Economic development and democratization: political culture among the middle class and the general public in Hong Kong from the 1970s to 1991

Abstract

Apparently, economic development would lead to democratization, as in the situation in Taiwan and South Korea. Nevertheless, Hong Kong is an anomalous case. This project attempts to use the political culture of the middle class and the general public from the 1970s to 1991 to explain the “abnormal” political development of Hong Kong. The framework of this study is rooted in the Modernization Theory and Almond and Verba’s (1965) framework. The data are mainly from the research conducted in the 1970s, 1980s, and the early 1990s, focusing on the political culture of the Hong Kong people. However, none of these studies use political culture to explain the abnormality of Hong Kong. Thus, this project tries to identify the relationship between economic development, political culture, political system, and democratization. The major finding was that, the political culture of the middle class was rather ignorant in the 1970s, since most of them were sharing “parochial-subject” culture. Together with the economic growth, the political culture of the middle class moved toward “subject” and “subject-participant” in the 1980s and early 1990s respectively, during which the middle class began to struggle for a democratic polity. The political culture among the middle class in the early 1990s was still strongly influenced by a subject political culture, so they were satisfied with the political structure changes in 1991. Indeed, the changes were insignificant, as the political structure in 1991 was still under a centralized colonial government. This project suggests that the abnormality of Hong Kong is due to the absence of a participant political culture among the middle class and the general public.