Book chapters
Year
2023
Abstract
In analysing the early Singaporean response to Covid-19, insights are drawn into neoliberalism and the temporalization of a citizenry. The corpus of documentary coverage of |Covid-19 from the first half of 2020 to the first quarter of 2022 is examined in terms of budgeting and health policy decisions made by government. The frames of neoliberalism and temporalization provide a focus. This study reveals that Singapore has adopted a variant of neoliberalism over the last four decades. In its health policies, concepts of shared responsibility have meshed with budgeting principles based on generational views of the citizenry. On that foundation, and with lessons learned from the 2003 SARS epidemic, Singapore was quick to respond to Covid-19 in terms of health policies and budgets. Its substantial response involved the use of past financial reserves rather than government debt without adopting a balance-sheet view of the strategy. Singaporean neoliberalism privileges individual decision-making within caveats formed by generational relationships and societal structures. A Singaporean city-state model of neoliberalism reveals possible future mutations of an eco-political philosophy dominant in other parts of the world. This chapter extends studies of temporalization as a foundation to the implementation of neoliberal policies.
CHRISTENSEN, M., YEONG LIM, C. et LIM, J. (2023). Public management and crisis. Dans: Tarek Rana, Lee Parker eds. The Routledge Handbook of Public Sector Accounting. 1st ed. New York & London: Routledge, pp. 18-31.
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