Constitutions are definitive, legally-binding accounts of the rules and principles that govern polities. They describe the powers and functions of the major executive, legislative, judicial and administrative institutions and delineate relationships between them. They provide the authority for the decisions of the government and help to legitimate the way in which power is exercised. They often specify how government is to be controlled and the mechanisms through which the executive authorities are to be held accountable by the legislature and by the people. They may reflect the aspirations and values of the people and help to protect their civil liberties...

The test of whether a government is politically accountable is not whether the system is representative or democratic but whether external bodies, be they voters, legislatures or a superior level of government, have the power to impose sanctions on office-holders in the event of unsatisfactory performance.¹ Judged by this criterion, the Hong Kong government is accountable to the government of the People’s Republic of China and Principal Officials are accountable to the Chief Executive. But the Chief Executive and Principal Officials are only very weakly accountable to the Legislative Council and the voting public. Voters cannot remove the government. And...

The Basic Law provides only a general framework for the organisation of the Hong Kong government and has even less to say about the public sector beyond the civil service. Article 48 does specify that the Chief Executive shall lead the government and may appoint judges and holders of public office and Article 62 empowers the government to conduct administrative affairs. Some departments, such as the Police, Immigration, and Customs and Excise, are mentioned in the Basic Law and it is stipulated that there shall be a Commission against Corruption and an Audit Commission, but there is no description of...

New public management is the name given to the range of public sector reforms that have been adopted around the world with the aim of reducing the size and cost of the public service, encouraging greater interchange of personnel between the public and private sectors, introducing more private sector practices, and divesting government of assets and activities that are no longer considered to be essential or cost-effective. These broad features of the reforms may be interpreted in very different ways, depending on specific political, economic and social circumstances. New public management does not offer a single road map to a...

Although public sector reform in Hong Kong has focused principally on reducing the size of the civil service, on the pay determination process and on cutting salaries, senior officials have frequently expressed the view that the public sector can benefit from greater entrepreneurialism, more private sector practices in the workplace, and more devolution of government functions to statutory bodies or subvented organisations. These are not new ideas. During the colonial administration, social policy outputs were initially mainly provided by churches and by charitable and subvented organisations. When the government became more involved in social policy, it created large statutory organisations,...

One criterion that can be used to evaluate the performance of governments is their ability to formulate and implement sound policies which will deliver collective benefits as efficiently, effectively and economically as possible. Our definition of public policy as:

A set of inter-related decisions taken by a political actor or group of actors concerning the selection of goals and the means of achieving them within a specified situation when these should, in principle, be within the power of these actors to achieve¹

suggests that it is possible to meet that criterion. But it is also quite possible that the government...

Definitions of policy are often recognised to be inadequate to cover the range of practical and analytical difficulties that the term encompasses.¹ Policy may involve debates over values, establishing an agenda to determine priorities, consultation with the public, negotiations between politicians and stakeholders, and deciding authoritatively on which course of action should be followed. It will also involve the use of state power, interactions between institutions and organisations, both inside and outside the governmental structure, strategies to ensure successful implementation, assessments of the impact of the policy on citizens and much more besides. It is difficult to find a definition...

In the previous two chapters, our attention was primarily focused on problems associated with budgeting and with policy formulation. Traditional policy-making models tend to assume that, if financial resources are available, if policy is properly formulated, and if appropriate organisations are in place to achieve the intended objectives, the actual process of implementation should be unproblematic.¹ In practice, this assumption is clearly not tenable. Many problems may prevent the realisation of policy objectives: communication between the policy-makers and implementers may be inadequate, objectives may be imprecisely stated, the means chosen to implement the policy may be inappropriate or those affected...

What do people expect of their government? How does the government seek to meet those expectations? For any government that is not solely based on the coercive power of the state, these are important questions. In Hong Kong, where the government cannot be removed by elections and where there are few other justifications for its continuing rule, the ability to respond to the people’s needs and expectations is critical. Both the colonial and the post-handover regimes have rested their claims to rule on performance legitimacy, the belief that if the government meets expectations and delivers the public goods and services...

A regime with a legitimacy deficit may ease its problems by conceding rights to citizens to protect them against illegal action by the government, by dealing with complaints against the unacceptable or corrupt behaviour of its public officials, and by providing channels for the redress of individual grievances about unfair or arbitrary administrative decisions. If recognition of citizens’ rights and complaint-handling and redress systems become institutionalised as part of the political system, they may compensate to some extent for the absence of democratic legitimation. It is sometimes said that Hong Kong people have freedom but that they do not have...

It is not easy to govern Hong Kong. Aside from the overarching problem of the relationship between the government and its people, there are many specific constitutional, organisational and policy issues which affect the way in which the public sector works. The Basic Law does not function in accordance with its central precept: the executive cannot “lead” and provide “strong governance” because it is constrained by a civil society which is often less than convinced that the government is acting in its best interests. Relationships between the executive and the legislature have still not been sufficiently delineated. There is no...