THE YOUNGER GENERATION AND SINGAPORE POLITICS

Abstract

The coming of age of the baby-boom generation of Singaporeans is likely to cause changes in Singapore's politics. This thesis aims at understanding these changes, and their causes, by studying the political socialization and values of the 2226 age cohort in Singapore. The first chapter delineates some of the theoretical terms, issues and problems surrounding study of political values and attitudes, political culture, generations and socialization. The second chapter looks at the past thirty years of Singapore's political development: to set the context for future change and to describe the milieu of politics that today's younger generation imbibed while growing up. The third and fourth chapters examine the early and later socialization environments that today's young adult Singaporeans were exposed to in the family, at school, in the workplace, youth groups, and through the media. Interview findings and documentary evidence are relied on. Seven distinct attitude categories are developed from interviews in the fifth chapter: those who fear the state, those who see the state as a provider of prosperity, those who see the state primarily as a provider of order, those who are largely ambivalent, those who hope for limited reform, those who see politics in conspiratorial terms, and those who are alienated. The implications of these and other findings are developed in the final chapter.