Sharad Pandian

Scholars of trust and misinformation typically assume that the only two poles of legitimacy are democratic pluralism and scientific technocracy. This paper examines Singapore’s response to Covid-19 to argue that this nation-state instantiates an alternative ideal: political technocracy. Singapore’s ruling party of sixty years, the People’s Action Party (PAP), has long positioned itself as a long-term steward, whose authority rests on the trust it has cultivated among citizens, which it attributes to governmental transparency. We present a taxonomy of the state’s rhetorical strategies – ontological, moral, and statistical – to highlight the government’s active role in shaping public perceptions of national problems and the aptness of its policies. This taxonomy elucidates how Singapore’s political technocracy differs from scientific technocracy, while still highlighting the state’s strategic deployment of the rhetoric of science and ad hoc experts for legitimacy. In so doing, we invite further consideration of the relationships between science and public trust in illiberal authoritarian states.