Is Singapore a Model for the West?

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This strict ethos of honesty comes straight from the country's remarkable founding leader, Lee Kuan Yew, now 69, who "believed anything venal had to be destroyed," says Bilveer Singh, a leading political scientist. "Lee basically weeded out corruption by giving it no excuse or legitimacy."

Vigilant, ruthless, shrewd, brilliant, pragmatic, Lee imposed his personal vision until he stepped down as Prime Minister in 1990 to become Senior Minister. He still approves important decisions. He believes that Western- style liberal democracy, with its emphasis on individual rights, won't work for most developing countries. "When you are hungry, when you lack basic services," he told an audience in the Philippines, "freedom, human rights and democracy do not add up to much." Instead, poor countries should promote savings, discipline, hard work and education, open the economy to foreign competition, spur investment.

Can Singapore be cloned? Not without a Lee Kuan Yew, say many citizens. Moreover, their city-state possesses special advantages: small size that makes control easy and infrastructure cheap, no job-seeking rural poor to overwhelm the city with slums, an ambitious immigrant population, a Confucian ethic stressing education and respect for authority, location on a major trade route in the heart of a dynamic region. The country's perpetual siege mentality -- it feels threatened by bigger neighbors and fears its own ethnic mix is volatile -- also encourages economic and political sacrifice.

Fukuyama asks "whether, in the long run, human beings are really made happy by the sacrifice of their individuality." Young and better-educated Singaporeans chafe at the petty restrictions and ruling-party patronizing. "Lee Kuan Yew thinks we are basically stupid," says law professor Walter Woon, a rare establishment critic.

Snug -- and smug -- in their manicured garden, Singaporeans are unprepared for the jungle of the outside world. "They generally don't transplant well," says a Hong Kong-based executive of an international firm. "When faced with difficulties, they wilt."

Singapore can adjust to meet new challenges, insists Yeo, without adopting the West's "hard liberalism." But neither can Singapore be a model for many other countries. Setting aside democracy to concentrate on economic development can work for a while. But the resulting affluence breeds more demands for democracy, even in Confucian societies, and autocracy can rarely remain enlightened and uncorrupt for long. Just as Singapore's leaders have made the most of its small size and unusual cultural mix, so too leaders of other countries will have to find their own formulas for success.