How Authoritarianism Intensifies Punctuated Equilibrium: The Dynamics of Policy Attention in Hong Kong

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lam, Wai Fung; Chan, Kwan Nok
• 署名单位: University of Hong Kong; Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington
• 刊物名称: GOVERNANCE-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLICY ADMINISTRATION AND INSTITUTIONS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0952-1895
• DOI: 10.1111/gove.12127
• 发表日期: 2015
• 关键词: government; governance; Budgets

摘要

The punctuated equilibrium theory contends that government attention allocation is universally leptokurtic in that long periods of stability are punctuated by bursts of rapid and radical change; the empirical evidence in support of this claim is however exclusively drawn from democratic systems. The absence of electoral politics and institutional decentralization in authoritarian regimes could presumably affect institutional friction; whether and how this might pose as a qualification to the thesis is of major interest. By analyzing four streams of government actions in Hong Kong from 1946 to 2007 straddling the colonial and postcolonial regimes, we have found that government processes are generally leptokurtic even under authoritarian regime institutions, with the degree of the dispersion of decision-making power across the streams of actions affecting the magnitude of punctuation. We have also found that punctuation was greater when the political system was more centralized but declined as the political system democratized.