Thread by @tcllee1972

Authoritarian party stay resilient because they're cohesive. These are signs the PAP juggernaut is fraying, slowly but surely. channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore…

Less than a year ago, the party stood behind it's leader. todayonline.com/singapore/paps…

And two years ago
straitstimes.com/politics/heng-…

Read journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

And Milan Svolik's book, chapter 6. cambridge.org/core/books/pol…

And now party elite appear to be caught off guard and unable torally behind a leader (yet).
todayonline.com/singapore/4g-l…

Exciting times for Singapore political science. 🙂

A post from party colleague and speaker of parliament. Reads like a political obituary even though HSK remains in the cabinet as Finance Minister.

I stand corrected, HSK steps down as Finance Minister in 2 weeks.

Authoritarian political parties are resilient becoz it has institutionalized channels for cadres to advance careers within a stable system of patronage; creates a quasi-constitutional form of power transfer, institutionalizing & regulating succession (Jennifer Gandhi 2008)

cambridge.org/core/books/pol…

Even if intra-party rules are informal, they offer guidelines for party elite, curbing conflict & minimizing potentially destabilizing power struggles.

Failure to these intra-party rules and SOPs, to steer a transition from one leader to another, could cause regimes to fragment and eventually fall apart (Natasha Ezrow and Erica Frantz 2011).

jstor.org/stable/24388178