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ICAC has largely dominated the ethical debate to the exclusion of other issues. There has, for example, been almost no treatment of whistle-blowing as an ethical problem; the Hong Kong government has simply regarded the few cases that have occurred as breaches of the Official Secrets Act. Codes of conduct have been tried from time to time, but they have always been so loosely worded as to be unenforceable. As a consequence, civil servants find themselves in a position where they are expected personally to be morally neutral, to do what the Civil Service Bureau and the ICAC tell them to do, even if the injunction itself is imprecise. The government has always been rather more concerned, corruption aside, with rules that promote efficient operations rather than with prescribing ethical behavior [30]. Some recent developments, such as the stress on “integrity management” within the Civil Service Bureau and the ICAC [31] could conceivably lead to a more holistic view of ethical issues, but at present the anti-corruption laws and their continual reinforcement by the ICAC still provides the most important ethical parameters within which civil servants operate.

14.2 Accountability, Openness, and Political Neutrality

The Hong Kong government’s core values of accountability, openness, and political neutrality have been particularly problematic areas since the retrocession to China in 1997. Like its colonial predecessor, the Hong Kong government finds it difficult to deal with problems of accountability and legitimacy in a constitutional setting that, in effect, does not require it to be accountable to anybody other than the government of the People’s Republic. Its attempts to improve this situation have had only mixed success and have not addressed the fundamental question of how the government is to be called to account for its actions. Its reliance on a well-established system of consultative committees in decision making has failing credibility as these have been increasingly seen as token organizations that serve only to endorse the government’s pre-determined course of action. The search for greater accountability has also had an impact on the key concept of political neutrality where “speaking truth to power” has been, to some extent, replaced with the notion that loyalty to the political order is the cardinal virtue. In the following, we examine in greater detail the impact of these changes and the government’s efforts to improve the situation.

14.2.1 Accountability

Immediately after the handover, a number of issues—including the chaotic opening of a new airport, the incompetent attempt to slaughter 1.2 million chickens during an avian influenza outbreak, and a public housing corruption scandal—brought the question of the accountability of the government to the forefront of the agenda [32]. The difficulties lay in Hong Kong’s curious political system. Although, until 2002, all but one of the principal officials (the equivalent of ministers) were civil servants, they were accountable not only to the Legislative Council, but also, as Burns points out, to the Hong Kong government that they themselves composed and which they regarded as the body to which they were ultimately responsible [33]. There were many complaints from legislative councilors about the cavalier manner in which they were being treated by senior civil servants. In 2002, a new set of arrangements, known as the Principal Officials Accountability System, was introduced, making the principal official a political appointee and directly accountable to the chief executive. The new arrangements did not increase accountability to the legislature; rather, they were intended as a means of exerting more political control over the civil service.

To be judged a success, it would have been necessary for the measures to meet two tests of accountability. One would be whether the chief executive used his powers to require a principal

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official, who had failed to discharge his or her duties properly, to resign. Three principal officials, who had been under fire for their handling of policy issues or had been guilty of improper behavior, did resign but in at least two of these cases it was not at the behest of the chief executive who explicitly said that he wanted them to continue [34]. A second test would be whether relationships between senior civil servants and the legislature improved and whether legislature councilors believed that principal officials were being called to account in the chamber. Relationships did seem to improve between the government and the legislature, but there is little evidence to support the view that principal officials became more accountable to it. The Legislative Council has weak powers; constitutional relationships are heavily weighted in favor of the government. For civil servants, the new system has meant changes in organization and their relationship with principal officials, but it has not changed the centralized, hierarchical nature of the government or the notion of bureaucratic accountability, which holds the individual civil servant strictly accountable to his or her superior.

14.2.2 Openness

Openness in decision making is a core value that concerns the relationship between senior public officials and society over matters of public policy. Closed circle policy making is a colonial legacy that has been compounded by the nature of the post-1997 political system. Because the government does not have an electoral mandate and because political parties are weak and have relatively little influence over policy, the government “consults” public opinion using advisory committees and issuing policy proposals for comment. Both means have been increasingly regarded as inadequate.

In 2008, there were an estimated 400 advisory and statutory boards and committees that the government used as forums for testing opinions on its policies [35]. The government appoints most of the advisory bodies, however, and there have been many complaints that they are not representative. Civil society organizations, which grew rapidly after 1997, have been an alternative, often critical, source of comment on proposed policies. These organizations frequently form coalitions to oppose new proposals. Through the employment of a variety of tactics, including demonstrations and legal action, they sometimes generate sufficient opposition to prevent policy implementation. Because the government has had so much difficulty in obtaining a mandate for its policies, it has explored alternative channels for seeking public opinion, such as the Public Affairs Forum, which canvasses different sectors of the population, and a Commission on Strategic Development, which was re-constituted in 2005 to make it more representative and to cover more critical issues than most other advisory bodies. Neither the forum nor the commission appear to have worked effectively [36], but other measures that involve more face-to-face contact between senior officials and stakeholders have sometimes been more successful [37].

The second means of consulting public opinion on policy—the consultation document—has been even more problematic. The long-standing practice of the Hong Kong government was to issue a document outlining various proposals and, after token consultation, declare that public opinion supported a particular proposal, which had already been flagged as the desirable course of action. After the debacle over attempts to introduce security legislation in 2003, that tactic was no longer credible. On that occasion, the government issued a consultation document and found, as usual, that a majority of the population supported its proposals. However, a coalition of pressure groups under the banner of the Civil Human Rights Front was able to organize a demonstration of over half a million people, which eventually persuaded the government to withdraw the legislation. Since then, the government has been less dogmatic about what policy action it intends to

© 2011 by Taylor and Francis Group, LLC