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Public Administration Research in Hong Kong and Macau

Hon S. Chan & Jie Gao

Department of Public and Social Administration

City University of Hong Kong

The East Asian city-states of Hong Kong and Macau are significant for their distinctive

public administration model. In order to maintain stability during their political transition,

leaders of socialist China introduced an intriguing framework of “one country, two systems”

to govern the former colonies when they returned to Chinese sovereignty in the late 1990s.

Under this system, Hong Kong and Macau are “special administrative regions (SAR)” of

China. They were permitted to retain their capitalist economic system and their self-

administered governments for 50 years after the handover (Canning 2001). The details of

“one country, two systems” in each city-state are enshrined in its mini-constitution, the Basic

Law. The effects, however, of implementing “one country, two systems” in the two SARs are

markedly different after the first decade of this experiment (Qi 2005). Today, the executive-

led government in Hong Kong is seen by its citizens as one of the SAR’s principal problems,

whereas in Macau a similar government is considered a reliable source of solutions to many

of that city-state's problems. In this regard, Hong Kong and Macau provide an interesting

case study of public administration in transitional societies in East Asia.

This article examines the quality and character of public administration research in Hong

Kong and Macau, after which it explores critical issues in the development of public

administration in the two city-states under the “one country, two systems” framework.

Because research in an academic field is the primary source of knowledge and theory

development within that field, the quality and character of research bear significantly on that

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field’s status as a discipline or profession (White and Adams 1994, xiii). However, the nature

of public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau has rarely been studied, leaving

unanswered questions such as: What topics are of interest to scholars who study public

administration in Hong Kong and Macau? What purposes do these studies serve and what

methodologies do they employ? Has public administration research reflected domestic policy

debates in the two city-states? If the answer is affirmative, then what are the noteworthy

issues? This paper will address those questions.

Data

We adopted different methods to collect data on public administration research in Hong Kong

and Macau because the majority of research in the two city-states is written in different

languages (English in Hong Kong and Chinese in Macau) and therefore published in different

sources. The data on public administration in Hong Kong were collected from the ISI’s Web

of Science (WOS) Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), a widely recognized database that

indexes publication documents including articles, bibliography, book reviews, editorial

material, letters, abstracts and notes (Corley and Sabharwal 2010). We used “Hong Kong” as

the topic to search all relevant articles published in the SSCI database from 1999 to 2009. A

total of 4,778 results were found. We selected 54 articles published under the subject area of

“public administration”, 62 articles published under “political science”, 124 articles

published under “area studies” and 16 articles under “Asian studies”. We reviewed these

articles and excluded those with irrelevant themes to collect 113 articles published in 41

journals (see Table 1).

---Table 1 about here---

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We used the same method to search publications on public administration in Macau but

obtained only 9 results, 4 of which overlapped with the articles from Hong Kong because

they were comparative studies which included both city-states. The results of our search

demonstrated that the majority of studies on public administration in Macau are not published

in English journals, so we switched our focus to literature written in Chinese. We collected

our data from “Public Administration in Macau” (in Portuguese, Revista de Administração

Pública de Macau Número), a quarterly journal sponsored and overseen by the Bureau of

Administration and Public Service of Macau SAR (Direcção dos Serviços de Administração

e Função Pública, SAFP). According to the SAFP, the journal is a key source for

understanding the development of public administration in Macau. It contains scholarly

articles, practitioners’ notes, and symposium pieces, keynote speeches of conferences held in

Macau, published in both Portuguese and Chinese. We collected a total of 223 such studies

published during the period 1999-2009. Given that the number of articles in English is too

small to support effective coding and to make a significant difference in our findings, we did

not include the 9 SSCI articles in this study.

We coded the collected articles according to the questions listed in the Introduction. The

coding aims to achieve two general objectives, as described in a study by Houston and

Delevan (1994, 127) on the nature of public administration research in the United States. The

first objective is to capture general characteristics of the article and the author, such as topics

studied, research trends, number of authors, university and department affiliation of authors,

and similar factors. The second objective is to assess the contributions made by these studies

to the development of a theoretically sound and useful body of knowledge in the discipline.

Coding variables include each article’s major purpose, theoretical framework, methodology

employed, time span, and research style.

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Public Administration Research in Hong Kong and Macau

We start by examining what topics are of interest to those researchers who study public

administration in the two city-states. Table 2 shows that studies of both city-states

overwhelmingly focus on the region’s political development under the framework of “one

country, two systems”. About one third (29.2%, 33 out of 113) of the studies in Hong Kong

discuss the problems of the Basic Law system and democratization in the region, whereas a

similar portion (28.3%, 63 out of 223) of publications in Macau focuses on localization of the

legal system. Popular but less frequently discussed topics in both regions include social

welfare policies, management reforms, regional development, and challenges of governance

in a changing political context. In contrast, privatization, environmental policies and disaster

management are the least frequently discussed topics. There is a surprising lack of journal

articles on environmental policies in the two city-states; only one article analyzes cross-

border environmental problems in Hong Kong, which is categorized under the topic of

regional cooperation.

---Table 2 about here---

Table 3 and 4 compare the author profiles of the collected articles. Table 3 shows that more

than half of the authors are local researchers, meaning they were based in the territory at the

time they produced the articles (66% in Hong Kong and 65% in Macau). One noteworthy

difference is that public administration in Hong Kong has triggered a wider international

discussion than the same topic in Macau. Researchers based in Macau, Hong Kong and

Mainland China conducted most of the studies of Macau, while the authors in the Hong Kong

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database have a more international background and come from the US, the UK and various

European countries. The number of comparative studies in the two databases illustrates this

difference. Figure 1 shows that comparative studies constitute only 10% of the articles on

Macau, but about 30% of those on Hong Kong. Moreover, in these comparative studies,

Hong Kong’s system is usually compared to those of other East Asian countries such as

Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and Japan, whereas Macau’s system is often compared to those

of Mainland China and Hong Kong.

---Table 3 & Figure 1 about here---

Table 4 shows that most scholars who study public administration in Hong Kong and Macau

are primarily based in departments of public administration, public affairs, political science,

international relations, law, and social sciences. There are scholars in both databases from

departments of business administration, environmental management, economics, education,

geography, and journalism. The profiles of the authors show that public administration in the

two city-states is a topic in which researchers from various disciplines are interested.

---Table 3 & 4 about here---

Figure 2 and 3 indicate the major features of research trends during the period 1999-2009.

Figure 2 shows that scholars have shown consistent interest in democratization in Hong Kong

during these eleven years. The number of such studies proliferated shortly after Hong Kong

returned to Chinese sovereignty, but has declined slightly since 2005. In the mid-2000s

scholars began to give more attention to Hong Kong’s management reform and development

issues. More recently, especially in the past three years (2007-2009), the focus of studies has

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shifted to the government’s management capacity and performance, relationship with the

press, and challenges in maintaining effective governance. By comparison, the trend in

Macau research is rather unclear. Figure 3 shows no clear change in research focus compared

to what can be observed in the case of Hong Kong. Throughout the eleven years, social

policies, management reform, regional development, human resource management and the

legal system in Macau have been the focus of research. Since 2004 there have been a growing

number of studies that aim to review the overall performance of the SAR government and

discuss regional cooperation between Macau and neighboring areas.

---Figure 2 & 3 about here---

Figure 4 summarizes the major aims of the published articles. The overall trend is that public

administration research in both Hong Kong and Macau is dominated by descriptive studies

that address questions of what, where, when, and how. Less frequent are studies designed to

explore new topics and generate new ideas. Still less frequent are studies aiming at explaining

why, building and/or testing theories (Babbie 2002). As Figure 4 shows, among a total of 113

articles on Hong Kong, more than a half (58%) are descriptive, 34 per cent are exploratory,

and 8 per cent are explanatory. This finding is more pronounced in the literature on Macau.

Two hundred and one (90%) out of the 223 publications are descriptive studies. Exploratory

(13 out of 223) and explanatory (9 out of 223) studies account for less than 10% of the

articles.

---Figure 4 about here---

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As regards the style of the papers, argumentation is a predominant style adopted by the

published articles on both city-states. Argumentation essays account for 43% of the articles

on Hong Kong (especially popular in studies on issues of democratization) and 38% of the

articles on Macau. Nonetheless, the style of research in the two city-states has a striking

difference. As Figure 5 shows, empirical studies constitute the majority (57%) of public

administration research in Hong Kong, whereas such studies account for only 8% of the

literature in Macau. It is of note that we categorized public administration research in Macau

into four styles, namely argumentation, empirical studies, phenomenal description, and

practitioners’ notes for the key reason that 35% of the publications in Macau are contributed

by those who serve in government organizations or professional associations. Around 20% of

the literature, although contributed by academicians, aims to simply introduce a system or

policy brief without arguments and analysis. It is therefore meaningless to code these two

groups of studies strictly according to the protocol of academic journal articles. The

comparison in Figure 5 implies that studies of public administration in Hong Kong are more

rigorous in regard to research focus and theory building.

---Figure 5 about here---

Figure 6 addresses the theoretical perspective adopted by each article. Forty-seven per cent of

the articles on public administration in Hong Kong discussed theoretical frameworks or were

designed to provide a theoretical perspective through literature review. It is difficult to

pinpoint a dominant theoretical perspective adopted across topics, yet some theoretical

frameworks are popular for studies on the same topic, for example, “regulatory states” and

“welfare states” are more frequently used in studies on government regulation and social

polices than other theories. In contrast, articles on public administration in Macau were

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greatly lacking in sound theoretical discussions. Only 19 out of the 223 (19%) articles

discussed theoretical frameworks.

---Figure 6 about here---

Table 5 and Figure 7 summarize the methodologies adopted by these articles. In general, a

review of secondary sources is the major method adopted by studies that relied on a single

research method. A small number of studies employed qualitative methods and an even

smaller number employed quantitative analytical technique. As Figure 5 and Figure 6 show,

100 (89%) out of the 113 articles relied on a single method to study public administration in

Hong Kong. Among these studies, seventy-eight (78%) developed their argument by

reviewing secondary sources. Fourteen articles (14%) employed qualitative methods such as

case study, survey, field observation and interviews. Eight articles (8%) employed

quantitative methods, including univariate analysis (3 articles), bivariate analysis (2 articles),

multivariate analysis (2 articles), and difference-in-difference approach (1 article). In addition,

13 (11%) out of the 113 articles adopted a combined research method. Nine of them

combined qualitative methods with a review of secondary sources. Two employed both

qualitative and quantitative analysis, and an additional two combined quantitative methods

with a review of secondary sources.

Studies of public administration in Macau are much less rigorous than the studies in Hong

Kong in terms of the methodologies used. One finding in our coding is that 70 (31%) of the

233 articles did not provide any information on research methods and data sources. Among

the remaining 153 articles, 151 employed a single method and only 2 combined more than

one method. One hundred and forty-eight out of the 151 articles (98%) depended on a review

of secondary sources. Two articles employed qualitative methods to collect and analyze

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primary data. Only one paper clearly explained how it used a quantitative method (univariate

analysis) to examine variables affecting self-efficacy of civil servants in Macau.

---Table 5 & Figure 7 about here---

A comparison of the time spans in the articles further illustrates the methodological rigor of

these studies. Figure 8 shows that 51 (45%) out of the 113 articles in Hong Kong clearly

indicate the duration period of the research. Among these articles, 25 (21%) are longitudinal

studies that observe the same phenomena over five years and six (5%) are longitudinal

studies of more than two years but fewer than five. Sixteen articles (14%) are cross-sectional

studies that involve observations of a sample, or cross section, of a population or

phenomenon made at one point in time (Babbie 2002, 97). Five studies adopted time series

analysis, a method of observing the same phenomenon in regular periods. By comparison,

less attention is paid to time span in studies of public administration in Macau. As Figure 8

shows, 202 (91%) out of the 223 articles do not indicate clearly the time span of the research.

A total of 21 articles (9%) provide a clear statement of the time span. Fourteen articles are

longitudinal studies over 5 years (6%), while longitudinal studies lasting fewer than 5 years,

time series, and cross-sectional studies account respectively for only 1% of the articles.

Public Administration in Hong Kong and Macau: Policy Debates

The Basic Law System

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A critical issue arising from the public administration studies in Hong Kong and Macau is

whether the “one country, two systems” experiment is working, and in particular, whether the

Basic Law system could maintain effective governance during political transition. About one

third of the studies in Hong Kong and Macau argue that the experiment of “one country, two

systems” has given rise to challenges in governing. In Hong Kong, the problem of greatest

concern and significance since the implementation of Basic Law is the creation of tensions

between the legislature and the executive branch that have seriously weakened the regime’s

stability and inhibited its capacity to govern (Scott 2000; Canning 2001; William 2001;

Pepper 2000; Holliday et al. 2004; Zhang 2009). By comparison, in Macau the pressing need

is major codifications and localization of the territory’s legal system after the implementation

of the Basic Law system (He 2008; Lou 2009; Luo 2009; Li 2009; Zhao 2005; Mi 1999;

Zhao and Leng 2000).

In both city-states, the main purpose of the Basic Law is to maintain stability during the

political transition. In Hong Kong’s situation, this is demonstrated in the intention to prolong

the region’s tradition of maintaining a strong executive-led government headed by the Chief

Executive. Meanwhile, since democratization of the legislature had already begun during the

final years of the last British governor, Chris Pattern, the Basic Law also gives the Legislative

Council more popular representation through the process of a slow expansion of directly

elected members. Yet in order to maintain the executive-led nature of the system, the Basic

Law restricts the power of the Legislative Council in order to prevent it from becoming as

powerful as the chief executive. For example, most government policies do not need the

approval of the legislature unless they involve changing laws and appropriations.

The power arrangements set by the Basic Law, however, lead, according to some accounts,

to a disarticulation of Hong Kong’s political system (Scott 2000). Unlike the British

governors, the SAR Chief Executive no longer has personal control over the legislature. He is

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also deprived of a workable majority in the Legislative Council to pursue major political and

policy goals because, under the Basic Law system, the Chief Executive cannot be affiliated

with a political party. The Chief Executive could appoint senior civil servants (i.e., heads of

bureaus and departments) as members of the Executive Council, yet the civil service

bureaucracy, who held a monopoly on the day-to-day formulation and implementation of

public policy, could resist the proposals made by the executive councilors. As a result, the

real power of the political chief executive is surprisingly weak. As Zhang (2009, 315)

indicates, the present political system in Hong Kong “only has the pretense, but not the

substance, of an executive-led system”. Scott (2000) points out that, under the Basic Law

system, the executive, the legislative, and the chief executive bodies ceased to be as

effectively coordinated as before. Each of these political bodies pursues their own agendas,

which consequently impedes the coherence of post-handover politics and smooth

implementation of public policy.

The Macau SAR government faces different problems in maintaining effective governance

under “one country, two systems”. Macau has a different legal tradition than does Hong

Kong, which has adopted a common law system, the most distinguishing hallmark of which

is reliance on a system of case precedent, not restricted to judicial decisions generated within

any single jurisdiction, but relying on case law from all jurisdictions throughout the common

law world. Under this system, each case serves as a precedent for subsequent cases. Macau,

however, has adopted the continental law system, under which the laws are written into a

collection, codified, and, in short, not determined by judges (Zhuang 2009). Hence, in Macau,

a crucial task during the political transition period was to localize the pre-handover legal and

judicial system. The localization issues mainly include the training of legal experts and

judges to replace Portuguese expatriates and translation of the written laws and decrees into

Chinese (Edmonds and Yee 1999, 812; Luo 2009).

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The Basic Law stipulates that both Chinese and Portuguese are official languages in

Macau’s legal and judicial system. Some scholars argue that an effective localization of the

legal and judicial system can only be implemented if Chinese is properly strengthened in

these spheres. Emphasizing the double-language legislation prevents outstanding talents who

have received domestic or overseas education but know little Portuguese from serving in the

legal and judicial system. In addition, such a system has implementation problems in a

territory where more than 95% of Macau’s population consists of native Chinese speakers.

For example, Zhu (2007) argues that Article 87 of Macau Basic Law stipulates that judges

should be selected based on their professional qualifications. Foreigners can also be

employed if they are professionally qualified. This stipulation actually restricts the use of

Chinese as an official language in judicial trials because most foreign judges do not

understand Chinese. However, such stipulations deprive litigants of the “right to know” in

trials, because most litigants understand little Portuguese.

The rebuttal viewpoint is that the double-language legislation should be promoted and the

need for reform requires the training of talents who know both Chinese and Portuguese. Guan

(2006) argues that since Macau’s legal system is derived from the Portuguese system, radical

changes in the legal system, even a simple literal translation of the Portuguese legal texts into

Chinese, may damage the established legal traditions preserved for a century in Macau. The

double-language legislation takes into consideration the benefit of the Portuguese

descendants living in Macau and is an expression of Macau’s distinctive local cultural

features. In this regard, the use of Portuguese in the legal system is important to guarantee the

equal rights of Macau’s residents without discrimination.

Localization of the legal system also includes revising and tailoring Macau’s major

codification in accordance with the Basic Law. By 1999 the localization of Macau’s five

major codifications—namely, the Civil Code, the Commercial Code, the Civil Procedure

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Code, the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code—and a number of important decrees

such as the Decree of Asset Registration was completed. Studies in our database discuss a

wide range of issues on the design and implementation of these codifications, laws and

decrees during the ten years after the handover. Examples abound and include interpreting

the major features of the localized codifications (Jiang 1999; He 2008; Su 2002; Deng 2007),

making comparisons with the same laws implemented in Portugal or Mainland China (Zeng

1999; He 2007; Liu and Zhu 2002), and examining values underlying the laws (Wang 2006;

Zhao 2007).

Democratization

Democratization is a hot topic in studies of public administration in Hong Kong but attracts

little attention in Macau. In the case of Hong Kong, many scholars argue that the electoral

system established under the Basic Law severely weakens the competitive edge of the

democrats in the Legislative Council and impedes democratization in Hong Kong (Ma 2001;

Lau and Kuan 2000 & 2002; Cheng 2001; So 2000; Ma and Choy 1999; Ho 1999; Kwok

2006; Sing 2009). According to the Basic Law, members of the Legislative Council are

elected by a proportional representation system. Under this system, most members of the

Legislative Council are chosen in indirect elections by functional constituencies, professional

groups, or the Election Committee, whereas the number of members directly elected by the

people constitutes only one third of the seats in 1998, with a gradual growth to half of the

seats in 2008. Such electoral rules have led to a new balance of power among major political

parties in Hong Kong—the pro-China parties can obtain more seats than the pro-democracy

parties. The election results of the 1st Legislature Council in 1998, 2nd in 2000, 3rd in 2004

and 4th in 2008 show that the pro-democracy parties have faced profound challenges to

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winning the majority seats of the Legislative Council and promoting democratization in Hong

Kong (Ma 2001).

In addition, the electoral system leads to the fragmentation of the legislature and thus

constrains its capacity to formulate alternative policies. The large number of functional

constituency and professional group seats combined with those allocated to the Election

Committee prevents any party with widespread general popularity from obtaining a

legislative majority. Instead, the major political parties all become sizable minorities that

exercises veto power. Either the functional group or the direct election/election committee

group can still veto any bill, amendment, or motion, which receives support from a majority

of the members of the Legislature Council. The ultimate decision rests, as always, in the

hands of the executive branch and the sovereign master in Beijing. Even though the number

of directly elected seats has increased gradually over time, with a weakened legislature it is

still difficult for popular demands to be effectively translated into government policies.

By contrast, public administration studies in Macau are less enthusiastic in discussing

democratization issues. One important reason for this is that in Macau, it is the social

organizations (shetuan) rather than the political parties that play a dominant role in political

affairs (i.e., the Chinese Chamber of Commerce). Party politics is absent in Macau. Instead,

since the handover, the Macau SAR government relies on the social organizations to maintain

effective governance, which consequently strengthens the role of the social organizations in

political participation and policy advisory. The social organizations do not compete for

political power through election, however, but tend to cooperate with the government in order

to gain protection of the interests of the groups they represent (Lou 2004 & 2009). In this

regard, Macau’s post-handover politics can be perceived as a “strong state corporatism”

under which the state-society relationship is not confrontation, but cooperation (Pan 2009).

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A typical example is the electoral system. Macau has also adopted a proportional

representation system to elect members of the Legislative Council. Most members are

indirectly elected by social organizations on the basis of functional constituencies (Lin 2008;

Lou 2006). The social organizations also have influence on direct election of the members of

the Legislative Council. According to the Basic Law, the candidates directly elected by

popular votes must be nominated by a “Nomination Committee”, which is usually supported

by powerful social organizations. In addition, most members of the Election Committee that

elects the Chief Executive of Macau are also indirectly elected by social organizations that

represent different functional constituencies. Delegates of the Election Committee must come

from a specific functional constituency and must be supported by a social organization that

satisfies certain voting qualifications within the constituency. As Lou (2006, 475) says,

Macau’s post-handover politics is by nature a “politics of the social organizations”, which

has two main features: the absence of political associations and a system of

Election/Nomination Committees supported by powerful social organizations.

Transformation Path

Studies show that while Hong Kong is in transition from an “administrative state” to a “neo-

administrative state” that has politicized the top levels of the civil service, the “administrative

state” is just beginning to take shape in Macau. Hong Kong has long been depicted as an

“administrative state” in which the civil service is insulated from political and societal forces

and enjoys a stable pattern of growth in rewards and status, but this bureaucratic model came

into question after 1997 when the SAR governments failed to respond efficiently to a series

of social and economic problems. Consequently, there are growing demands for a more

economical, accountable, and responsive civil service as well as a more effective and

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accountable political executive. The then Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa attempted to

respond to these demands by introducing a new accountability system in 2002 (the Principal

Official Accountability System) (Chan 2003). Under this system, all policy secretaries are

now politically appointed and are expected to be responsible for their policy. These political

officials will be directly accountable to the Chief Executive and are in charge of political

work. In 2008, the current Chief Executive Donald Tsang introduced two more layers of

political appointees under the Principal Official Accountability System to help strengthen the

political tiers (Cheung 2009; Lam 2009). These moves, as Chan (2003, 413) points out,

restrict Hong Kong’s civil service to an assisting or subsidiary role, thus heralding the end of

the domination of the civil service on Hong Kong’s political stage. A team of political

leadership headed by the Chief Executive and manned by full-time politicians displaces the

civil servants to take center stage in Hong Kong.

In contrast, Macau is steering towards an “administrative state”. The Chief Executive of

Macau is more powerful than his counterpart in Hong Kong. He is not only the head of the

government, but also the highest officer of the special administrative region. He has the

power to nominate some members of the Legislative Council, reject the bills approved by the

Legislative Council and even dismiss the Legislative Council. Although the Chief Executive

of Macau is not affiliated with a specific political association or social organization, he could

still obtain the support of the majority legislature under the nomination system. As such,

Macau has a de facto strong executive-led government (Zhan 2005; Wang 2005).

The executive-led political system provides an institutional guarantee to maintain

sociopolitical stability and promote economic development (Wang 2005; Zhuang 2009; Wu

and Lin 2009). After the handover, the central focus of the first Macau SAR government was

to stimulate the stagnating economy. In 2002, the government liberalized its pillar industry,

gambling, in order to increase economic vitality. Its main intent was to break the monopolist

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operation of casinos, expand the right to manage casinos, and introduce competition to the

gambling industry. This measure has successfully increased the casino managers’ incentives

to improve services and enlarge investments. The rapid growth of the gambling industry has

consequently led to the revival of a prosperous tourism industry and a recovery of the entire

economy (Monteiro 2009; Pessanha 2007). The successful economic transition illustrates that

the Macau SAR government, managed by a group of administrative elites, has high public

credibility and governing authority. An administrative state is nascent.

Conclusion

This article examines the quality, content, and character, of public administration studies in

Hong Kong and Macau published over the past decade. It demonstrates several features of the

published articles: First, generally speaking, the quality of studies in Hong Kong is better

than those in Macau because they are more rigorous in the methodologies employed and

more engaged in testing and building theories. Second, in both Hong Kong and Macau, a

significant portion of studies is descriptive. This implies that studies on public administration

in Hong Kong and Macau are largely at the phase of describing the problems, phenomena,

and observations. More exploratory and explanatory studies are needed to consider new ideas

and build theories in the field. Third, there is a severe lack of empirical studies on public

administration in Macau, which impedes better understanding of scenarios in the real world.

Although practitioners contribute one third of the articles in Macau, their studies mainly

describe government structure, policies and systems. They are barely engaged in analyzing

the problems caused by government policies and, more importantly, in explaining the gap

between theory and practice. Fourth, public administration articles in Macau create a

relatively “closed” discussion. They tend not to compare Macau’s domestic problems with

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those of other East Asian countries/regions (except Hong Kong). The lack of comparative

studies published in English journals prevents exchange of ideas in the field, such as what

lessons can be learned from Macau’s experience as a transitional economy in an East Asian

cultural background.

This paper also illustrates three critical issues central to the discussion of public

administration in Hong Kong and Macau over the past decade. It shows that the same

experiment of “one country, two systems” has resulted in different obstacles to effective

governance in the two SARs, which pushed them to adopt different solutions and take

different transitional trajectories. In fact, Hong Kong and Macau started from different

historical points in experimenting with “one country, two systems”. By 1997 Hong Kong had

developed a relatively advanced capitalist industrial system and is ranked as one of the

world’s most liberalized economic and competitive regions. In this context, since the

handover the citizens of Hong Kong stress the “continuity” of the merits of the previous

system. In contrast, the Portugese colonial government in Macau before the handover had

performed badly. When Macau returned to China, the territory faced serious socioeconomic

problems that required the government to take immediate action. Accordingly, citizens of

Macau expect to see “changes” from the previous system. As a result, a small governing

problem in Hong Kong may become a significant political issue, whereas a small

achievement in Macau may be considered a great success (Qi 2005, 911).

The points of departure and institutional legacies of the two city-states determine the paths

of their post-handover transition under the same “one country, two systems” principle. Hong

Kong’s disarticulated and fractured political system after the handover requires the Chief

Executive to enforce a top-down politicization of the highest levels of the civil service in

order to increase coherence in policy implementation. Yet under the framework of the Basic

Law, such measures are only an expedient remedy within the existing power structure and

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make no fundamental changes to bureaucratic traditions of rule (Painter 2005). In Macau, a

more traditional executive-led system is favored as it ensures effective coordination between

the executive and the legislature and establishes trust between the Macau SAR government

and the Chinese central government (Zhuang 2009). With no need to worry about

“quarrelling” with the Legislative Council, the Chief Executive and his civil service

bureaucracy can concentrate their efforts on implementing reforms that promote good

governance beneficial to the Macau people. Hence, the executive-led political system is

viewed as a “political advantage” in Macau’s development and an essential part of the

emerging “Macau Model” (Qi 2005). Ten years after the reversion of the two city-states, the

one formula instituted by Beijing has led to two contrastingly different experiences in Hong

Kong and Macau. Divergences are more profound than convergences.

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___________. 2008. Implementation Procedure System of the Macau Civil Procedure Code.

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  21

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  22

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  24

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Table 1:

Journals that Published Articles on Public Administration in Hong Kong

No. Journal Number of Articles 1 Issues & Studies 13 2 The China Quarterly 12 3 Asian Survey 9 4 The Pacific Review 5 5 Social Policy and Administration 5 6 International Review of Administrative Sciences 4 7 Public Administration and Development 4 8 Public Administration Review 4 9 The Policy Press 4 10 The China Review 4 11 The Journal of Contemporary Asia 4 12 The Australian Journal of Public Administration 3 13 Government & Opposition 3 14 Journal of Democracy 3 15 Current History 3 16 Public Management Review 2 17 Contemporary Economic Policy 2 18 Journal of Social Policy 2 19 Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 2 20 Governance 2 21 Environment and Planning 2 22 Electoral Studies 2 23 The Political Studies 1 24 Administration & Society 1 25 Problems of Post-Communism 1 26 Modern Asian Studies 1 27 Political Psychology 1 28 The Journal of Asian Studies 1 29 The China Journal 1 30 The International Journal of Conflict Management 1 31 Japanese Journal of Political Science 1 32 Asian Journal of Social Science 1 33 Public Choice 1 34 Critical Asian Studies 1 35 Modern China 1 36 Party Politics 1 37 Political Geography 1 38 Review of International Political Economy 1 39 International Journal of Press/Politics 1 40 Political Quarterly 1 41 The Analysis of the American Academy of Political

and Social Science 1

 

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Table 2:

Topics of Public Administration Researches in Hong Kong and Macau

Hong Kong Macau Topics No. % No. %

Accountability 3 2.60 0 0.00 Collaboration/coordination/networking 4 3.48 9 3.80 Privatization 1 0.87 0 0.00 Corruption 2 1.74 3 1.69 Development 8 6.96 32 13.92 Disaster management 0 0.00 2 0.84 E-government 0 0.00 4 1.69 Environmental policy 0 0.00 0 0.00 Foreign policy 3 2.60 8 3.38 Governance 7 6.09 14 5.49 Human resource management 1 0.87 17 7.17 Management reform 9 8.70 12 5.49 Performance management 5 4.35 5 2.11 Public finance 2 1.73 4 2.11 Regulation 4 3.48 5 3.80 Social policy 11 9.57 32 13.92 Political system development 33 29.57 9 3.80 Legal affairs 0 0.00 63 28.27 Media 4 3.48 0 0.00 Identity 5 4.35 0 0.00 Other 11 9.57 4 2.53 Total 113 100.01 223 100.01  

 

 

 

 

 

  27

Table 3: Country Bases of Authors

(At the Time the Article Was Published)

Hong Kong Macau

Countries Number of the Author

Countries Number of the Author

Hong Kong 68 Macau 118 U.S. 13 Hong Kong 7 UK 7 Mainland China 44

Canada 3 Taiwan 5 Taiwan 3 Portugal 7

Australia 2 UK 1 Japan 2

Singapore 1 Mainland

China 1

Northern Ireland

1

Portugal 1 India 1 Total 103 Total 182

 

Figure 1: Ratio of Comparative Studies in Hong Kong and Macau

  28

  29

Table 4: Department of Authors

(At the Time the Article Was Published)

Hong Kong Macau Department/School Number of Author Number of Author Pub.adm/affairs/policy/government 25 56 Political science/Intel relation 24 8 Social Science 20 14 Planning/development 2 14 Business adm/management 7 4 Environment 1 2 Economics 3 9 Education 1 5 Public Health 1 3 Geography 2 42 Journalism 4 1 Others 11 19 Total 101 177

Figure 2: Study Trend in Hong Kong in Terms of Distribution of Topics

(1999-2009)

 

  30

Figure 3: Study Trend in Macau in Terms of Distribution of Topics

(1999-2009)

 

  31

 

 

Figure 4: Purposes of the Collected Articles

 

 

  32

Figure 5: Style of the Collected Articles 

 

 

 

 

  33

 

Figure 6: Articles with Theoretical Discussion

 

 

  34

  35

Table 5: Methodologies Employed by the Collected Articles

Method No. (Hong Kong) No. (Macau) Review of secondary sources 78 1 Qualitative method 14 2 Quantitative method 8 148

Single method Total 100 151

Review of secondary sources/Qualitative

9 1

Review of secondary sources/Quantitative

2 1

Qualitative/Quantitative 2 0

Combine method

Total 13 2 No clear statement of method 0 70 Total 113 223

Figure 7: Method Employed by Studies Using Single Method

  36

 

Figure 8: Time Span of the Collected Articles

 

  37