Singapore is rather famously not a liberal democracy.

I think the gp would argue that they can, and in fact one of their selling points is that they can help avoid the erratic swings between corrupt autocratic rule and an impotent variety of populism.

They’re just harder to build and maintain: “get a better strong guy to strongarm the last strong guy who went rotten” makes more instinctive sense than “swallow the bitter medicine of compromise and spread power around.”

> gp would argue that they can

I’d go further: they have. But that requires both investment into those resources and patience. (Consider all the comments on even HN whenever wrongdoing is exposed confidently predicting there will be no consequences. Then, when they’re charged, that they won’t be arrested. Then that they won’t be convicted. Then that sentencing will be light. Then that it will get overturned on appeal. Now imagine the entire country thinks like that—there is no patience for due process.)

It’s more difficult for a poor country to transition to liberal democracy than benign autocracy. The only ones I can think of did so under occupation or in the wake of a traumatic dictator and/or civil war (see: Uruguay, India, and going way back, the United Kingdom).