the compatibility or incompatibility of Islam and democracy. Islamist movements and parties embody the multiple manifestations and trajectories within political Islam. The granular case-studies and theological analyses in this volume draw attention to the policy refinements, socio-political reforms and ideological transformations engendered by Muslim intellectuals and Islamist movements and ideologues. The diverse political landscape in the Muslim world is inextricably linked to the socio-political and theological shifts within Islamism-in particular, the yearning for greater social, economic and political justice, a yearning that lies at the core of an inclusive wasatiyyah Islam.

The book offers a nuanced and innovative analyses of the emergence of an inclusive secular democratic state paradigm which incorporates the sacred within the framework of secular democracy in the Muslim World.

Muslim Secular Democracy: Voices From Within provides an expansive understanding of secularism in the Muslim World by exploring different trajectories and varieties of secularism, from the failed authoritarian secular state of Pahlavi Iran and the ambiguous secularism in Malaysia to democratizing passive secularism in Indonesia and shifts towards passive secularism under the AKP government in Turkey. Where the bulk of academic literature on democratization in the Muslim World focuses on the Arab World, this volume fills a gap by developing an integrated Muslim World perspective; together, the country case-studies provide multiple lenses through which to appreciate the socio-political shifts that have resulted in different democratic transitions, supported by varied discourses and propelled by diverse combinations of political, social, and religious actors. In the early twenty-first century, passive secularism increasingly aligns itself with mainstream Muslim aspirations for forms of wasatiyyah democracy and governance based on popular sovereignty and citizenship rights and for the incorporation of the sacred within the political framework of the inclusive secular state. The contributions to this volume examine the ways by which Muslim wasatiyyah democracy has been advanced by progressive Islamic Muslim discourses and movements grounded in the principles of equity and social justice.

This book delves into the limitations of Singapore's authoritarian governance model. In doing so, the relevance of the Singapore governance model for other industrialising economies is systematically examined. Research in this book examines the challenges for an integrated governance model that has proven durable over four to five decades. The editors argue that established socio-political and economic formulae are now facing unprecedented challenges. Structural pressures associated with Singapore's particular locus within globalised capitalism have fostered heightened social and material inequalities, compounded by the ruling party's ideological resistance to substantive redistribution. As 'growth with equity' becomes more elusive, the rationale for power by a ruling party dominated by technocratic elite and state institutions crafted and controlled by the ruling party and its bureaucratic allies is open to more critical scrutiny.