Political Development in Hong Kong: State, Political Society, and Civil Society

摘要

Ma Ngok's book is the most up-to-date attempt to explain two fundamental research problems for Hong Kong: what has contributed to its governance crisis since 1997 and what to the futility of its democracy movement? Ma alleges that elite fragmentation, lack of a governing party, diversity of institutions, and built-in institutional checks have weakened the governing capacity of its government and, subsequently, engendered its governing crisis. Concerning the futility of the democracy movement, he rejects explanations relating Hong Kong's poor economic performance to continuing colonial legitimacy after the 1980s, and cites the absence of obvious support for democracy immediately after 1997 as evidence that economic performance was not a chief cause shaping support for democracy. Instead, he suggests the underdevelopment of political society is a crucial and "overlooked"rnfactor in accounting for the movement. This underdevelopment, he argues, made it hard to bridge the gap between state and civil society, channel public opinions, aggregate interests and mediate conflicts (p. 7). Given the underdevelopment of political parties and legislature, he claims, Hong Kong lacked institutionalized mechanisms to mollify conflicts between state and society, deepening the governance crisis of Hong Kong after the handover (pp. 7, 13).