Executive-Led Governance or Executive Power ‘Hollowed-Out’—The Political Quagmire of Hong Kong

The Chief Executive of Hong Kong has inherited from the former British colonial governor wide-ranging constitutional powers as built into the Basic Law. Such powers are expected to facilitate an executive-led government. However, this article argues that since the handover in 1997, there had been a steady process of hollowing-out of executive power under the rule of former Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, resulting from growing political challenges, policy failure, and internal fissures, which pushed the administrative state to the brink of a ‘disabled state’. His successor faced the daunting task of rebuilding a new form of governance based on reconnection between political institutions and sectoral and civil society interests. So far, the political quagmire has remained.