Time for Globalscepticism?

AFTER the signing of the Oslo accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1995, PLO leader Yasser Arafat visited the then-occupied Gaza Strip, which - with one of the highest population growth rates in the world - was (and still is) overcrowded and economically depressed.

He pledged that under his leadership, Gaza would draw investment and trade and be transformed into the "Singapore of the Middle East".

Indeed, during the roaring years of globalisation in the 1990s, Arafat was not the only world leader who harboured fantasies about his country becoming "like Singapore" - assuming that there was some sort of universal blueprint for success in the new age of open global markets; adopt the right mix of policies and you were bound to be a winner like Singapore.