Lingnan University Digital Commons @ Lingnan University Theses & Dissertations Department of Political Sciences 2014 The politics of crisis management in post-1997 Hong Kong : a state-society interactive framework Hin Yeung CHAN Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.ln.edu.hk/pol_etd Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Chan, H. Y. (2014). The politics of crisis management in post-1997 Hong Kong: A state-society interactive framework (Doctoral dissertation, Lingnan University, Hong Kong). Retrieved from http://commons.ln.edu.hk/pol_etd/13 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Political Sciences at Digital Commons @ Lingnan University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Lingnan University. Terms of Use The copyright of this thesis is owned by its author. Any reproduction, adaptation, distribution or dissemination of this thesis without express authorization is strictly prohibited. All rights reserved. THE POLITICS OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN POST-1997 HONG KONG: A STATE-SOCIETY INTERACTIVE FRAMEWORK CHAN HIN YEUNG PHD LINGNAN UNIVERSITY 2014 THE POLITICS OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN POST-1997 HONG KONG: A STATE-SOCIETY INTERACTIVE FRAMEWORK by CHAN Hin Yeung A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Sciences (Political Science) Lingnan University 2014 ABSTRACT The Politics of Crisis Management in Post-1997 Hong Kong: A State-society Interactive Framework by CHAN Hin Yeung Doctor of Philosophy Most studies and research on crisis management and government crises put their focus on advanced, democratic nations, where governments have to bear the responsibility of handling of a crisis through elections. However, relatively little attention has been given on the consequences of crises, particularly governance crises, in regimes without full democracy. By using post-1997 Hong Kong, a liberal society with limited democracy, as an example, this thesis aims to examine the applicability of crisis management theories and models currently available, and to introduce an entirely new State-society Interactive Framework 1 to tackle their limitations. The Five Tasks Leadership Approach suggested by Boin, 't Hart and Stern, et al. (2005) and the Pattern of Politicization Approach of Brandstrom and Kuipers (2003), which respectively represents the top-down and bottom-up crisis management approaches, are selected as the analytical framework. This thesis begins with an application of these two approaches on an analysis of two noticeable crisis cases in post-1997 Hong Kong – the 1 July 2003 Demonstration and the Anti-High Speed Railway incident. Based on the results, this research found that the applicability of current theories and models derived from previous studies is restrictive in two aspects - First, the level of severity of the crises affects the validity of those studies. Hence, for the purpose of effective interpretation, only mega-crises are chosen for this thesis. Second, instead of explaining the incident, most of the current theories view crises as a clue for fault-finding in the aftermath, with little attention devoted to the development process. Drawing upon different approaches in the field, this thesis has developed a heuristic 1 A condensed version of this thesis - an article entitled “Crisis Politics in Authoritarian Regimes: How Crises Catalyse Changes under the State-society Interactive Framework” - was published in the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Volume 21, Issue 4, December 2013, pp. 200-210. Crisis Development Ladder and the State-society Interactive Framework more relevant for limited democracies, such as Hong Kong and Mainland China. The Crisis Development Ladder refers to the flow from crisis to governance crisis and from governance crisis to change. At each stage of this process, there are interactions between the Crisis Strengthening Forces and Weakening Forces. By focusing on the Catalytic Effect of Crisis that accelerates reforms and changes, this research argues that critical crisis is politically influential and decisive in authoritarian system with an increasingly proactive civil society. This research has illustrated the deliberation of developing a crisis-driven society as an alternative to influence decision-making under non-democratic rule with valid examples. The current result suggests that crises are far beyond unfavourable situations that challenge the legitimacy of the government. More importantly, in the context of Hong Kong as well as other non-democratic systems, crises provide opportunities to initiate political changes. The current political institution in Hong Kong makes it possible for the government to pay no heed to the wants of the general public. Thus, the cases explored in this thesis show how activists and those who are not involved in the decision-making process use crises as a catalyser to impose sufficient political influence to the government so as to force a real change under a closed political system. DECLARATION I declare that this is an original work based primarily on my own research, and I warrant that all citations of previous research, published or unpublished, have been duly acknowledged. _______________________ CHAN Hin Yeung Date: CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL OF THESIS THE POLITICS OF CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN POST-1997 HONG KONG: A STATE-SOCIETY INTERACTIVE FRAMEWORK by CHAN Hin Yeung Doctor of Philosophy Panel of Examiners: ____________________________ (Chairman) Prof Lok-sang HO ____________________________ (External Member) Dr Yin-hung Joan LEUNG ____________________________ (Internal Member) Prof Yiu-chung WONG ____________________________ (Internal Member) Dr Wai-keung TAM Chief Supervisor: Prof Yiu-chung WONG Co-supervisor: Dr Che-po CHAN Approved for the Senate: ______________________________________________ Prof Jesús SEADE Chairman, Postgraduate Studies Committee ______________________________________________ Date CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................... vi LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................. vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................. viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................... x CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................... 1 1.1 Background ..................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 Crisis and Crisis Management: An Overview .......................................... 2 1.1.2 Conceptualization: The Civil Society, State, and Government ................ 5 1.1.3 Hong Kong as a Sub-Sovereign State ...................................................... 8 1.2 The State-society Relationship in Post-1997 Hong Kong............................. 10 1.2.1 Hong Kong in Transformation ............................................................... 10 1.2.2 The Executive-led Government under Semi-democracy ....................... 11 1.2.3 Political Controversies and the Immature Party Politics........................ 15 1.2.4 Hong Kong-Central Government Relations ........................................... 17 1.2.5 The Corporatist Regime: Government-Business Relations ................... 20 1.2.6 A Vibrant Civil Society in the Post-1997 Hong Kong ........................... 21 1.2.7 Post-2003: the Crisis Provoking Politics and New Social Movement ... 24 1.2.8 Observations: Statistical Data on State-society Interactions .................. 27 1.3 Research Questions ....................................................................................... 32 1.4 Structure of the Thesis .................................................................................. 35 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................... 40 2.1 Theories on Crisis and Crisis Management .................................................. 41 2.1.1 Crisis: Definitions and Typologies ......................................................... 42 2.1.2 Two Dimensional Approaches in Crisis Management ........................... 50 2.1.3 Crisis Management: Alternative Models from the Management School 58 2.2 Issue-based Crisis Studies ............................................................................. 60 2.2.1 Political Scandal ..................................................................................... 61 2.2.2 Health Crisis: Man-facilitated Natural Disease...................................... 63 i 2.2.3 New Challenges to Crisis Management ................................................. 64 2.3 Crisis and Public Policy ................................................................................ 66 2.3.1 Policy Failure as Governance Crisis ...................................................... 66 2.3.2 Crisis Aftermath: Learning and Policy Change ..................................... 71 2.3.3 Summary ................................................................................................ 73 2.4 Media and the Politics of Crises.................................................................... 74 2.4.1 Crisis Communication: the Mediation and ‘Mediatization’ of Crises ... 75 2.5 Studying the Governance of Hong Kong .....................................................