TOWARD A NEW ASIAN ORDER : A WORLD REPORT SPECIAL SECTION : Interview : Making a Case for Kinder, Gentler ‘Big Brother’ : * Singapore’s former prime minister argues that most Asians prefer their governments to have an authoritarian bent.

Is Asia ready for Western-style democracy? No, and it probably never will be, according to Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister of Singapore. In Lee’s view, rugged individualism just doesn’t fit in Asia’s complex tapestry of cultural bonds.

Lee’s vision of “Confucian capitalism,” an Asian answer to democracy, has recently gained a lot of adherents, with countries ranging from Vietnam to China and even the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan asking Lee for his advice on how to duplicate Singapore’s economic development.

Lee was prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to November, 1990. Under his firm tutelage, Singapore grew from a backwater port and colonial outpost to one of Asia’s economic success stories.

But his philosophy is still controversial in much of Asia because the Singapore government often casts itself in the role of parent to its wayward citizenry, with well-publicized campaigns against spitting, public smoking and even chewing gum.

Cynical analysts have noted that Communist regimes, especially, are attracted to the model here as much because Singapore has managed to maintain authoritarian rule as because of its impressive economic results.

The Times interviewed Lee, now a senior minister in the Singapore government, at his office in the Istana, the former British governor’s mansion.

Question: You have been talking lately about the kind of differences that make for Confucian capitalism, or some would call it soft authoritarianism, in Asia, and why Western-style democracy can’t take root. But what specific cultural reasons do you think there are?

Answer: I think you should phrase the question differently. How is it that only in Britain, and subsequently overseas Anglo-Saxon communities, has the democratic system of government succeeded? The British exported it to their white colonies in North America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Why was it not universal, even in Europe? Not the Germans, not the Spaniards. The French attempted it and were not very successful. They went through five republics since the storming of the Bastille.

And when I was a student of British constitutional law at law school in 1947-48, my professor--who was one of the wartime British Cabinet secretaries, so he was not just a theoretician, but one who understood how Cabinet government worked--pointed out the difference between the British and the French system. The French then were going through their many revolving-door governments. Every four to five months, they had a new government, and continued to have it until 1958 when (Charles) de Gaulle came in. This was not in (the) textbook he wrote but in his lectures. He said, there are certain cultural differences which made the British parliamentary system successful--amongst other reasons, a different cultural temperament.

The British were more phlegmatic, less volatile. They had a knack for compromise. They were willing to accept that since you’ve won, then (the) next four to five years, you run it, and I will obey your rulings. It will come back to my turn some other time. This was not part of the Latin temperament. Having lost, you begin immediately to fight and thwart the winner from the day you’ve lost. Of course, instability led to De Gaulle’s new constitution in 1958. So the question I would ask is, why is it that only the Anglo-Saxon temperament led to the development of parliamentary democracy?

Q: What about Asia? Is Asia culturally right for democracy?

A: Asia has a different history altogether, and not just no Renaissance and Enlightenment. It’s a very hierarchical society, East Asia. I would differentiate between East Asia and South Asia. The Indians, with Hindu culture, are very different. They like the argument and discussion. East Asians go for decisions not as a result of arguments, but as a result of consultations in reaching a consensus on an answer to a problem.

I’m not saying democracy will not work. It has, with considerable modifications, in Japan. The first elections were in the 1950s, so it’s about 40-odd years. But it’s a special democracy with strong Japanese characteristics. An opposition can threaten to walk out of Parliament and thus bring proceedings to a halt. . . . It’s not unconstitutional to pass a budget without the opposition present. But in their culture, it’s unacceptable.

Q: What about elsewhere in Asia?

A: I would say without the American tutelage of Japan, the Japanese wouldn’t have got where they have. It was the Occupation years, the changes in the constitution, the deliberate (Gen. Douglas) MacArthur policies, these created the conditions for the results we see. I’m not sure whether (South) Korea will develop in the same way. There has been considerable American influence as a result of the Korean War, which brought thousands of American troops to Korea. The impact or interaction was not just between governments, but also between peoples. Large numbers of (South) Koreans have been educated in America, plus trade and other interactions. These may have modified Korean behavior. Even so, they are developing their own form of democracy, very different from America’s.

Q: The bottom line, as they say, is that many people are now drawing the comparison between authoritarian governments, such as Taiwan, and economic success, and at the same time democracies such as India and the Philippines are the basket cases of Asia.

A: Only partially. I think it’s not just the constitution. It is also the culture. They’re authoritarian in a positive sense--Taiwan, Korea, maybe even Japan. Look at the way authority is respected in Japan. Two persons meet and they bow to each other, and the man with the higher standing bows less deeply. There is a certain sense of order and discipline, and that is favorable for growth, because when you get down to work, to get a factory going, you can’t keep on discussing and contradicting. Somebody has got to make decisions to go this way or that way. And I think it’s not soft democracy that has made the Philippines and India less successful, but the nature of their cultures. . . . They accept lower standards because they don’t consider high standards or hard objectives worth the effort. They’re prepared to make do with less. . . .

Q: And by the same token, countries like Burma (Myanmar) and North Korea, and even Vietnam, I guess, which had authoritarian regimes, are economic basket cases nonetheless.

A: They are two different groups. You can change the system in Burma and it will still be slower than Vietnam or North Korea when they change their systems. Introduce free-market practices and policies, Vietnam will take off. So will North Korea. Burma will improve, but not to the same extent.

Q: Do regimes which are soft authoritarian, such as in Singapore, subject their citizens to what (Alexis) de Tocqueville called the tyranny of the majority? Francis Fukuyama said the consequence of this is to prevent people from growing into adults capable of self-mastery.

A: No. That’s a caricature of what soft authoritarianism would mean. It means there is less opportunity to obstruct the majority policy, which an American system encourages and tolerates. You have a vote in America, with the majority will clearly expressed. From the moment the vote has been taken, the minority begins to work to obstruct the will of that majority. You revel in it. And you have thrived on it. I think that’s because your circumstances are different. You’ve got so much leeway because of your enormous wealth, natural resources, wide-open spaces. So you could just up stakes and move somewhere else and start all over again without much trouble. This is not open to many societies. It has made for American optimism that their practice is valid all over the world. I think it isn’t so.

Q: If this is the view in Singapore--that is, a majority view--why do you still have this problem of immigration of your best and brightest to places like America, Canada, Australia?

A: If it were the best and the brightest, then we’d be flat on our faces. It’s some of our second-best and next-brightest. Those who have not reached the top feel that the grass is greener on the other side.

Q: Singapore is getting kind of a reputation worldwide for what The Economist calls being a nanny to its people and tells its citizens that they can’t chew gum and they should flush the toilet, not smoke. And while these may all be positive things, in the sense of a Confucian system, isn’t this really the area of what the family should be doing? Is the government taking the place of the family?

A: Let’s take flushing toilets. We’re not interested whether you flush your toilets at home or you don’t because you put up with the stink. The point is they do flush the home toilets. But when they do not flush public toilets, they are creating a nuisance for everybody else. Perhaps the reason why they don’t flush is because the speed of the transformation. Only day before yesterday they were using a hole in the ground, and it really doesn’t matter whether you flush it or you don’t. It didn’t matter. Some people still urinate in public lifts. So pressure helps accelerate behavior change.

Americans emphasize the rights of the individual. Take drug testing. Test an American either through his urine or his blood to see whether he’s consumed drugs, and you’d have a suit for battery and assault and a huge claim for damages. Indeed, an American case went up to the Supreme Court where they held that as the initial arrest was unlawful, the fact that he subsequently was found to have drugs did not support the conviction. That’s an American view of how things should be--the primacy and privacy of the individual. But nobody in Singapore complains that we have laws which enable our police to require anybody, without giving any reasons, to take your urine sample for testing. If the sample is proved positive, then you undergo treatment. That’s the law, and it’s kept our drug problem under control. But it’s completely unthinkable in America. What is one society’s good is another society’s bugbear.

Q: Would you agree that the true test of this soft authoritarianism is not in boom times but when the economy’s turned sour? Do you think that is going to pose a problem?

A: Well, the economy turned sour in 1985. It dipped into negative growth and they were able to get the unions to agree to a 15% pay cut. So it bounced back in 1986 marginally, and went back to normal in ’87. . . . I would hazard this guess: that it’s because of a cohesive society, not whether it’s authoritarian or not authoritarian. A cohesive society will weather a difficult patch better than one which is not.