What happens when you give an honest, capable person absolute power?
In From Third World to First, Lee Kuan Yew, in characteristically blunt style, does his best to answer that question.
Lee Kuan Yew's politics--and by extension Singapore's, because he really did define the country--are often, I feel, mischaracterized. In We Sail Tonight For Singapore, for example, Scott Alexander characterizes it as reactionary. This is agreeable to the American left, because it's run so differently to Western liberal ideals, and agreeable to reactionaries, because Singapore is preternaturally successful by almost any metric you care to use.
The only problem is that the claim reflects almost nothing about how Lee Kuan Yew actually ran the country or who he was.