Contradictions in the development of citizenship in Hong Kong: Governance without democracy

Asian Survey

Volumn 49, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 505-527

  Ku, Agnes Shuk Mei ^a,b  

^a HONG KONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY   (Hong Kong)

^b YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Citizenship; Civil society; Democratic governance; Hong Kong

Indexed keywords

CITIZENSHIP; CIVIL SOCIETY; DEMOCRACY; DEMOCRATIZATION; GOVERNANCE APPROACH; STRATEGIC APPROACH;

ASIA; CHINA; EURASIA; FAR EAST; HONG KONG;

EID: 67649995598     PISSN: 00044687     EISSN: 1533838X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/as.2009.49.3.505     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. T. H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [1950] 1992).
2. Peter Evans, "The State as Problem and Solution: Predation, Embedded Autonomy, and Structural Change," in The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributive Conflicts, and the State, eds. Stephan Haggard and Robert Kaufman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 139-81.
3. See also Bob Jessop, State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in Their Places (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990)
4. Bob Jessop, "The Changing Governance of Welfare: Recent Trends in Its Primary Functions, Scale, and Modes of Coordination," Social Policy and Administration 33:4 (1999), pp. 348-59.
5. Anthony Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory (London: Macmillan, 1982).
6. See also Bob Jessop, "Capitalism and Democracy: The Best Possible Shell?" in Power and the State, eds. Gary Littlejohn, Barry Smart, John Wakeford, and Nira Yuval-Davis (London: Croom Helm, 1978)
7. and Michael Mann, "Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship," Sociology 21 (August 1987), pp. 339-54.
8. Bryan Turner, "Outline of a Theory of Citizenship," Sociology 24:2 (May 1990), pp. 189-217.
9. Yet, as Bottomore qualifies, Marshall's principal concern is more about the impact of citizenship on social classes rather than the reverse. See Tom Bottomore, "Citizenship and Social Class, Forty Years On," in Citizenship and Social Class, Thomas Humphrey Marshall and Tom Bottomore (London: Pluto Perspectives, 1992), pp. 55-93.
10. Ibid.
11. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays, p. 21.
12. Antonin Wagner, "Redefi ning Citizenship for the 21st Century: From the National Welfare State to the U.N. Global Compact," International Journal of Social Welfare 13:4 (August 2004), pp. 278-86.
13. Gerard Delanty, Citizenship in a Global Age: Society, Culture, Politics (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000).
14. Klaus Eder, The New Politics of Class: Social Movements and Cultural Dynamics in Advanced Societies (London: Sage, 1993).
15. See Delanty, Citizenship in a Global Age, p. 47.
16. Kwok-Leung Ho, "Citizenship as a Form of Governance: A Historical Overview," in Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation, and the Global City, eds. Agnes S. Ku and Ngai Pun (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 19-36.
17. See also Catherine Jones, Promoting Prosperity: The Hong Kong Way of Social Policy (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1990)
18. Ku and Pun (eds.), Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong
19. McLaughlin Eugene, "Hong Kong: A Residual Welfare Regime," in Comparing Welfare States: Britain in International Context, eds. Allan Cochrane, John Clarke, and Sharon Gewirtz (London: Sage, 2001), pp. 105-40.
20. Matthew Turner and Irene Ngan (eds.), Hong Kong Sixties: Designing Identity (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Center, 1995).
21. Norman Miners, The Government and Politics of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1998).
22. Agnes S. Ku, Narratives, Politics, and the Public Sphere: Struggles over Political Reform in the Final Transitional Years in Hong Kong (1992-94) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999).
23. See ibid.
24. and M. Sing, Hong Kong's Tortuous Democratization: A Comparative Analysis (London: Routledge, 2004).
25. Grace O. M. Lee, "A De-capacitated State? Systemic Constraints on Governance in Hong Kong," in Governance and Public Sector Reform in Asia, eds. Anthony B. L. Cheung and Ian Scott (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 117-37.
26. Anthony B. L. Cheung, "New Interventionism in the Making: Interpreting State Interventions in Hong Kong after the Change of Sovereignty," Journal of Contemporary China 9:24 (July 2000), pp. 291-308.
27. Anthony B. L. Cheung and Ian Scott, "Governance and Public Sector Reforms in Asia: Paradigms, Paradoxes, and Dilemmas," in Cheung and Scott, eds., Governance and Public Sector Reforms in Asia, pp. 1-24.
28. A study by the Census and Statistics Department in June 2007 showed that Hong Kong's Gini coefficient rose from 0.483 in 1996 to 0.500 in 2006, which was higher than that of the developed countries.
29. See Anthony B. L. Cheung, "New Interventionism in the Making," pp. 291-308.
30. For instance, in 2007, the wage level of the lower quartile of the overall wage distribution was HK$ 7,147 (around US$920), which was 29% lower than the median wage level of HK$ 10,123 (around US$1,300). See the Report of the Commission on Poverty on its website.
31. By 2006, the government began to pay some attention to the issue of minimum wage, especially for security guards and cleaners. A major concern was that an exceedingly low wage might induce more people to turn to unemployment and live on social security benefi ts as a better alternative to work.
32. Tung set up such high-level commissions as the Commission on Strategic Development and the Commission on Innovation and Technology, and created a $5 billion Innovation and Technology Fund; he also set up a special task of experts, economists, and trade unionists to look into issues of employment and unemployment amid economic downturn.
33. Ku and Pun (eds.), Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong.
34. Ian Scott, "The Disarticulation of Hong Kong's Post-Handover Political System," China Journal 43 (January 2000), pp. 29-53.
35. Agnes S. Ku, "Negotiating the Space of Civil Autonomy in Hong Kong: Power, Discourses, and Dramaturgical Representations," China Quarterly 179 (September 2004), pp. 647-64.
36. In June 1997, the government tabled an Independent Police Complaints Council Bill that intended to give a police watchdog statutory powers. However, it suddenly withdrew the bill before its third and fi nal reading, and this has left the police with minimally monitored power until today.
37. For example, before 1995 the Public Order Ordinance required organizers to get a license for public assembly. In 1995, as part of the liberalization of law under the effect of the Bill of Rights, the law was relaxed to remove the requirement for a license. Then in 1997, the provisional legislature amended the law to include a requirement for a notice of no-objection from the police.
38. Agnes S. Ku and Clarence Tsui, "The 'Global City' as a Cultural Project: The Case of the West Kowloon Cultural District," in Hong Kong Mobile: Making a Global Population, eds. Helen Siu and Agnes Ku (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009).
39. Yiu-Wai Chu, "The Donaldization of Hong Kong Society," presented at the conference on Contemporary Asian Modernities: Transnationality, Interculturality and Hybridity, Hong Kong Baptist University, September 2006.
40. There has been widespread criticism of several key aspects of the appointments, namely, the nationality and experience of the appointees, their salaries, and the transparency of the recruitment process.
41. See .
42. Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, The 1998 Policy Address [from the Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa], at , 1998.
43. Agnes Ku and Clarence Tsui, "The 'Global City' as a Cultural Project."
44. See People's Panel on West Kowloon, .
45. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, "Deepening Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance," Politics and Society 29:1 (March 2001), pp. 5-41.
46. See also Klaus Eder, "Social Movement Organizations and the Democratic Order: Reorganizing the Social Basis of Political Citizenship in Complex Societies," in Citizenship, Markets, and the State, eds. Colin Crouch, Klaus Eder, and Damian Tambini (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 213-37
47. Robert Edward Goodwin, "Democratic Accountability: The Distinctiveness of the Third Sector," Archives Europeennes de Sociologie 44:3 (2003), pp. 359-96
48. Bob Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002).
49. Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State.
50. Goodwin, "Democratic Accountability," pp. 359-96.
51. Ibid., p. 360.
52. Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, "Deepening Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance," Politics and Society 29:1 (March 2001), pp. 5-41.
53. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press [1962] 1989).
54. Eder, "Social Movement Organizations and the Democratic Order," in Citizenship, Markets, and the State, eds. Crouch, Eder, and Tambini, p. 220.