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This chapter provides a detailed discussion of the legal and operational dimensions of the prevailing system for electing the Chief Executive (CE) in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). It describes the synoptic profile of the 2006 Election Committee (EC) and explains the eligibility rules for the CE. It reviews the voting regime that applies in CE election itself and discusses the changes in the political landscape of the CE election since 1997.

This chapter discusses the scope of activities of the HKSAR executive. The executive in the HKSAR is comprised of the chief executive (who is assisted by the Chief Executive's Office and supported by 15 principal officials), the Executive Council, and executive departments and agencies. The chapter reviews the executive functions of the HKSAR and its relationship with the legislature. It also examines whether the practice of “executive-led government” is in decline. The pre-1997 executive-led government has been replaced by executive-driven government after the 1997 handover. The chapter concludes by examining challenges to effective governance (such as the inadequate supply of professional politicians) and suggesting ways to construct a viable and workable governing system for the HKSAR.

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the election of the Chief Executive (CE) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). This book reviews the history and development of both the Election Committee (EC) and its predecessor, the 1996 Selection Committee (SC), and discusses the significance of the EC in both Hong Kong and China. It describes the system of electing the CE and reflects upon the future of the EC system particularly in the context of universal suffrage.

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the election of the chief executive (CE) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). It explains that the Election Committee (EC) is the child in Hong Kong's political system and that its birth in 1998 was a milestone as it embodied a system that gave Hong Kong people, for the first time, the power to select the highest political office holder in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). It suggests that this child is clearly in the process of growing up and that both nature and nurture will play a role in its future development.

The chapter suggests principles that are fairly flexible in context and that can give way in light of other powerful considerations. The chapter presents two incidents, personal illustrations that show how self-restraint works, why self restraint in advocacy is much more attainable than self-restraint in decision or judgment, and why exercising greater self-restraint in advocacy need not amount to insincerity. The chapter concludes that people have great difficulty trying to face particular political issues free of the push of their religious or other comprehensive views. This requires an exceptional discipline to achieve this with any success. It is doubtful whether one should recommend to ordinary people a self-restraint that is so hard to perform. The chapter also set the stage for the following chapters by outlining briefly various roles and functions in liberal democratic governance.

The collegial structure of universities, with their stress on election to management positions (the metaphor of the Gentleman’s Club) is being replaced by managerialism. Below the level of President, the apparent objectivity of managerialism conceals a personal and arbitrary power (reflected in the metaphor of the Medieval Court). Senior managers, particularly manager-academics, are appointed through the ‘blessing of the President’ but without the discipline of profit as the ultimate ‘bottom line’. Women make up one fifth of those at this level, illustrating the gendered nature of that ‘blessing’. A collegial discourse remains an important source of legitimacy for managerialist power: power that is also reflected in the role of the President as Chief Executive Officer

This chapter looks outwards from the ILO to demonstrate how the SPF became a rallying point for the struggle for global social policy synergy, that is, the struggle to ensure that all UN agencies, including the World Bank and the IMF, agreed to tackle the shortcomings of market drive globalization with a plan to construct a social floor under the global economy. It shows how the ILO influenced the UN initially through the UN Chief Executive Board; how it influenced the G8 and then the G20 under the French Presidency of 2011; how as a consequence it came to be able to try to influence the World Bank and the IMF. It ends by explaining how the ILO was able to play a major role, alongside UNICEF and the UNDP in ‘almost’ bringing it all together in the form of a new UN Social Protection Inter Agency Co-operation Board.