At the Center of It All: Applying Network Analysis to Authoritarian Elite Shareholders in Singapore

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes concentrate power in an exclusive elite. When the elite depends on state access for power, the regime is able to discipline and reward these elites through interventions on their supply and demand. When the regime faces a contestation to power, authoritarian theory reveals two possibilities. One, the regime may expand distribution of benefits to co-opt outsiders. Two, the regime may further concentrate benefits to trusted elites. I test these hypotheses in Singapore, a state with clear authoritarian origins, an elite of government-linked companies (GLCs), and recent existential political threats to power. Utilizing data from nearly 30,000 government contracts across six years, I find evidence of concentration of benefits over the period as changes in total spend outpace changes in supplier count. I then bring novel applications of network analysis to the shareholders who own the suppliers. Through nodal representations and robust centrality indices, I find that shareholder centrality grows in importance, indicating that contracts go to more connected suppliers. The top shareholders at all times are GLCs, affirming that the developmental elite still dominates government contracts today. These findings support the latter hypothesis of concentration of benefits, though future work is needed to understand causal relationships and fringe elites.