Depoliticising the “Surplus” through Welfare Imaginaries in Singapore National Day Rallies

With welfare states considered contested sites for the construction of unequal social relations, this article explores official welfare imaginaries – discursive practices and narratives which construct the nature of the “good society” and the role of government policies in achieving this – as strategies of depoliticisation, aimed at reproducing authoritarian governance. Through an analysis of Singapore National Day rally speeches by then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the article focuses on appeals to maintaining Singapore’s established cultural, societal, and economic relations. Three inter-connected depoliticising logics to National Day speeches are highlighted: technocracy (an appeal to government through rational expertise); survivalism (an appeal to stable leadership in the face of global challenges); and anti-welfarism (an appeal to the necessity of eligibility-based and productivity-geared welfare). Central to maintaining oligarchic modes of authoritarian political governance, welfare imaginaries disseminated through officialised political narratives pre-emptively diffuse alternative discourses and practices which could trouble established hierarchies. The mobilisation of these imaginaries insulates the political economy from deeper critique or the possibility of popular mobilisation against an economy skewed towards enriching an oligarchic state-capitalist elite. Welfare imaginaries help to legitimate accumulation based in disciplined labour and one-party rule albeit within a welfare state facilitating asset-building for some.