Hong Kong is at the crossroad of East and West, not only in culture and heritage, but more interestingly, in evolving a governance system featured with the rule of law and separation of power but irrevocable financial and... [ view full abstract ]
Hong Kong is at the crossroad of East and West, not only in culture and heritage, but more interestingly, in evolving a governance system featured with the rule of law and separation of power but irrevocable financial and economic integration with China. Reforms in Hong Kong, being political, economic, or institutional, are always closely watched by China and the world as they have significant influences over the interpretation and future of so-called “One County Two System” that has been touted by China as success model for country unification but criticized by others as a way oppressing rights.
The past decades have witnessed a significant institutional development in Hong Kong. At first following traditional model from the British colonial government, Hong Kong has begun to develop its own distinctive model and process in governance after the handover event in 1997, especially in its resource allocation system. One key institutional development, an increasing independent legislature with growing voice of political dissents, has led to extended debates in the budgetary process in interacting with the bureaucrats, providing a research opportunity testing a classical problem in the public budgeting literature on how legislative funding outcomes are influenced by administrative budgetary strategies.
The literature establishes that legislative actions in budgetary allocation exercises are largely driven by political motives to serve political constituencies and reelection concerns, while professional administrators are inclined to prepare budget proposals with different sets of concerns that take into account of political, economic, financial, and technical considerations. The seemingly conflicting perspectives indicate the need to understand the role of administrators and the impact of their actions in legislative resource allocation decision-making.
The legislative debates on environmental spending proposals in Hong Kong provide a unique opportunity. With a legislature in Hong Kong that divides on spending philosophy and priorities, the bureaucrats are known to implement various strategies when facing increasing hurdles from legislators, including the threat of filibuster, in legislative proceedings. This study attempts to explore how the decisions are affected by budgetary strategies adopted by an administration in budget debates. Whether there are typical strategies working better for legislative outcome? The results of our research contributes to the development of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) which calls for a better understanding of institutional factors that affect the policy outcome of government agendas. We look into the budgetary process in institutions in which budgetary politics and administrative roles and strategies play in influencing legislative budgetary outcome.
A mixed method is adopted in this research. Based on overall environmental spending patterns, we conducted a quantitative spending analysis to identify major projects that cause spending fluctuations, followed by a qualitative analysis of cases and contents of environmental spending projects in which we examined government documents, legislative proceedings, and project statistics. The preliminary results show that administrators tend to use more strategies that demonstrate the good performance of proposals rather than those emphasize strong external stakeholder support. Furthermore, strategies of gaining support from Chief Executive Officer and demonstrating international competitiveness help a proposal reduce the approval time.
