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Fragmented Politics in Hong Kong—Analyzing the Pro-democracy Cohesion in the Legislative Council Before 2019

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Tayden Fung Chan at University of Auckland
Tayden Fung Chan
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This study is to analyze how the fragmentation of the pro-democracy camp affected their council voting and policy stances before 2019. The quantitative measurements including the rice and unity indices are adopted to evaluate the cohesions of the pro-Beijing and pro-democracy camps in bill voting, in which the strategies employed by the pro-democracy camp are further analyzed. Before the 2010s, the moderate democrats deliberately separated from the administration and some of them also kept distance from the radical groups. However, since the radical ideologies gained supports from time to time, the moderate democrats had been forced to follow more pro-active lines against the administration. Although the political sphere of Hong Kong has drastically changed after the 2019 Anti-extradition Protests, the cohesion of the pro-democracy parties in the previous terms of the Legislative Council still facilitates to understand the legislative process in the city. In this article, 18 then members of the Legislative Council from different parties were interviewed in 2018, providing various insights on the analysis of pro-democracy cohesion and fragmented politics in Hong Kong.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-021-09362-1
1 3
Fragmented Politics inHong Kong—Analyzing
thePro‑democracy Cohesion intheLegislative Council
Before 2019
FungChan1
Received: 28 December 2020 / Accepted: 22 March 2021
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021
Abstract
This study is to analyze how the fragmentation of the pro-democracy camp affected
their council voting and policy stances before 2019. The quantitative measurements
including the rice and unity indices are adopted to evaluate the cohesions of the pro-
Beijing and pro-democracy camps in bill voting, in which the strategies employed
by the pro-democracy camp are further analyzed. Before the 2010s, the moderate
democrats deliberately separated from the administration and some of them also
kept distance from the radical groups. However, since the radical ideologies gained
supports from time to time, the moderate democrats had been forced to follow more
pro-active lines against the administration. Although the political sphere of Hong
Kong has drastically changed after the 2019 Anti-extradition Protests, the cohesion
of the pro-democracy parties in the previous terms of the Legislative Council still
facilitates to understand the legislative process in the city. In this article, 18 then
members of the Legislative Council from different parties were interviewed in 2018,
providing various insights on the analysis of pro-democracy cohesion and frag-
mented politics in Hong Kong.
Keywords Legislative Council of Hong Kong· Pro-democracy camp· Party
cohesion· Filibuster· Democratization
Introduction
Both the pro-Beijing and pro-democracy camps were influencing the development
of democratization in Hong Kong. Although the democratic development experi-
enced setbacks in past decades, the trend of post-materialism had been emerged
and the people could not be satisfied by only providing economic sweeteners [22].
* Fung Chan
LCHA521@aucklanduni.ac.nz
1 School ofSocial Sciences, The University ofAuckland, Auckland, NewZealand
/ Published online: 8 April 2021
East Asia (2021) 38:249–269
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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