Singapore is not a democracy in the sense we usually mean it, it is arguably a “consultative democracy” and has been governed effectively as such, but political contestation is very limited. 1/

I’m not arguing for single-party states, but for effective parties or other mediating institutions through which politics can be prosecuted. 2/

Our Constitution “tries to” provide such institutions in the form of the Senate+Electoral College, which were mostly compromises necessary to get the thing ratified, but were justified to the degree they were justified as providing more reasoned fora for contestation than shifting public passions.3/

But in general we see that a heuristic the Constitution’s framers used a lot of— longer tenure means greater reason (see judges, senators)—basically doesn’t work. An individual insulated from frequent elections can have incentives and interests other than “reason” to guide them. 4/

Plus, those institutions hope to attain not merely reason as in rational contestation in the interest of a faction, but reason as in pursuing some true public interest, rising above all factional dispute. That’s a lot to ask for, and predictably mere tenure fails to deliver it. 5/

The Constitution’s arrangement of a House often unwise in its passions and a Senate + judiciary to serve as “cooling saucer” and impose rationality hasn’t worked. 6/

It’s particularly broken now, as party supercedes all other institutions and the political parties are defined by ideological and unrepresentative primary voters. Our two political parties are not designed to contest any interest rationality except for the interests of electoral candidates. /fin