Current vs. Envisioned Parliamentary System in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

Article 4 / 11 , Vol 39 No. 3 (Autumn)

Current vs. Envisioned Parliamentary System in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

The future of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was sealed in the Joint Declaration of 1984 and the Basic Law of 1990 between the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China. Was the United Kingdom genuine and realistic when it publicly defended Hong Kong’s right to complete and universal democratic elections in the 1990s and in the last few years? The legal rights and obligations set out in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law, a legal document in Hong Kong with legal standing equivalent to a national constitution, tend to support a different approach. In this article, the author argues that the terms agreed upon in those two fundamental documents established Hong Kong as a region with greater socio-economic and political autonomy, while setting obstacles to the development of a government elected through universal suffrage.

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Parliamentary Bookshelf Vol 38 No 1

Article 9 / 12 , Vol 38 No 1 (Spring)

Parliamentary Bookshelf

Remaining Loyal: Social Democracy in Quebec and Saskatchewan, by David McGrane, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal & Kingston, 373p.

David McGrane has written an ambitious book about social democracy in Saskatchewan and Quebec. His thesis is that the CCF-NDP and PQ governments were social democratic in a traditional sense under premiers such as Tommy Douglas and Allan Blakeney in Saskatchewan, as well as René Levesque and Jacques Parizeau in Quebec. McGrane believes that later governments evolved into third way social democracy under other premiers, including Roy Romanow and Lorne Calvert in Saskatchewan and Bernard Landry and Pauline Marois in Quebec.

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