Does public consultation affect policy formulation? Negotiation strategies between the administration and citizens

While public consultation is a signature process of democratic policy formulation, many governments manoeuvre to refract citizen's opinions or conduct it perfunctorily.Using the case of a medium of instruction policy in Hong Kong, this article unveils the strategies that the state and citizens employ to put their opinion through to the final policy text, during a public consultation process.Recent literature has identified the mechanisms through which individual actors or organisations contribute to broad policy agenda-setting or policy programme development.However, yet to be investigated is how they -sometimes with conflicting interestscollectively negotiate a policy with the state via public consultations.This paper investigates this very phenomenon, building on previous work conducted in the public policy field, analysing 51 government-generated documents through both thematic content analysis and critical discourse analysis.The paper uncovers four strategies adopted by administrations (non-commitment, case closure, disengagement for irrelevance, and placation) to evade citizens' equity-oriented demands and stakeholders' three counter strategies (mobilising other stakeholders into a coalition, reopening the case pointing out a new problem, and appealing by affirming relevance).The state's discrete refusals and stakeholders' conjoint reengagement tactics draw our attention to the complexity and subtlety involved in negotiation via public consultations.