This post picks up on a point made by Oikono's SIPA friend about how "the dearth of independent social policy research in Singapore... results in conservative decision making." I argue that the crux of the problem is not so much that critical social policy research is lacking but that such research does not constitute as significant, regular or structural input into the civil service policy formulation process.
Leaving aside the contested notion of how "independent" social policy research produced by our local thinktanks and academic institutions is, I contend that critical research does exist and has been increasing in quantity. I've previously blogged about how Saw Swee Hock's Population Control for Zero Growth in Singapore shows that academics had been arguing against the Stop At Two policy for almost ten years before it was eventually reversed.
Likewise, Lai Ah Eng's Meanings of Multiethnicity shows how the Chinese- Malay- Indian- Others (CMIO) categories and its assignment by paternity are begining to mean less real Singaporeans but yet continue to have housing implications due to HDB racial quotas based on CMIO. Her edited volume, Beyond Rituals and Riots, brings together a rich collection of studies on issues like ethnic mixing and cohesion in early education settings.
However I do not know if such social policy research forms a decisive or significant input into policy formulation and implementation. I suspect that it does not. Firstly, while it is not beyond imagination that civil servants and ministers might actually read such research, I have not seen any evidence that such research is a regular, structural input in the Singapore social policy-making process even though this is normally the case in UK's paradigm of 'evidence-based policy-making' [further reading].
Secondly, I am not entirely sure if civil servants are quite ready for academics to have a regular (rather than ad hoc) finger in policy making pie. The degree of bureaucratic turf-guarding, inertia, propensity towards social engineering varies from ministry to ministry, I'm sure.
Thirdly, and most seriously, critical social research not only illuminates past mistakes (thus causing embarrassment and undermining an image of omnipotence and omniscience) but can also seriously challenge key foundational myths such as the benefits and actuality of trading off debate for action (Saw on how it took 10 years to scrap Stop At Two, in contrast [via the FT] to how it took South Korea two years to scrap a similar policy on the basis of similar data) or the fixed nature of ethnicity (Lai on salience of CMIO categories).
Thus it may not be that civil servants lack critical social policy research to draw on but that, drawing from dansong's insight, such research simply does not have a systemic input into technocratic policy-making.
Comments (4)
Perhaps one of the biggest challenge is not the lack of social research, but the lack of data available for more rigorous research. I sincerely believe Singapore does have the talent for social research, but lacks the information to play with sometimes.
I have personally try to gather data on a wide range of simple economic figures for Singapore, such as exports as percentage of GDP over time and it was a tremendous challenge for me. In contrast, I could easily obtain such data from our Southeast Asia neighbors from World Development Indicators and other sources!
In addition, it seems that a significant portion of data is under secrecy. From the actual migration rate to EM1,2 and 3 pupils eventual employment, such figures are either not calculated as of yet or not available on the public domain.
I leave it to historical sociologists, political scientists and historians to share with us how much information our Singapore's Archive yield, especially on contemporary historical issues.
Suppose the bureaucracy dominate data collection and maintain high levels of secrecy, will undertaking 'independent' social research continue to be a challenge in Singapore?
Posted by Wayne Soon | January 12, 2007 12:31 PM
Good points, Wayne. Social policy research will definitely be greatly advanced by the regular release of key statistical data, the opening up of old archives and access to contemporary records through some type of Freedom of Information legislation.
My own belief is that the long term trend is towards more openness, given how transparency is a key building block of good governance which, in turn, is a dominant theme in the ruling party's foundational myths and discourse.
However 'long term' could be 10-20 years in the future. In the meantime, I think academics in Singapore are [and have been been] pushing the boundaries by working with what they have and using innovative qualitative methods to get more out of what is available.
Posted by ringisei | January 12, 2007 7:09 PM
Just a note, there may be social research going on in Singapore but whether the research feeds into the policy making process/cycle is an entirely different matter.
In Singapore it may very well there are social research conducted for policy making purposes but they would be mainly confined within the civil service domain. Academics do indeed play a part in producing the research that have policy implications and their findings may be used to inform policymakers of the various dimensions of their policies. However it remains to be seen whether they are instrumental in driving policy formulation.
For example of civil service driven policy research: http://app.mcys.gov.sg/web/corp_orgstruc.asp#11
2 cents from a policy student (just graduated, yippee!)
Posted by ted | January 13, 2007 2:17 AM
Hmm apologies if I made remarks that ringsei had already expanded in his main post. What I wanted to say was simply that while the social research done by academics in Singapore can be called social policy research only if their findings are seen to be driving policy formation and evaluation.
Peace!
Posted by ted | January 13, 2007 2:25 AM