Bulletin Number Two 1985

Social Research Project Participatory Urban Service Delivery in Hong Kong The research project on Participatory Urban Service Delivery was started in late 1981 by Dr. Lau Siu-kai of the Department of Sociology, Dr. Kuan Hsin-chi of the Department of Government and Public Administration and Dr. Ho Kam-fai of the Department of Social Work. It is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, and under the auspices of the Centre for Hong Kong Studies. The project is part of a cross-national project bearing the same theme, though the specific phenomena studied differ among the particular societies. Still, the broad comparative framework designed would enable meaningful comparisons to be made on a number of items among Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines. In fact, several cross-national seminars have already been held to discuss issues of common concern. The main purpose of the project in Hong Kong is to look into the inter-relationships among local officials, local leaders and residents in four selected localities in Hong Kong - Tuen Mun, Tai Hang Tung, Kwun Tong and Sai Ying Pun. These inter-relationships are conceptualized to be grounded in a context characterized by the following features: (1) a bureaucratic government increasingly responsible for the delivery of urban and social services; (2) a thin and weak layer of local leaders; (3) a population increasingly dependent on public resources for the satisfaction of personal and social needs; and (4) a political setup where the channels of political participation are meagre and minimally effective. As a tightly organized bureaucratic government encounters a society with minimal political organization in the process of service delivery, the lack of effective intermediate leadership is sorely felt. While the government is adopting a more tolerant posture towards activist grassroots leaders, it has yet to undertake more active efforts at leadership cultivation and organization building via sharing with them information, power and other resources requisite for participatory service delivery. What is urgently needed in Hong Kong at the present is information on the factors essential to the establishment of a more participatory service delivery system. More specifically, the variables that can explain the occurrence of active and organizationally involved leaders would be extremely useful to policy making. In pursuance of these ends, the project adopted a research design which would 'maximize' the availability of differences among the localities studied, in order to enlarge the possibility of locating the relevant factors for leadership behaviour. And the choice of Tuen Mun, Tai Hang Tung, Kwun Tong and Sai Ying Pun has these considerations in mind. In 1981 and 82 the investigators interviewed the officials, leaders and residents of the four localities. During the process, the following kinds of information were obtained: (1) the normative and behavioural orientations of the three categories of people; (2) their perception and evaluation of the roles of themselves and others; (3) the ways they structure their relationships to others; (4) their perception of and feelings for their communities and the major problems affecting them; and (5) the collective efforts undertaken to improve community conditions and solve community problems. In short, the data collected should allow the investigators to locate the patterns of interactions among officials, leaders and the people, as well as the factors which underlie these patterns. The data collected thus far are still under analysis. Up to now two reports on the preliminary findings have been published by the Centre for Hong Kong Studies. They are: 'Leaders, Officials, and Citizens in Urban Service Delivery: A Comparative Study of Four Localities in Hong Kong,' and 'Organizing Participatory Urban Services: The Mutual Aid Committees in Hong Kong.' A book-length report on the project will be completed by the end of the summer of 1985. - S. K. Lau 16 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS