Preface

Since 2004, Civic Exchange has encouraged scholars to carry out in-depth research and study of Hong Kong's core political institutions, which surprisingly had up to then been much neglected by academics. These studies have served to inform the public, stimulate public debate and contribute to better public policy making in Hong Kong. The studies have generated new empirically based understanding about the operation and significance of these political institutions.

The University of Hong Kong's Centre for Comparative and Public Law was proud to be involved in two of these studies commissioned by Civic Exchange. The first study concerned Hong Kong's functional constituencies, and the fruits of this research were published in 2006 by Hong Kong University Press in Functional Constituencies: A Unique Feature of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, edited by Christine Loh and Civic Exchange. This book is the product of the second project concerning an even more significant institution, the office of the Chief Executive.

We are indebted to a number of people who helped us see this book to completion and publication. First and foremost we thank Civic Exchange, Christine Loh and Yanyan Yip for bringing this project to us and for their patience and never-ending support. We also thank Civic Exchange's 2007 summer intern, Courtney Heavey, who provided extremely helpful assistance with the appendices. Within CCPL we benefited greatly from a number of talented young researchers. Angela Lai made a significant contribution to Chapter 2 and also to the Chinese translation which was subsequently completed by Lily Chan, Christina Chan and Wing Chan. Ernest Ng provided invaluable historical research and also contributed to the appendices, together with Xing Fei. Last but not least, we thank Michael Duckworth and Dennis Cheung at Hong Kong University Press and the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

Simon NM Young

Richard Cullen

University of Hong Kong

January 2010