Evaluating the Quality of Legislative Deliberation in Hong Kong under the NSL

• In Event: Live under Democratic Backsliding: National Security Law in Hong Kong

Abstract

Extant studies of authoritarian parliaments focus on their function of co-opting the opposition.
The extent to which the presence of the opposition improves the quality of legislative
deliberation receives far less scholarly attention. In this article, we provide one of the first
empirical studies of this question by taking advantage of a natural experiment that happens in
Hong Kong, where all the opposition legislators were removed from the local legislature as a
result of a recent change of the electoral system. In particular, we analyze the transcripts of
parliamentary debates before and after the electoral change. We show that the change has
adversely impacted the quality of legislative deliberation.

Authors

• Stan Hok-Wui Wong, University of St. Thomas

• Sanho Chung, University of Arizona