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History and Context of Public Administration in Hong Kong 249

12.7 Public Administration and Society

12.7.1 Public Accountability and Participation

Miners (1995), in his analysis of the political system of colonial Hong Kong, comments that the wide scope of power enjoyed by the governor could have turned it into a position of petty dictatorship. The major constraint was the lack of knowledge about the local community and reliance on civil servants. Bureaucratic dominance was secured in the colonial era through a system in which all officials below the governor were civil servants, and a legislature that until 1984 consisted only of appointed members that would always rubberstamp the decisions made by the executive. The institutional restraint on this system of executive dominance lay mainly in the horizontal accountability mechanisms, such as an independent judicial system, the Audit Commission, and since the 1970s, a powerful independent anti-corruption agency (the Independent Commission Against Corruption, or ICAC). In the absence of elections, the media and civil society played the major role in offering vertical accountability mechanisms.5 Since the 1970s, the colonial state has tolerated the presence of a free and independent media, while civil society has also developed in increasing strength since the 1970s. Taken together, these vertical and horizontal accountability mechanisms (together with the legitimacy deficit of the colonial government) have restrained executive power in the absence of democratic elections. On the transition of sovereignty, these accountability mechanisms were guaranteed to continue after 1997 through the provisions of the Basic Law.

Formal channels for public participation, however, have been lacking. As mentioned, the legislature (Legislative Council) consisted only of appointed members until 1984, when elected seats returned by limited suffrage (through functional constituencies and electoral college) were introduced. Directly elected seats were introduced in 1991, and up to now, only half of the legislature is popularly elected. Local democracy is also equally underdeveloped. The two municipal councils, which were in charge of municipal and cultural policies and whose history dated back to the Sanitary Board established in 1883, were for a long time the only representative institutions with independent financial and executive power. These two institutions were abolished in 2000, leaving only District Councils as the local representative institutions. The District Councils, though only advisory in nature, at present still consist of 25% appointed seats. The highly centralized administrative machinery lacks responsiveness toward citizens’ demand.

Administrative officials have been resorting to a system of advisory committees to collect public opinion in the course of policymaking. There are over 400 advisory committees attached to different policy bureaus and administrative departments. These advisory committees, however, have long been criticized as window-dressing measures that legitimize government decisions and co-opting. The government appoints their unofficial members, while government officials most often chair these committees and control the agenda setting. Another measure frequently taken for major policy change is the use of consultation reports and open invitations for citizens’ inputs. In recent years, consulting district councils, politicians, and major stakeholders are also standard actions taken by officials in the policymaking process. However, these actions have not greatly improved the government’s responsiveness toward public opinion or increased public satisfaction toward government policies. The most common criticism is that these consultation exercises are used to legitimize government decisions rather than as forums for listening attentively to public opinion and incorporating citizens’ input. There is also a general impression that government

5For a discussion of the concepts of horizontal and vertical accountability, see Schedler, Diamond, and Plattner (1999).

©2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

250 Public Administration in Southeast Asia

officials often have preconceived positions and are seldom swayed by opinions expressed in these exercises.

12.7.2 Administrative Values

The majority of the time during colonial rule, these administrative officials operated behind a “secluded bureaucracy” in Lau’s (1982) sense, meaning that their (open) interaction with society was limited. In the absence of an active political leadership, political values were rarely articulated in official discourses. The colonial regime naturally suffered from normative deficit and thus found it difficult to lead its polity with a sense of mission or national purpose. Administrative officials came to play the role of political leaders as they constructed official discourse about public policy and administrative practices. Many of the values embodied in these discourses have become deeply entrenched not only in the institutional order of the bureaucracy and the policy approach of the state, but also in shaping the values of society. As these administrative values acquired the status of public philosophy, issues of political values were thus often technicized. For instance, while public spending level pertains to the allocation and distribution of resources and is a political problem in liberal democracies, in Hong Kong it has been articulated as a technical issue of “good” financial management. Administrative officials have often regarded popular demands for public accountability and responsiveness as detrimental to efficiency and good results. In actuality, the apolitical overtone of these administrative values not only serves the purpose of depoliticization, but also camouflages biases. One important bias is the pro-business inclination of this regime. Business elites have been the most important partner to the colonial regime since the early days of colonial rule. Many of these administrative values are highly compatible with capitalist values and serve capitalist interests.

As mentioned, since the 1970s, economic growth and the transformation of the colonial state into a public service state has enabled the state to establish its legitimacy on the basis of delivering good results in public policy. In this process, administrative officials have come to perceive themselves as “neutral technocrats,” guardians of public interest rather than the defender of any sectoral interest. Not bound by the pressure of democratic process, it easily led to a bureaucratic culture of intellectual arrogance that detached officials from the popular sentiment.

12.7.3 State-Society Relations

While the state in Hong Kong is characterized by its limited capacity in both the colonial and postcolonial periods, and historically, the bureaucracy has been detaching itself from popular sentiment, it does not necessarily mean that the state has little interaction with society. Some earlier scholarly works were premised on the idea that the colonial state attained political stability largely through its segregation from society (Lau 1982), or through co-opting elites into the administrative structure (King 1975). Later works contended such view and regarded the colonial administration as playing a far more interventionist role in managing society. Such interventionism is evident in the ways the state historically subjected community organizations to its management and surveillance for fear that they would become anti-colonial forces. Pro-establishment figures were actively recruited by the state to occupy leadership positions in community organizations that were supported by the state (Lee 2006). The district administrative reform in the 1970s, including the launching of the CDO Scheme (discussed above), the Area Committee, and the Mutual Aid Committee (MAC) Scheme were efforts of the colonial state to step up its community-building effort from above. Channels for community participation have been limited

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

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