ABSTRACT
After the power handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, its first Chief Executive introduced Principal Official Accountability System (POAS) in his second term, replacing civil servants with political appointees to lead policymaking. This chapter reviewed models, theories and the context of Hong Kong to develop an analytical framework aiming to explain the impact of regime change and structural reforms on political-administrative relations in policymaking. The framework benefits from the theoretical insights from the role-perception model, accountability relation model, transaction cost theory, literature about political-administrative relations in the policy processes, Expanded Principal-Agent Model, transaction cost theory, social structure theory and new institutionalism, Public Service Bargains and Institutional Analysis and Development Framework. Working hypotheses informed by the context of Hong Kong were developed for test and refinement in Chapters 2–5. These hypotheses were to identify conditions that explain collaborative, mutually respectful and adversarial political-administrative relations in policymaking during 1997–2012 in Hong Kong.
