Public housing residents as clients of the state

State-welfare provision cushions individual citizens from the full impact of capitalist market economy. One of its consequences is the expansion of the rights of citizens in their claims for welfare provisions as citizenship entitlements. The government is obligated to meet these claims in order to maintain its mass loyalty and its legitimacy to rule. However, citizens' dependency on state provision renders them clients of the state, reducing their political pou,er at the ballot box. This emasculating tendency reaches ifs logical conclusion when the state monopolises the provision of particular goods or services, it is then able to threaten to withhold provision, thus threatening the material life of particular societal segments, if electoral support were not forthcoming from the latter. This political dynamic is examined through the near universal public housing programme in the single-party dominant state of Singapore.