Policy Implementation in Hong Kong

Policy implementation has been defined as "the process of carrying out public policy . directives" (Nakamura and Smallwood, 1980: 1). It has, in the past, been seen to be part of a sequential, top-down, process which begins with the formulation and development of policy objectives, proceeds in the implementation stage with putting these objectives into practice, and ends with monitoring the outcome and assessing its impact. Much of the recent academic interest in policy implementation has centred around the observable fact that many governmental programmes serve as good, but expensive, examples of how not to get things done (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973; McLaughlin, 1976; Ripley and Franklin, 1982). There has, in consequence, been some emphasis in the literature on the need to develop new models of implementation and to recognize the importance, in Bardach's (1977) terms, of the players, normally bureaucrats, in the implementation game. What this has meant, theoretically, is the rejection or modification of the classical hierarchical model, which assumes an unidirectional sequence in which policy formulators choose and instruct and policy implementers deliver (Nakamura and Smallwood, 1980: 9), in favour of one in which the significance of the interaction between formulators and implementers is taken into account (McLaughlin, 1976). The argument presented in this article, however, is, in effect, a reversion to the earlier, top-down view of policy implementation. There are two broad reasons for considering policy implementation in Hong Kong from this perspective. First, it has recently been recognized that the "very strength in stressing the importance of the implementation process as distinguishable from the policy-making process, and deserving of study in its own right, has tended to lead to the weakness of over-emphasising the distinctiveness of the two processes" (Ham and Hill, 1984: 95). This observation is particularly apposite in the case of Hong Kong. A central tenet of the analysis in this article is that policy implementation in Hong Kong is effective precisely because .. a disproportionate amount of human and financial resources has been expended in making it so. Because the public purse is not limitless, effective policy implementa. tion has been achieved, to some extent, at the expense of innovative policy-making, long-term planning and, especially, of the monitoring of policy outcomes. In short, one aspect of the policy process has been strengthened to the detriment of other