I wouldn't call it "full on autocracy", but the setup heavily favors the ruling party. A few examples: - There are open and free elections; the current ruling

I wouldn't call it "full on autocracy", but the setup heavily favors the ruling party. A few examples: - There are open and free elections; the current ruling party, PAP, has ruled since the countries inception - However, the ruling party is more than happy to "tweak" the rules to make sure they stay in power. A good example is when they turn single member constituencies (one person is elected to one seat in parliament) to a group representation constituency (GRC), where 5 or more people are "elected". The argument was that it improves minority representation, but it also puts a barrier to opposition parties running because they need to field way more candidates (each one costs money). It's not surprisingly which constituencies were turned into GRCs when you look at how many voted for PAP - They are also quite blatant about "if you vote against PAP, we'll take money away from your constituency". Since PAP controls the purse, they "punish" constituencies that don't vote them in by deprioritizing infrastructure and public housing improvements. And they don't hide this. - There is no freedom of information act, so the ruling party (PAP) controls all government data. Opposition can ask for it, but the response is often "what is the purpose of your question?" or "releasing that information would disrupt racial harmony". So without hard data, the opposition has can't prove there is a problem. - The "grassroots" setup PAP has resident committees, neighborhood committees, resident's networks, etc. It's a massive group of volunteers for PAP that allows them a broad interaction with voters that the opposition can't really replicate - One opposition member made a claim in parliament that a woman who was raped was not treated fairly by the police. Well, turns out she made statements to parliament that were false. So the entire party was put on "trial" and every statement was run through with a fine tooth comb forcing the person to leave parliament. But then when PAP does it (like when Covid tracking data was shared with police, directly against what they promised) and it's smoothed over, an apology made and the laws changed to make it legal. So it's democracy, but set up to make it very hard for opposition to get into positions of power. It has happened, but the cards are stacked against them. That said, the PAP works very hard to keep the voters happy. When I lived there I was amazed when problems would happen and they would be fixed within a day or two. They are incredibly responsive to complaints, use their grassroots network to quickly collect voter sentiment, then quickly respond. So in the end, most of the voters are happy with PAP.