Better civic engagement: how it can enhance the governance of Hong Kong

Abstract

The HKSAR Government has been experiencing great difficulties in governing the region since the handover of sovereignty in 1997. The weak governance is reflected by people’s distrust to the SAR Government and the failure of policy implementation. The underlining problems for the SAR Government are legitimacy and governance. Although the Principal Official Accountability System (POAS) was introduced in July 2002 by the first CE, TUNG Chee-hwa with a view to enhancing the accountability of the government, the legitimacy problem still remained because the ministers were appointed and directly responsible to the CE who had no electorate mandate. In short, people have no trust in the CE and the SAR Government that lacks legitimacy. The institutional arrangements are not expected to have significant changes until 2017 and 2020 when the CE and legislature are created by universal suffrage, if achieved as promised. While the lack of legitimacy remains, the SAR Government has to explore ways to resolve the problem of weak governance. Civic engagement is considered one of the remedies. The dissertation aims to examine the effectiveness of current civic engagement processes adopted by the SAR Government at different aspects and levels, and explore how the better civic engagement mechanisms can enhance the governance of Hong Kong.