State-society relations in Hong Kong and Macau : A historical institutionalist analysis

What accounts for different trajectories of state-society relations in Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions (SAR) despite the presence of similar institutional settings? This chapter adopts a historical institutional analysis to explain changes and continuities through this paired case study. It discusses how the diverse regime’s responses to critical events, namely the 1966/1967 riots and subsequent massive protests in Macau and Hong Kong have endogenized the societal challenges and produced path dependence. In doing so, it provides a framework to understand what constitutes a critical juncture, to map the dynamics of civil society developments, and to single out the role of agency’s conditioned responses in shaping the divergent and recurring patterns of political activism in the two SARs.