Public Administration in Hong Kong: Dynamics of Reform and Executive-Led Public Policy

This book looks at the relationship between politicians and bureaucrats in policy making and the factors that account for variation in such relationships by looking at regime change and governance reform. It uses Hong Kong as a case study to illustrate the impact of these changes.

The book examines the political-administrative dynamics of the reform of an executive-led policy advisory system in a hybrid regime nested in an authoritarian political system. It identifies three strategies that political executives use to counter civil servants’ contestations against political control in complex and changing social-economic contexts. The book demonstrates that political-administrative dichotomy can be adapted to transcend internal-external government boundaries, and captures the political-technical dimensions of policy advice content. It concludes that bureaucrats no longer dominate policymaking under the new governance arrangement.

The findings of the book will be useful for public administration reformers to acquire knowledge of the actors, processes and structure of policy processes and policy advisory systems that span multiple levels of jurisdictions (beyond Hong Kong), so that they may design reforms and foresee their impacts.