¹ The cognitive dimension of political culture has been denned as, “knowledge of and belief about the political system, its roles and the incumbents of these roles, its inputs, and its outputs.” (Almond, G. A. and Verba, S., The Civic Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963, p. 15)CrossRefGoogle Scholar Theoretically, cognitive orientations toward the political system and its various components will affect evaluative and affective orientations toward the same objects. That is, what one knows about politics will affect to some extent one's feelings about and evaluations of politics. Thus cognitive orientations are an important part of political culture. And political culture is, of course, the theoretical bedfellow of political structure. (Almond, G. A. and Powell, J. B. Jr, Comparative Politics. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1966, pp. 21–25.)Google Scholar To understand the maintenance and adaptations of political systems one must understand political culture as well as political structure. To understand political culture one must consider, among other things, cognitive orientations toward the political system and its various parts.

² For a consideration of the implications of this data for theory about political culture see Gibbons, D. S., “The Spectator political culture: a refinement of the Almond and Verba model”, Journal of the Commonwealth Political Studies, Vol. 9 (March 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ The amounts and types of knowledge that a person has about politics are among the more important indicators of his cognitive political culture. Almond and Verba, op. cit., p. 95 have argued that “Democratic competence is closely related to having valid information about political issues and processes…” and they found that political awareness was related to country, sex and level of education. High political awareness was found more often in Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.A. than in Italy or Mexico (ibid., pp. 95–96). In all the countries it was found more often amongst men than women and amongst those respondents with secondary or more education than those with primary or less. Level of education was, however, the decisive variable. When it was controlled, the differences among nations and between men and women were narrowed (ibid., pp. 393–94). An analysis of political awareness of undergraduates at the University of Singapore, however, has shown that although both final year men and women students are considerably more aware than their first year counterparts, the difference between men and women is not narrower for final year students. (Gibbons, D. S., “Sex and political awareness amongst Singapore University students,” Southeast Asian Journal of Sociology Vol. 2 (May 1969), pp. 14–22.)Google Scholar In a sample survey of socialization among Turkish peasants Frey, F. W., “Socialization to National Identification Amongst Turkish Peasants,” Journal of Politics, No. 30 (November 1968), pp. 934–65Google Scholar found that among all his independent variables political party knowledge was the best predictor of scores on a national identification index. That is, knowledge of political parties was strongly and directly associated with feelings of national identity.

⁴ Guttman scaling has, for the most part, been utilized in the measurement and analysis of sociological and socio-psychologioal data. Recently, however, it has been utilized on political data. Further reference see R. C. Aage, “Measurement identity in the longitudinal analysis of legislative voting,” American Political Science Review 61 (December), pp., 1020–1035 and R. A. Bernstein and P. D. Weldon, “A structural approach to the analysis of international relations,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 12 (June), pp., 159–181. As the technique was developed for the measurement and analysis of attitudes and beliefs it has obvious relevance for the study of political culture. For an introduction to Guttman scaling see Philips, B. S., Social Research. New York: Macmillan, 1966, pp. 187–195Google Scholar. For an explanation of the application of Guttman scaling to the measurement of political awareness see Table 4 and page of this article.

⁵ According to the Planning Department in Singapore seventy-nine per cent of the island's population is urban. (Ministry of National Development and Economic Research Centre, Singapore Sample Household Survey, Report No. 1 Tables Relating to Population and Housing. Singapore: Government Printer, 1966.

If we apply the Planning Department's definition of “rural” to the map of electoral constituencies, then nine out of the fifty-eight constituencies may be said to be rural. They are Bukit Panjang, Chua Chu Kang, Jalan Kayu, Nee Soon, Ponggol, Sembawang, Tampines, Jurong and Changi. Together they cover the north, north-eastern and north-western parts of the island, forming a semi-circle around the urban area which is spreading in all directions from the central south coast (For the electoral map see White Paper on the Review of the Boundaries of the Present Fifty-one Parliamentary Electoral Divisions, Act 22 Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1967.)

⁶ Whereas on the island-wide basis, the P.A.P. won thirty-seven of fifty-one seats and forty-seven per cent of the popular vote while the Barisan won thirteen seats and thirty-three per cent of the vote. Milton Osborne, Singapore and Malaysia, Data Paper: No. 53, Southeast Asia Program. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, Department of Asian Studies. On the P.A.P. see T.J. Bellows, The People's Action Party of Singapore: Emergence of a Dominant Party System. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1970; Chan Heng Chee, Singapore: The Politics of Survival, 1965–1967. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1971; Lee Kuan Yew, The Battle for Merger, Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1961; M. Leifer, “Politics in Singapore: the first term of the P.A.P.: 1959–1963.” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 2 (May): 102–119; Pang Cheng Lian, Singapore's People's Action Party. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1971.

⁷ In 1963 the status of Nanyang University, the Chinese-medium University, was a political issue, since the P.A.P. Government had not yet recognized the Nanyang degree as equal to the University of Singapore degree (the English-medium university) for purposes of civil service employment. Recognition was accorded in 1968.

⁸ When Singapore became independent in 1965 the Barisan Sociahs refused to recognize this independence as genuine and adopted a policy of boycott of Parliament. It extended the boycott in 1968 by not standing for elections. There is no opposition representation in the Singapore Parliament at present, though opposition parties still exist and function.

⁹ The farm survey was planned and conducted by Rodolphe De Koninck, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography, University of Singapore. The social and economic data from the survey will be presented and analyzed in Mr. De Koninck's forthcoming dissertation on farming in Singapore. The authors would like to express their gratitude to Mr. De Koninck for his generosity in allowing them to add questions to his interview schedule and for his enthusiastic co-operation at all stages of the project.

¹⁰ This was done by careful observation of the farming areas. De Koninck toured the island thoroughly during the exploratory stage of his research. He located the major farming areas and classified the types and sizes of farms. From this information area quotas were established for the interview teams who were at the same time asked to make sure that their actual choices included a number of each of the various types and sizes of farms. While these steps do not make the sample random they do result in increased confidence concerning its representativeness.

¹¹ Monthly expenditure on the farm rather than acreage is our best indicator of farm size. There are several reasons for this. For the most part the farms are small family enterprises supplying the city with poultry, eggs, pork, fresh vegetables and fruits. Acreage requirements are relatively small. Moreover, land is scarce in Singapore. Finally, the government has been very cautious in allocating land in its resettlement programme.

Almost all Singapore farms are commercial enterprises. There is virtually no peasant agriculture in Singapore. The small farms (the average size of those in the sample was 2·2 acres) rely on substantial capital and/or intensive labour, thus constituting a good Asian example of a Western type suburban farming area. There is no doubt, however, that a majority of our respondents are bona fide farmers.

A full 50% of the households visited depended for their livelihood solely on revenue and produce from the farm.

¹² By an “acceptable” Guttman scale is meant one for which the coefficient of reproducibility (CR.) is 90 or higher (see B. S. Philips, op. cit., p. 193); and one for which the coefficient of scalability (C.S.) is 65 or higher. (H. Menzel, “A new coefficient for scalogram analysis,” Public Opinion Quaterly, 17 (Summer), pp. 260–280. The fact that the items are scalable shows that they constitute a unidimensional measure of something. In order to show that that “something” is awareness of politics, one must present some arguments concerning the content validity of the scale. That is, from a theoretical point of view, do the items in the scale constitute a convincing measure of awareness of politics, and did the items scale in the expected order? To give a completely satisfactory answer to these questions, one would have to show that the scale items were chosen and ordered in advance by a panel of expert judges and that the empirical findings supported the judges' scale. This procedure, however, has not been adopted in this study. For the present, all that can be done is to advance arguments as to why the items should be accepted as a valid measure of political awareness. The scale contains three indicators of awareness of national politics: ability to name the Prime Minister, political parties, and national problems. These indicators tap knowledge of three different elements of national politics: a political leader, input structures and policy matters. In addition there is one indicator of awareness of local politics, i.e., ability to name the functions of the Citizens' Consultative Committee, a local political institution. Thus, while the measure may not be complete it is fairly broad.

¹³ The national problems most frequently mentioned were defence, unemployment, the British withdrawal and economic growth. All except unemployment are stressed by the P.A.P. Government. Objectively, all four are important national problems.

¹⁴ In theory to make use of the full analytic potential of the scale, one would want to consider each of the eight levels of political awareness. Our sample size of 209 does not, however, permit such detailed analysis. In order to have categories large enough for analysis, we collapsed the scale into the three categories. The marginals did not, however, divide very equally, and we had to be satisfied with the following distribution:

¹⁵ Gamma goes from −1 to 1 and tells one how much more probable a like order (e.g. high political knowledge with consultative decision-making) is than an unlike order (e.g. high political knowledge with non-consultative decision-making). If the value is close to 1 there is a high positive association and if the value is close to −1 there is a high negative association. All gammas were computed on the full, rather than on the collapsed tables. Since our sample is not random no significance tests have been run. All gammas are- significant for our population of 209 farmers, none can be said to be significant for the total population of farmers in Singapore.

For a discussion of gamma and its advantages over other measures of association, see Zelditch, M.,A Basic Course in Sociological Statistics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1959)Google Scholar; H. L. Costner, “Criteria for measures of association,” American Sociological Review, 30 (June), pp. 341–353.

¹⁶ The actual question was: “Suppose it was announced over the radio or in the newspaper that the government was planning to pass a law which you considered to be harmful. What, if anything, do you think you could do about it?” The Almond and Verba question was: “Suppose a law were being considered by [SPECIFY APPROPRIATE NATIONAL LEGISLATURE FOR EACH NATION] that you considered to be very unjust or harmful. What do you think you could do. [IF NEEDED.] Anything else?” Op. cit., pp. 528–529.

¹⁷ These sessions are held once a week in each constituency by each P.A.P. Member of Parliament and provide an important opportunity for the people to take their problems to their M.P. The actual question was “Have you ever attended a ‘Meet-the-People’ session held by your M.P.? Yes/No”.

¹⁸ See page 113 for additional analysis of this interesting finding.

¹⁹ The actual question was “Have you ever requested help from him (the Member of Parliament) on any matter? Yes/No”.

²⁰ Nearly all of the respondents who said they could do something about a law they didn't like mentioned that they would contact their Member of Parliament. We have interpreted this as response indicating faith in the regular channels of the democratic system.

²¹ Elections were held in Singapore in mid-April 1968. The Barisan Socialis boycotted the polls on the ground that elections were meaningless in a sham democracy. The Barisan urged its supporters not to cast ballots (Straits Times, 20 Feb. 1968). Only two of nine rural constituencies were contested.

These were Jalan Kayu and Nee Soon where the contest was between the P.A.P. and the Workers' Party. In 1963 both constituencies were won by the Barisan Socialis. In the 1968 elections more than ninety-two per cent of the eligible voters cast ballots in both constituencies. The Barisan campaign urging people not to vote was a failure. This can be taken as an indication of declining support for the Barisan in these two rural constituencies. On the other hand, the fact that voting is compulsory in Singapore (the penalty for not voting is deregistration) may have deterred people from boycotting. It can be argued that some people who voted may still have been Barisan supporters, but were afraid of losing the vote if they failed to cast a ballot. If this was the case one would have expected such people either to spoil their ballots or to cast a protest vote against the P A P. In fact, however, neither course of action was followed to any great extent. Spoilt votes were less than three per cent of total votes in Jalan Kayu and three and one-half per cent of total votes in Nee Soon. Opposition vote, some of which may have been anti P.A.P. protest vote, was eighteen per cent of total valid vote in Jalan Kayu and nine per cent of total valid vote in Nee Soon. Thus in the two former Barisan rural strongholds the P.A.P. won eighty-two per cent and ninety-one per cent of the total votes respectively. This is strong evidence that at least in these’ two rural areas support for the Barisan has decreased strikingly. (AU 1968 voting data were taken from the Straits Times, 14 April 1968).

²² This is not to say that political tutelage is the only factor responsible. The cognitive political culture of the farmers may be changing as a result of many forces of modernization which exist despite or only indirectly because of Government action.