Anti-Corruption Approaches in Macao: lawmaking and legal enforcement

Successive governments have sought to address the enduring problem of corruption in Macao. Yet the institutional framework for dealing with corrupt practices has singularly failed to live up to political promises and public expectations of clean government. The Ao Man-long case, in which a former Secretary for Transport and Public Works was found guilty of corrupt practices involving an estimated $800 million (about US$100 million), rocked public confidence in the anti-corruption institutions and gave credence to the widely-held view that an expanded gaming industry had provided more opportunities for illicit behavior. Diagnosing the causes of failure suggests that neither a lack of resources nor the absence of rules serves to explain the continuing high levels of bureaucratic corruption. Rather the explanation for the failure of the institutional framework lies in the content of the rules and the way in which they are implemented. While this situation continues to persist, it is unlikely that the problem of bureaucratic corruption will be resolved or that its wider impact on the government's legitimacy will be reduced.     

Formal and Informal Politics in Macao Special Administrative Region Elections 2004–2005

Formal politics is defined as political participation under ‘rules and institutions’ while informal politics is a kind of ‘conventions and codes behavior’ in the political sphere, such as cronyism and guanxi networks. Both kinds of politics are interacting and functionally inseparable in a political system. This article explores the interactive dynamics between formal and informal politics in the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR), with the August 2004 Chief Executive election and the September 2005 Legislative elections as illuminating case studies. It highlights the ways and means with which the Beijing and the MSAR authorities shaped the electoral institutions to undermine political opposition. It argues that formal politics possesses more than window-dressing functions to reveal the ‘normal and orthodox form of politics’ while the informal type is the real process for decision making. Formal and informal politics undermined the political input of the mass in Macao and triggered political irregularities involving money politics. It concludes that the dynamics of formal and informal politics did not possess enhancement but corruption in forging a genuinely democratic MSAR polity.