The Government and Statutory Bodies in Hong Kong: Centralization and Autonomy

Ian Scott

Public Organization Review, 2006, vol. 6, issue 3, 185-202

Abstract: Over the past decade in Hong Kong, the relationship and accountability of statutory bodies to core government, to the legislature, and to the broader public have been the subject of continuing and, as yet, unresolved debate. Faced with scandals and other serious problems in a number of the major statutory bodies, and in the context of its own problems of lack of political support and legitimacy, the Tung administration tended to reduce the autonomy of the statutory bodies by increasing central control and integrating their functions with those of core government. Legislators have seen the problems of statutory bodies from a rather different perspective, arguing that they result from a lack of accountability and transparency. The government’s eventual concession to the need for reform has resulted, since 2003, in a review of the principles governing the work of all advisory and statutory bodies and of specific statutory bodies which have experienced serious problems. This article examines the principles contained in the review and assesses whether they are likely to lead to increased autonomy and improvements in governance standards. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2006

Keywords: Autonomy; Integration; Centralization; Accountability; Transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11115-006-0012-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:porgrv:v:6:y:2006:i:3:p:185-202

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11115/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11115-006-0012-1

Access Statistics for this article

Public Organization Review is currently edited by Ali Farazmand

More articles in Public Organization Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().