Lessons from a 'Grand Master'
Dozens of Asia's best and brightest government officials each year join what has become known as the "Mayors' Class" - studying good governance, economic management and how to make their countries work like Singapore.
As prime minister for its first three decades, Lee Kuan Yew raised a poor port from the bottom rungs of the third world to the first world in a single generation.
As it prepares to mark its 50th anniversary as a nation, Singapore is today an ultra-modern metropolis of almost six million people with higher per capita GDP than the United States, according to the World Bank.
Some say Singapore's story is sui generis: Something that could only happen in that time and place. But its remarkable performance has less to do with miraculous conditions than with Lee's model of disciplined, visionary leadership. Leaders of other aspiring-to-develop nations, and even the US, should take pages from Lee Kuan Yew's playbook to address current challenges.
Concept is good but result is the last word
First, Lee insisted that governance was first and foremost about results.
In his words, "the acid test of any legal system is not the greatness or the grandeur of its ideal concepts, but whether, in fact, it is able to produce order and justice."
About the core purposes of government, he was crystal clear. In terms America's founding fathers would recognize, he believed that "the ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of its people, plus enabling the maximum of personal freedoms compatible with the freedoms of others in society."
Moral leadership
Second, superior performance requires superior leadership.
Lee demanded of leaders both intellectual and moral superiority. Contrary to modern Western democratic theory that emphasizes citizens' participation in governance, his views were closer to Plato's conception of the "guardians," or China's historical Mandarins. Good government requires most of all leaders who put the public good unquestionably above their own personal interests. He was disappointed by many of his counterparts who failed that test.
Equal opportunity
Third, successful societies guarantee strict equality of opportunity for all individuals, but are realistic about the fact that this will yield substantial inequalities in outcomes. For Lee, the essence of a successful society was intense competition on a level playing field that allows each individual to achieve his or her maximum. As he put it, the leader's objective was to "build up a society in which people will be rewarded not according to the amount of property they own, but according to their active contribution to society in physical or mental labor."
Discipline, not democracy
Fourth, about democracy, particularly Western liberal democracy, Lee had serious reservations.
In part, this attitude stemmed from his own experience, but it also reflected a deeper philosophical aversion to ideologies. As he liked to say, "the acid test is performance, not promises. The millions dispossessed in Asia care not and know not of theory. They want a better life. They want a more equal, just society."
Lee enjoyed engaging American critics who insisted that without democracy Singapore could not develop an advanced economy. In contrast, he argued that what most countries needed was more "discipline," rather than democracy.