Public Administration Research in Hong Kong and Macau

Abstract

The East Asian city-states of Hong Kong and Macau have followed different transitional trajectories after their return to China in the late 1990s under the political framework of “one country, two systems.” This article reviews the public administration research literature published in Hong Kong and Macau between 1999 and 2009 as a means of examining how public administration developed in the two city-states in the post-handover period and the ways in which those developments affected the study of public administration in the two jurisdictions. The review findings reveal differences between the two cities. In general, studies of Hong Kong are more engaged in testing and building theories, use rigorous methodologies, adopt a comparative outlook, and have received far better funding support than studies conducted in Macau. In Macau, the focus is different as the public administration community seeks to foster closer research-practice interaction between academicians and practitioners. However, in both communities, research studies are often descriptive. In conclusion, it is argued that more can be done to advance the study of public administration in these East Asian city-states.

Keywords

public administration research Hong Kong Macau East Asia

The nature of public administration research in the East Asian city-states of Hong Kong and Macau has rarely been studied.¹ This lack of research is a major obstacle to a good understanding of the contributions and shortcomings of the key ingredients of knowledge and theory development within the field (see White & Adams, 1994). Basic, important yet unaddressed questions include the following: Who has been conducting public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau? What topics are of interest to these researchers? What are the noteworthy issues reflected in these studies? What methodologies do these studies use, and what purposes do they serve? What might be done to advance the status of research in this field?

Public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau is examined in tandem because the same administrative model was adopted in both city-states. Both places were former colonies and became “special administrative regions” (SARs) of China in the late 1990s. Since then, the two SARs have been governed under the same political framework of “one country, two systems,” which let them retain their capitalist systems after reunification with socialist China. However, different points of departure and institutional legacies have led public administration in the two SARs to follow different trajectories, which has inevitably affected the growth of scholarship of public administration in the two jurisdictions. The aim of this article is to examine these points of departure and to review and understand the nature, form, and content of scholarly work in the two cities. This review will enhance our understanding of the divergent development of the public sector in the two SARs in this new era in their history.

The review encompasses scholarship that was published from 1999 to 2009, the first decade after the implementation of “one country, two systems.” This article commences by outlining the differing political and academic trajectories of the two cities to set the review in context. The data sources, coding objectives, and variables are then introduced. Following this, the major findings are presented, revealing that public administration studies in Hong Kong and Macau are substantially different in terms of research focus, author profiles, methodological rigor, and theoretical contributions to the field. In general, studies conducted in Hong Kong are more engaged in testing and building theories, use more rigorous methodologies, and have received far better funding support than those conducted in Macau. By comparison, public administration studies in Macau garner greater contributions from practitioners, and therefore there is closer interaction between research and practice in Macau than in Hong Kong. Studies in both city-states are largely dominated by descriptive research, rely on secondary resources, and utilize primary analytical methods. The conclusion summarizes the major contributions and shortcomings of public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau and suggests ways to improve the quality of research in the field.

Context

Hong Kong and Macau were colonies of Britain and Portugal, respectively. In the late 1990s, they returned to Chinese sovereignty as SARs. Leaders in China adopted the intriguing principle of “one country, two systems” to govern the two regions. This principle permits Hong Kong and Macau to retain their capitalist economic system and largely to govern themselves for 50 years after their return to China (Canning, 2001).

Despite the two SARs’ shared political context, the development of higher education and study of public administration in Hong Kong and Macau have followed different trajectories that reflect their different points of departure and institutional legacies. According to Peter A. B. L. Cheung (2005), in Hong Kong, public administration as a field of study took shape in the colonial period, signaled by the founding of the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1970. By the late 1990s, when Hong Kong returned to China, the six major local universities had established academic departments that taught a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate programs in public administration and management. A growing number of scholars with an international background joined the faculties of these departments and became the foundation upon which research in public administration in Hong Kong was built. Their extensive links with the overseas academic community was an important reason why a majority of their work was written in English and published in international refereed journals. In 1990, the Hong Kong Public Administration Association (HKPAA) was created. At that time, it recruited more than 200 members, including intellectual, academics, and professionals from the private and public sector, especially civil servants.

Meanwhile in the 1990s, the higher education system in Hong Kong experienced a rapid expansion as it became caught up in the global trend toward managing universities in accordance with the philosophy of marketization and managerialism. The shift from elite education to mass education caused rising public concern regarding the cost and quality of higher education. To ameliorate that concern, the Hong Kong SAR government launched a series of quality assurance activities in the 1990s. These activities

put rigorous emphasis on “academic” research in terms of articles published in international peer-reviewed journals and also the assessment relies heavily on this kind of publication as the sole indicator of quality. Articles or research outputs published in less well known, regional and even local journal publications as well as book chapters receive less recognition. (Mok, 2001, p. 306)

Academicians were thus further incentivized to publish in internationally indexed journals.

By comparison, Macau lagged behind in the development of higher education and the study of public administration. Macau did not have any institutions of higher education until the 1980s. The two most prestigious local universities—the University of Macau and the Macau Polytechnic Institute—were founded in 1981 and 1991, respectively. In the early 1990s, both universities began to teach subjects on public administration. The School of Public Administration of the Macau Polytechnic Institute, established in 1991, apparently has the longest history in building the discipline of public administration and political science in Macau. The Department of Government and Public Administration of Macau University was officially founded in the early 2000s, though before that, it had existed as a program under different names. Nonetheless, it has the largest faculty carrying out teaching and research in this field. The Faculty of Management and Administration of Macau University of Science and Technology was founded in 2000, but with a much smaller faculty specializing in public administration. At present, these are the three universities in Macau that have academic units devoted to public administration.

What is noteworthy is that civic associations play a very important role in promoting social science studies in Macau. In the mid-1980s, when the Chinese and the Portuguese governments began to discuss Macau’s handover, studies of social sciences received a growing attention. In 1986, the Macau Social Sciences Association was established as a civic academic association. Later that year, it published Macau’s first social science journal, titled Macau (haojing), which stated its mission as being to “study society, serve the local community, face society, and guide practice.” In 1993, to promote communication among scholars and students of public administration, the Macanese Association of Graduates in Public Administration was founded, and the next year, the Association of Law, Public Administration and Translation of Macau was established. These civic associations continue to play a dominant role, publishing a variety of local journals and promoting development of social sciences and the discipline of public administration.

According to Wu (2008), there are 129 academic associations on the subjects of humanities and social sciences in Macau by 2008. Among these, 58 have various types of publications, and 18 associations operate 19 journals, the most authoritative of which is Macau Studies. It is clear from this that an essential feature of the academic tradition in Macau is that research serves practice. Scholars do not focus on pure academic study alone; they also place a high priority on analyzing Macau’s socioeconomic problems and look for practical solutions to the problems of the city for the government. The journals receive funding from the government of Macau, and the civil associations that produce them are major forums in which academicians and practitioners can exchange ideas.

Data Sources

The divergence of the higher education systems and public administration discipline in Hong Kong and Macau has led to the majority of research in the two cities being written in different languages (English in Hong Kong and Chinese in Macau). A consequence of this is that data for this review derive from different sources, as described below.

Hong Kong

In the case of Hong Kong, a total of 168 journal articles were surveyed for this study. They came from three sources. The first is the Institute for Science Information’s (ISI) Web of Science (WOS) Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). This is a widely recognized database that indexes peer-review articles (see Corley & Sabharwal, 2010). As mentioned above, since the 1990s, the Hong Kong government has been urging local researchers to publish articles in international peer-reviewed journals. Consequently, the scholarly journals listed in the SSCI became major publication outlets for those working in the Hong Kong social science academy.

The SSCI thus becomes a good fit as this article focuses on journal articles. Data selection began with using “Hong Kong” as the topic to search for relevant articles listed in the SSCI database that were published from 1999 to 2009. A total of 4,778 results were found. Two subject areas defined by the WOS were used to zero in on appropriate articles: “public administration” (54 articles) and “political science” (62 articles). In addition, because journals on area studies (e.g., China Quarterly) often contain articles relevant for territory-based public administration studies, another two subject areas were picked: “area studies” (124 articles) and “Asian studies” (16 articles). The resultant articles were then reviewed and irrelevant articles were excluded, leaving 113 articles from 41 journals. A review of these 41 journals shows that from 1999 to 2009, the three area-focused journals publishing the most articles on public administration research in Hong Kong were Issues & Studies (13 articles), China Quarterly (12 articles) and Asian Survey (9 articles). Area studies journals suggest themselves as a very important source of publications for studies of public administration in Hong Kong.

The second and third sources were two Hong Kong-based peer-reviewed journals. The two journals were selected because they are the most important local platforms for discussing public administration development in Hong Kong. Hence, articles collected in these two journals are a valuable means of gaining a more complete picture of public administration research in Hong Kong. The first is The Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, published semiannually by the Department of Politics and Public Administration of the University of Hong Kong since 1979. Originally The Hong Kong Journal of Public Administration, it changed its name to The Asian Journal of Public Administration in 1983 and to its current title in 2004. The current title reflects the expansion of its research themes into the Asian Pacific area. With its relatively long history and good reputation, the journal is a leader in the field of public administration in Asia. From 1999 to 2009, it published a total of 131 articles, one fifth of which (n = 25) were related to public administration in Hong Kong.

The second journal is Public Administration and Policy: An Asia-Pacific Journal, which was published jointly by the Hong Kong Public Administration Association and the Department of Public and Social Administration at the City University of Hong Kong during the period of time under study. This journal was first launched in 1992 under the name Hong Kong Public Administration and took its current name in 1997. From 1992 to 2005,² it was published semiannually. The mission of the journal is to promote the integration of theories and practice of public administration and management in Hong Kong and other Asia Pacific regions. Of the 76 articles it published during 1999-2009, nearly half (n = 30) touch or focus on public administration in Hong Kong.

Macau

Data on public administration research in Macau were collected from two local journals that were selected because they represent the major body of journal articles on public administration research in Macau. The first is The Journal of Public Administration in Macau (Aomen gonggong xingzheng zazhi), a quarterly journal published in Chinese and Portuguese by the Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau of Macau SAR. It contains scholarly articles, practitioners’ notes, symposium pieces, and keynote speeches of conferences held in Macau. The second is Macau Studies (Aomen yanjiu), a journal published jointly by the Macau Foundation and the Center for Macau Studies of the University of Macau. Although Macau Studies publishes on a broad range of issues in social sciences, it has spent significant time on the development of public administration in Macau. A total of 500 articles published during the period 1999-2009 (223 from The Journal of Public Administration in Macau and 277 from Macau Studies) were collected.³

Coding

The collected articles were coded according to the protocol adopted across this symposium (Walker, Brewer, & Choi, 2014). The coding aims to achieve two general objectives. The first objective is to capture general characteristics of the articles and the authors, such as topic studied, number and affiliation of authors, funding patterns, and similar factors. The second objective is to assess the contributions the studies made to the development of a theoretically sound and useful body of knowledge in the discipline (see Houston & Delevan, 1994, p. 127). Coding variables include each article’s major purpose, research style, theoretical framework, methodology used, and time span.

Authors

The profiles of the authors of the collected articles reveal an interesting difference in the orientation of public administration studies in the two territories: Public administration research in Hong Kong is internationalized and dominated by the academicians. By comparison, studies in Macau have focused on city-based discussions and fostered a closer interaction between academicians and practitioners.

The difference is clearly reflected in the country bases and career status of the authors of the collected articles. Three points are noteworthy: divergence in internationality, contribution of practitioners, and participation of research students.

Internationality

The majority of the authors who study public administration in both city-states are local researchers, meaning that they were based in the territory at the time they wrote their article (see Table 1). Local researchers accounted for 62.1% of authors (n = 100) in the database of Hong Kong and 57.1% of authors (n = 280) in that of Macau. However, public administration in Hong Kong has triggered a much wider international discussion than the same topic in Macau. Most researchers (96.5%, n = 473) who studied public administration in Macau were based in Greater China (Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China). By comparison, the authors in the Hong Kong database are more international: Of the 161 authors, 20 (12.4%) come from North America (United States and Canada), 15 (9.3%) from European countries (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Northern Ireland), 17 (10.6%) from Asia (Taiwan, Macau, Singapore, Japan, mainland China, Brunei, and India), and 9 (5.6%) from Australia and New Zealand.

Table 1.

Country Bases of Authors (at the Time the Article Was Published).

Hong Kong		Macau
Region	Number of authors^a	Region	Number of authors^a
Hong Kong	100	Macau	280
Asia (Taiwan, Macau, Japan, Singapore, Brunei, India, and mainland China)	17	Hong Kong and Taiwan	18
North America (United States and Canada)	20	Mainland China	175
Europe (United Kingdom North Ireland and the Netherlands)	15	Portugal	8
Australia and New Zealand	9	Other European countries (United Kingdom and Germany)	9
Total	161	Total	490

Counting the same author who was based in the same place at the time they published different articles as one person, a total of 161 authors published the 168 articles in Hong Kong and 490 authors produced 500 articles in Macau. Local researchers account for 62.1% (n = 100) of authors in the database of Hong Kong and 57.1% (n = 280) in that of Macau.

These patterns of authorship are also reflected in the content of the comparative studies in the collected articles. Comparative studies constitute 28.6% (n = 48) of the 168 articles from Hong Kong and 22.4% (n = 112) of the 500 articles from Macau. However, although the percentage of comparative studies in the two databases is close, articles originating in Hong Kong compare public administration in Hong Kong with public administration in Western countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, or to public administration in other East Asian countries, such as Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Japan, whereas articles originating in Macau typically compare public administration in Macau with public administration in mainland China or Hong Kong.

Participation of Practitioners

Practitioners contributed significantly to studies in Macau but barely at all to those in Hong Kong (see Table 2). Among the 506 authors (including all collaborating authors) who penned studies in Macau, practitioners who work for government agencies, social organizations, and various foundations were a little less (26.1%, n = 132) than academicians (36.3%, n = 184). In contrast, only 8 of the 233 authors (3.4%) in the Hong Kong database were practitioners. An overwhelming majority (75.1%, n = 175) of the authors in Hong Kong are academics (professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and lecturers). One interpretation is that there is a substantial gap between research and practice in Hong Kong, and that studies in the field chiefly express the research interests of the academics.

Table 2.

Profiles of Authors.

	Hong Kong		Macau
Author profile	n	%	n	%
Academic faculty
Professor	65	27.9	66	13.0
Associate professor	63	27.0	50	9.9
Assistant professor	30	12.9	29	5.7
Lecturer	17	7.3	39	7.7
Researcher	35	15.0	29	5.7
Practitioner	8	3.4	132	26.1
Student
PhD	5	2.1	86	17.1
MA	1	0.4	47	9.3
BA	0	0	6	1.2
Other (i.e., columnists and writers)	9	3.9	22	4.3
Total^a	233	99.9	506	100

In order to accurately portray the contribution of authors with different portfolios in each article, the same author who had been counted in one article was recounted if she or he appeared in another article. As a result, the sample size of the authors in the database of Hong Kong and that of Macau is 233 and 506, respectively.

Participation of Research Students

Research students published more frequently in Macau than in Hong Kong (see Table 2). For example, 26.3% (n = 133) of the authors in the Macau database are PhD and MA students from the mainland China or Macau. Most of them published independently. By comparison, only six research students (five PhD students and one MA student, 2.5%) published journal articles on public administration in Hong Kong. Only two of them published a single-authored article (non-SSCI). The other four collaborated with scholars holding professorships and were not the lead authors. A related observation is that in Hong Kong, professional researchers employed by public or private research institutions (i.e., research centers of universities or professional policy study institutes) play a more significant role than students in publishing peer-reviewed journal articles. Researchers account for around 15% (n = 35) of authors in Hong Kong but only 5.7% (n = 29) of authors in Macau.

Topics Studied

An examination of the major topics covered by public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau shows that the prominent governance concerns in the two SARs differed markedly in the first decade after the handover. As Table 3 shows, in both Hong Kong and Macau, a large portion of the studies addressed the governance challenges caused by the implementation of the “one country, two systems” policy. However, the focus of those studies differed. The most popular topic in Hong Kong was democratization and political development, which was the theme of 20.2% (n = 34) of the collected articles. In Macau, by comparison, the most popular topic was legal affairs, discussed in 26.2% (n = 131) of the articles. It is noteworthy that researchers have shown consistent interest in these two topics, with an average of 3 articles on democratization and political development in Hong Kong and 12 articles on legal affairs in Macau published per year.

Table 3.

Topics of Public Administration Researches in Hong Kong and Macau.

	Hong Kong		Macau
Topics	n	%	n	%
Accountability	5	3.0	1	0.2
Collaboration/coordination/networking	6	3.6	45	9.0
Privatization	4	2.4	1	0.2
Corruption	4	2.4	3	0.6
Development	11	6.5	94	18.8
Disaster management	0	0.0	2	0.4
E-government	0	0.0	7	1.4
Environmental policy	1	0.6	0	0.0
Foreign policy	3	1.8	12	2.4
Governance	9	5.4	16	3.2
Human resource management	4	2.4	23	4.6
Management reform	23	13.7	21	4.2
Performance management	7	4.2	7	1.4
Public finance	3	1.8	7	1.4
Regulation	6	3.6	8	1.6
Social policy	20	11.9	57	11.4
Democratization and political development	34	20.2	32	6.4
Legal affairs	4	2.4	131	26.2
Media	5	3.0	0	0.0
Identity	5	3.0	5	1.0
Other	14	8.3	28	5.6
Total	168	100	500	100

The difference reflects the challenges faced by the two SAR governments in maintaining effective governance in the post-handover era. In Hong Kong, the problem of greatest concern and significance since the implementation of the Basic Law (the mini-constitution of the SAR) has been the tension between the legislature and the executive branch, which has seriously undermined the regime’s stability and inhibited its capacity to govern (Holliday, Ngok, & Yep, 2004; Lo, 2007; Pepper, 2000; Scott, 2000; Zhang, 2009). In addition, many scholars have found that the electoral system established under the Basic Law severely weakens the competitive edge of the democrats in the Legislative Council and thus impedes democratization in Hong Kong (Cheng, 2001; Lau & Kuan, 2000; Ma & Choy, 1999; Sing, 2009).

In Macau, the pressing need has been codification and localization of the territory’s legal system after the implementation of the Basic Law system. Macau adopted the continental law system, under which the laws are written into a collection, codified, and, in short, not determined by judges (Zhuang, 2009). Hence, during the political transition period, a crucial task was to localize the pre-handover legal and judicial system. The studies discuss a wide range of issues concerning the design and implementation of these codifications, laws, and decrees during the 10 years after the handover. Examples abound and include explaining the major features of the localized codifications (Deng, 2007; Jiang, 1999; Z. X. Su, 2002), making comparison with similar laws implemented in Portugal or mainland China (He, 2007; Liu & Zhu, 2002), and examining the values underlying the laws (Wang, 2006; Zhao, 2007).

Popular but less frequently discussed topics in both city-states include management reforms (13.7%, n = 23 in Hong Kong and 4.2%, n = 21 in Macau), social welfare policies (11.9%, n = 20 in Hong Kong and 11.4%, n = 57 in Macau), regional development (6.5%, n = 11 in Hong Kong and 18.8%, n = 94 in Macau), and governance issues in a changing political context (5.4%, n = 9 in Hong Kong and 3.2%, n = 16 in Macau). Privatization, environmental policies, and disaster management are the least frequently discussed topics. For example, only two journal articles examine environmental policies in the two city-states. One focuses on cross-border environmental problems in Hong Kong and therefore is categorized under the topic of regional cooperation (Y. S. Lee, 2002). The other one examines evolving strategies for environmental management in several Asian countries and Hong Kong. The article focuses on the environmental management strategies adopted by the Asian countries rather than on an in-depth analysis of the case of Hong Kong (Smith, 2000).

Some interesting observations arise from the discussions in the literature on management reforms, development, performance management, and governance. First, it becomes clear that “one country, two systems” has created different obstacles to effective governance in Hong Kong and Macau. As a result, the governments of the two SARs have adopted different strategies and followed different transitional trajectories. Hong Kong’s disarticulated and fractured political system weakened the de facto power of the Chief Executive and prevented the SAR government from effectively responding to a series of socioeconomic problems after the handover. As a result, many Hong Kong citizens saw the executive-led government as one of Hong Kong’s principal problems. To increase coherence in policy implementation, the chief executive enforced a top-down politicization of the top levels of the civil service by introducing a system of appointed politicians who were directly accountable to the chief executive (C. Y. Cheung, 2009; Lam, 2009). These moves ended the domination of the civil service in Hong Kong’s politics and put a team of political leadership headed by the chief executive and full-time politicians on center stage (Chan, 2003, p. 413). Painter (2005) has described Hong Kong’s progress as a transition from an “administrative state” to a “neo-administrative state” that is politicized at the highest levels of the bureaucracy.

In contrast, Macau is strengthening the extant administrative state. The implementation of the Basic Law has strengthened a traditional executive-led system that gives enormous power to the chief executive and a group of administrative elites (Y. Wong, 2005; Zhan, 2005). Such a system is favored in Macau because it ensures effective coordination between the executive and the legislature and builds trust between the government of Macau and the Chinese central government (Zhuang, 2009). As Macau adopts a different legislature election system from that of Hong Kong, with the expectation that the legislature will not stand in the way, the chief executive and his civil-service team can concentrate their efforts on implementing reforms that promote good governance beneficial to the people of Macau. Hence, the administrative-state system is viewed as politically advantageous for Macau’s development and an essential part of the emerging “Macau Model” (Qi, 2005).

Second, it appears that the New Public Management (NPM) movement has more profound implications in Hong Kong than Macau. Hong Kong is often used as an example to show the variations of NPM reforms in an Asian context. Some studies of Hong Kong indicate that after the handover, the SAR government has conducted substantial NPM-style reforms in economic, administrative, and social governance systems, such as marketization of higher education and contracting out of social welfare provision (Mok, 2001; Walker & Li, 2002). But the reform focuses and approaches have been deeply affected by factors such as the region’s macroeconomic environment, political system, and state traditions. For example, although Hong Kong’s reform has emphasized performance by results, these measures have little to do with satisfying the populace’s demands for better service in a situation of shrinking resources. Instead, since the prospect of further democratization in the region is dim, the NPM reforms are by nature a substitute for political reforms, the notion being that they might help inculcate a public service culture and change the bureaucratic mind-set (A. B. L. Cheung, 2005; E. W. Y. Lee & Haque, 2006).

In contrast, studies of Macau do not generally use popular Western concepts such as NPM to explain public management reforms in Macau. Instead, studies are more likely to talk about Guben Peiyuan (“consolidate the base whilst fostering vitality”), a concept originally borrowed from Chinese medicine (see Lin, 2005). Macau’s chief executive described Macau at the time of the handover in 1999 as a weak patient just recovering from long periods of illness. The prescription (reform strategies) was to be made based on the diagnosis of what was wrong with the existing institutions and systems. Accordingly, the Macau SAR government focused on implementing reform measures that could tackle the region’s major development problems—a stagnating economy and an inefficient civil service. Approaches included liberalization of Macau’s pillar industry (gambling) to increase economic vitality (Monteiro, 2009; Pessanha, 2007) and the implementation of a variety of performance-oriented reform measures to improve government operation and culture (M. L. Zhu, 2005; W. G. Zhu, 2009). Although these measures resemble the practice of NPM in some Western countries, they were arrived at without the application of a set of borrowed principles.

The third observation is that studies in Hong Kong are more likely to include testing and theory building than those in Macau. Around 32.1% (n = 54) of the articles in Hong Kong adopted theoretical frameworks or were designed to provide a theoretical perspective through literature review. For example, Holliday (2000) argues that the classic tripartite welfare framework (conservative-liberal-social democratic typology of a welfare state) is not suitable to explain the welfare arrangements in capitalist East Asia. He introduces the concept of “productivity welfare capitalism” to describe the East Asian welfare model. This contribution significantly enriches the conventional framework. Welch and Wong (2001) develop their existing theoretical framework to explain the effects of global pressures on the major attributes of public bureaucracy, such as structure, scope, size, autonomy, and accountability. Mok (2001), drawing on Slaughter and Leslie’s (1997) idea of “academic capitalism,” conceives the concept of “academic capitalization” to describe the process of marketization of Hong Kong’s higher education, under which professors and academics have gradually become involved in the market. In contrast, articles on public administration in Macau are greatly lacking in sound theoretical discussions. Only a small percentage of articles (13%, n = 65) introduced theories before proceeding to the case of Macau. Those studies neither provide substantial discussions on how Macau’s case contributes to existing theories, nor do they contribute significantly to concept and theory building in the field.

Method

The difference in the methodologies of studies conducted in Hong Kong and Macau also reflects their differing orientations. This section reviews the research style, methods used, time span, and funding frequency of each article in the collected studies. It further illustrates the similarities and differences between public administration studies in Hong Kong and Macau regarding their methodological rigor.

Research Style

The first finding is that public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau is dominated by descriptive studies that address questions of what, where, when, and how. Less frequent are studies designed to explore new topics and generate new ideas. Still less frequent are studies aiming at explaining why or at building and/or testing theories. Among the 168 articles on public administration in Hong Kong, more than half (56%, n = 94) are descriptive, 24.4% (n = 41) are exploratory, and 19.6% (n = 33) are explanatory. This trend is more pronounced in the literature on Macau, where more than three fifths (61.4%, n = 307) of the publications are descriptive. Exploratory studies account for 32.6% (n = 163), and explanatory studies account for only 6% (n = 30) of all the articles.

Logical argumentation is the predominant style in articles on both city-states. Argumentation essays account for 56% (n = 94) of the articles on Hong Kong (and this style is especially popular in studies on democratization and in articles published by the two local journals) and 53.6% (n = 268) of the articles on Macau. However, the style of research in the two city-states has a striking difference: Empirical studies account for nearly half of the public administration articles in Hong Kong (44%, n = 74), whereas such studies account for only 8.2% (n = 41) of the literature in Macau. Public administration research in Macau falls into four categories. In addition to the logical argumentation and empirical studies mentioned above, there are very descriptive studies (19.6%, n = 98) whose aim is simply to introduce a system or policy brief without arguments and analysis. Practitioners’ notes, which interpret policies or the progress of reform measures from an insider’s perspective, are also widely included in the literature (23.6%, n = 118). These latter two groups of studies barely engage in analyzing the problems caused by government policies and, more important, they rarely touch on the gap between theory and practice. Only 21.3% (n = 46) of the articles in these two groups (n = 216) provide primary data to introduce the status quo of policy implementation, but these articles do little to disseminate new findings. Nor do they test or build theories through the use of empirical evidence. It is therefore meaningless to code the very descriptive studies and practitioners’ notes strictly according to the protocol of academic journal articles.

Method

Table 4 summarizes the methodologies adopted in these articles. In general, studies that relied on a single research method chose a review of secondary sources. A small number of studies used qualitative methods, and an even smaller proportion used quantitative analytical techniques. In the Hong Kong database, three fourth of the studies (75%, n = 126) relied on a single method, and among these, the majority (56.5%, n = 95) developed their argument by reviewing secondary sources such as existing literature, government documents, results of opinion polls, and the like. Around 13.1% (n = 22) of the articles used qualitative methods such as case studies, surveys, field observation, and interviews. Around 5.4% (n = 9) of the articles used quantitative methods, including univariate analysis (n = 3), bivariate analysis (n = 2), multivariate analysis (n = 2), difference-in-difference approaches (n = 1), and component method approach (n = 1). These nine articles examined a wide range of topics, including the effects of education policies (Lui & Suen, 2005), justice in managing human resources in organizations (Pillai, Williams, & Tan, 2001), public perceptions of democratization prospects (Chang, Chu, & Tsai, 2005; Ho, Chau, Chiu, & Peng, 2003; Kuan & Lau, 2002), level of political trust (T. K. Y. Wong, Hsiao, & Wan, 2009), regional competitiveness (Thompson, 2004), the usefulness of key performance indicators for improving government accountability (Taylor, 2007), and the effects of migration on population distribution (Yip & Lee, 2000).

Table 4.

Methodologies Used by the Collected Articles.

	Hong Kong		Macau
Method	n	%	n	%
Single method
Review of secondary sources	95	56.5	255	51.0
Qualitative method	22	13.1	13	2.6
Quantitative method	9	5.4	20	4.0
Subtotal	126	75.0	288	57.6
Combined method
Review of secondary sources/qualitative	15	8.9	1	0.2
Review of secondary sources/quantitative	2	1.2	12	2.4
Qualitative/quantitative	2	1.2	1	0.2
Subtotal	19	11.3	14	2.8
No clear statement of method	23	13.7	198	39.6
Total	168	100	500	100

Out of the 168 articles, 19 (11.3%) adopted a combined research method. Of these, 15 (8.9%) articles combined qualitative methods with a review of secondary sources. Two (1.2%) articles used both qualitative and quantitative analysis, and an additional two (1.2%) combined quantitative methods with a review of secondary sources. One fifth of the articles (13.7%, n = 23) did not have a clear statement of their research methodologies.

Public administration studies in Macau are in general less methodologically rigorous than those in Hong Kong, which are mainly published in internationally peer-reviewed journals. More than one third (39.6%, n = 198) of the articles published in Macau did not provide any information on research methods or data sources. A total of 288 articles (94.7%) used a single method, and only 14 (2.8%) used more than one method. Most of the 288 single-method articles (88.5%, n = 225) depended on a review of secondary sources for their data. Thirteen articles (4.5%) used qualitative methods to collect and analyze primary data. For example, Yu (1999) adopted a survey method to examine the attitudes of people in Macau toward democratic values in the territory. Twelve articles (4.2%) clearly explained how they used quantitative methods to achieve their research objectives.

Time Span

A comparison of the time spans in the articles further illustrates the methodological rigor of Hong Kong studies (see Table 5). Among the 168 articles in the Hong Kong database, approximately 51.2% (n = 86) did not indicate the duration period of the research, whereas 48.8% (n = 82) clearly did. More specifically, 24.4% (n = 41) are longitudinal studies that observe the same phenomena over 5 years, and 6% (n = 10) are longitudinal studies of more than 2 years but fewer than 5. For example, Ku (2004) examines the trajectory of the discourse on Hong Kong identity and immigration between 1950 and 1980. T. K. Y. Wong (1999) reviews the major trends in public opinion toward the Hong Kong SAR government from July 1997 to June 1999 to discuss changing legitimacy, the challenges facing the ruling administration, and the strategies used to cope with these challenges.

Table 5.

Time Span.

	Hong Kong		Macau
Time span	n	%	n	%
Longitudinal studies (5+ years)	41	24.4	55	11.0
Longitudinal studies (2-5 years)	10	6.0	10	2.0
Cross-sectional studies	25	14.9	12	2.4
Time series studies	6	3.6	50	10.0
No clear statement of time span	86	51.2	373	74.6
Total	168	100.1	500	100

Around 15% (n = 25) of the articles are cross-sectional studies observing a sample or phenomenon at one point in time. For example, Ho et al. (2003) conducted a survey in April 1995 to examine public confidence in Hong Kong’s future after its reversion to China and the factors affecting the level of that confidence. About 3.6% (n = 6) of the articles adopted time series analysis, a method of observing the same phenomenon in regular periods. For example, Post (2003) examined emergent trends in inequality of access to higher education in Hong Kong through review of 1981, 1991, and 2001 population censuses.

By comparison, less attention is paid to time span in studies of public administration in Macau. An overwhelming majority (74.6%, n = 373) of the articles do not indicate clearly the time span of the research. Only one fourth (25.4%, n = 127) of the articles provide a clear statement of the time span. Among these articles, longitudinal studies over 5 years account for 11% (n = 55), whereas longitudinal studies lasting fewer than 5 years (2%, n = 10), time series (10%, n = 50), and cross-sectional studies (2.4%, n = 12) altogether account for less than 15% of the collected articles.

Among the 74 empirical studies of Hong Kong, 79.7% (n = 59) clearly stipulate the time span of the research. Within these 59 articles, 57.6% (n = 34) are longitudinal studies, 32.2% (n = 19) are cross-sectional studies, and 10.2% (n = 6) are time series studies. This is slightly different from the trend in the research in North America in the past few decades. For example, in their study of the research methodologies of articles published in Public Administration Review during 1975-1984, Perry and Kraemer (1986) indicated that more than half of the empirical research in the sample collected was cross-sectional. This observation is consistent with the finding of Houston and Delevan (1994), which showed that most articles published in six leading public administration journals during 1984-1989 relied on cross-sectional data, with few longitudinal studies undertaken. Apparently studies in Hong Kong are more engaged in observing and interpreting long-term changes in the administrative system or policy effects. It is important to note, however, that because the number of empirical studies in Hong Kong with a clear time span is rather small, this divergence may be offset by future growth of empirical studies in the field.

Funding

Whether a study was funded is considered a reputational indicator in the field’s research quality (Houston & Delevan, 1994). On this aspect, there is a dramatic difference between studies in the two city-states (see Table 6). Almost one third of studies (23.2%, n = 39) in Hong Kong reported a source of funding, whereas only 1.6% (n = 8) of those in the Macau database did. This suggests that the funding picture for public administration in Macau is much worse than it is in Hong Kong. There are two possible reasons for this difference. First, the government of Hong Kong has placed a higher emphasis on funding academic research. A total of 39 studies received funds from various sources. Among these, more than a half (53.8%, n = 21) obtained financial support from the Research Grants Council (RGC) under the University Grants Committee (equivalent of the National Science Foundation in the United States), 38.4% (n = 15) received grants from their universities, faculties, and departments, and 7.7% (n = 3) from foreign institutions or individual businesses. By comparison, of the eight funded studies in Macau, two received supports from the Chinese government (Department of Education of the PRC and the National Natural Science Foundation of China), four from local social organizations, and three from their faculty. The second reason is that practitioners, who do not have the same access to research funds that academics do, produced a significant portion of studies in Macau.

Table 6.

Funding Pattern.

	Hong Kong		Macau
Funding source	n	%	n	%
Government	21 (RGC)	53.8	2 (Chinese government)	25
University, faculty, and department	15	38.4	3	37.5
Other (i.e., social organizations)	3	7.7	4	50
Total amount of funded studies	39	99.9	8	100
The ratio of funded studies to all collected articles	—	23.2	—	1.6

Conclusion

This article reviews the major features of journal articles on public administration in Hong Kong and Macau in the first decade after the two territories’ political transition. It illustrates how the growth of public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau has followed different transitional trajectories under the same political principle of “one country, two systems.” It improves our knowledge of public administration research in these East Asian postcolonial regions at a time of profound political transformation.

As shown in this article, on one hand, because Hong Kong and Macau are allowed to maintain their previous systems, reunion with the socialist China does not seem to be a critical determinant in the different growth paths of the higher education systems and the discipline of public administration in the two city-states. In Hong Kong, the development of the higher education system has clearly been affected by the global trend toward marketizing the education sector and using performance-oriented measures to ensure the quality of education. By comparison, the driving forces behind the development of Macau’s higher education system are the needs of the local community.

This difference plays a critical role in shaping the nature of public administration research in the two city-states. In Hong Kong, well-trained academicians and professional researchers who are motivated by the government to publish in internationally peer-reviewed journals play a dominant role in the growth of public administration studies. As a result, public administration studies in Hong Kong are more rigorous in the methodologies used and more engaged in testing and building theories than the studies in Macau. The articles from Hong Kong also made an evident effort to compare the system of Hong Kong with those of other East Asian countries, whereas the articles from Macau focused more on city-based issues and were less engaged in comparative studies or international dialogues. Macau’s articles on public administration were in general weaker at theory building and less methodologically rigorous than Hong Kong’s. One explanation is that practitioners and research students who are perhaps less equal to the demands of academic scholarship contribute significantly to studies in Macau. On the other hand, public administration research in Macau demonstrates a close interaction between academicians and practitioners, particularly in comparison with Hong Kong.

The identity change from colony to SAR has deeply affected the content of public administration research of Hong Kong and Macau. As shown in this article, a common ground in public administration research in both city-states is examination of ways in which “one county, two systems” has been adapted to the local situation. This involves discussions of the components, approaches, and challenges of reforming the colonial governance systems and establishment of new relationships between politics, administration, and the legal spheres. At the core of these discussions is how to respond to the governance challenges that implementation of “one country, two systems” has caused in Hong Kong and Macau.

But public administration studies in Hong Kong and Macau have different focuses, following on the different themes of public administration reform in the two city-states. In Hong Kong, studies focus on how to improve the tense relationship between the chief executive, the civil-service team, and the legislature. This task is viewed as the key to tackling Hong Kong’s socioeconomic problems after political transition and to maintaining the territory’s competitiveness in the East Asian region. Discussions in the collected articles mainly focus on strengthening accountability and responsiveness within the fragmented political structure, implementing a series of typical NPM-style reforms, and gradually democratizing the political system. The traditional administrative state in Hong Kong is being supplemented by a gradual politicization of the top layer of the bureaucracy. By comparison, public administration studies in Macau focus on how to tackle the region’s major development problems through building an efficient administrative team, a functioning legal system, and a dynamic economy. These studies show that in Macau, the government’s major efforts have been to codify and localize the legal system, build a team of professional administrative elites, strengthen the role of the administrative state, and implement reforms tailored to local features.

The findings in this article suggest several ways in which to advance the status of public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau. Of the articles reviewed for this study, a significant portion from both city-states is descriptive, and logical argumentation remains the predominant style of studies in both databases. Empirical studies are particularly inadequate in studies from Macau. This is understandable given that the history of public administration development in the two city-states is fairly short and that the discipline of public administration was established earlier in Hong Kong than in Macau. The first recommendation for research in the future is for more exploratory and explanatory studies that consider new ideas, promote theory testing and building, and make use of empirical evidence. In particular, more effort could be made to develop theories that can better explain local issues and help the Western audience to understand the reform features in East Asia.

Second, the methodological rigor of studies in both city-states could be strengthened. Data in this article reveal that a limited number of studies utilized qualitative methods such as field research or surveys to collect primary data, and even fewer adopted advanced quantitative methods such as multivariate regression in data analysis. Some studies collected primary data through field research or surveys, but they did not use advanced techniques to code, analyze, and explain those data. This methodological deficit also prevents these studies from building useful and logical theories. The evidence base could be much strengthened so as to reveal the complex real-world scenario. With more theories built on a solid basis of empirical evidence, public administration research in both city-states could better help their SAR governments to address core problems in administering the territories.

Third, the data suggest that there is a substantial gap between theory and practice in academic studies in Hong Kong because practitioners are largely absent in research activities. As this article shows, Hong Kong academics have made impressive contributions to the development of a theoretically sound and useful body of knowledge in the field, but there is a need for more knowledge about public administration as a profession and a field of practice. It is noteworthy that the civil society is playing an increasing role in reducing this theory-practice gap in Hong Kong. Nongovernmental organizations such as SynergyNet, founded by a group of intellectuals and professionals coming from the academic, business, social-service, and political sectors publish their own reports on the performance of the government and the legislature. Such organizations may offer new, promising platforms for the exchange of ideas among academicians and practitioners and for the formulation of useful policy suggestions.

Fourth, this article has observed that public administration studies in Macau create a relatively “closed” discussion. They tend not to compare Macau’s domestic problems with those of other East Asian states (except Hong Kong and mainland China), nor do they attempt to understand Macau’s reform in the context of an increasingly globalized world of public administration. More comparative studies would promote better exchange of ideas. For example, what lessons can be learned from Macau’s experience as a transitional economy in an East Asian cultural background? Does the “East Asian model” that is useful to explain the development of the four East Asian “little dragons” also fit Macau? How do we understand Macau’s profound socioeconomic changes in the context of globalization and the territory’s unique history (Y. Y. Su, 2006)?

Certain limitations of this study must be acknowledged. First, the differences between Hong Kong and Macau are based on a comparison of data from different publication sources. The SSCI-indexed journals from which most of the studies of Hong Kong were collected may have different expectations and standards of excellence than the policy journals sponsored by the government of Macau and Macau’s various civic associations. This limitation must be acknowledged, although the data sources truly reflect the material currently available and the nature of the discipline in the two jurisdictions. Second, this study cannot be taken as representative of all public administration research in Hong Kong and Macau because it mainly reviews journal articles. Other important sources of public administration research, such as books, master’s and doctoral dissertations, and key symposium pieces, are beyond the scope of this research. Furthermore, public administration articles that were published in journals in other disciplinary fields, such as urban and environmental studies, are not included in this study. Whether research findings in those areas will present a strikingly different picture from the one described here must wait to be seen. With greater interest being placed on public administration theory and practice in East Asia, this study ventures to take the first step toward a better understanding of what has been done in the past and what is to be done in the future in the East Asian city-states of Hong Kong and Macau.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the journal editors, the anonymous reviewers, Professor Richard M. Walker, and Professor Hon S. Chan for their helpful suggestions and comments on successive drafts of this article. The author also thanks Professor Ngo Tak-wing for providing information on public administration development in Macau.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author received financial support from City University of Hong Kong for the research and publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Jie Gao is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy at City University of Hong Kong. She teaches and researches in the fields of public administration and China studies. Her current research focuses on performance management in Chinese local government, such as use of performance information, citizen surveys, and gaming in performance measurement in public sectors.

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