Party Unity after Elections: A Study of the Roll-Call Votes in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council

Yu Wang and Minggang Peng argue that to develop a better understanding of party politics in Hong Kong, due attention should be paid to the legislative process.

Extended Abstract

This article examines the issue of party unity in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo). By analysing the LegCo roll-call votes, one can see that the voting patterns of its members are characterised by strong party unity. In particular, a cross-party comparison reveals that for the pro-establishment parties, the Liberal Party had a higher level of unity than the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB); for the pro-democracy parties, the Civic Party had a higher level of cohesion than the Democratic Party. Furthermore, this article shows that strong party unity is likely to be the joint product of party discipline and policy homogeneity among partisan members. Based on the empirical results, the article questions the traditional wisdom that party politics in Hong Kong is necessarily underdeveloped for its simple juxtaposition of party politics with the performance of political parties in elections. Instead, it is suggested that for a better understanding of party politics in Hong Kong, due attention should be paid to the legislative process.

Our contribution to the comparative literature on party unity is fourfold. First, our study of Hong Kong thus expands the research scope of the literature on party unity by investigating the issue in a liberal authoritarian regime striving for democracy. Second, although using roll-call results to analyse party unity has been the norm in American politics, data availability is still a barrier, sometimes insurmountable, to comparativists who want to apply this approach to other places. The current research shows the data generosity in Hong Kong and thus enriches the data pool of roll-call votes. Third, existing research on party unity has proposed and tested several generalist factors that are likely to determine the level of party unity between elections. The findings of this research imply that some of them have the expected explanatory ability for the case of Hong Kong. For instance, our three major findings are consistent with theories on how closed party-list PR, the socio-economic inclusiveness of political parties and party maturity decide the level of party unity (Janda, 1980; Katz, 1980; Maor, 1997). On the other hand, our results seem to be inconsistent with theories that focus on factors such as executive-legislative relations and agenda-setting power (Figueiredo and Limongi, 2000; Shugart, 1998). The distribution of power in Hong Kong is much closer to the presidential system than to the parliamentary system, and the LegCo does not enjoy considerable power in agenda-setting. But contrary to what those theories predict, the party unity between elections in Hong Kong’s LegCo is quite high. These results are by no means surprising. Previous studies have found that such factors fail to show the same effect in different countries largely because each legislative chamber often has its own rules of operation that arise from its unique constitutional and cultural context. Finally, this research is a reminder of the importance of case-specific determinants of party unity. In particular, we are concerned with the effect that sources of funding have in deciding the level of partisan cohesion in Hong Kong.

Keywords: party unity; roll-call; legislative council; Hong Kong

About the authors

Yu Wang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests lie in legislative politics, political economy and security studies.

Minggang Peng is Assistant Professor in the Public Administration School at Guangzhou University. His research interests include party politics, elections and civil society in Hong Kong

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