介绍： A bizarre idiosyncrasy: Too many seats for farmers
From The Economist 20161015

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Of the 70 members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, half represent “functional constituencies”, composed mostly of local industries, professions, trade unions and other interest groups. These constituencies...

介绍： A bizarre idiosyncrasy: Too many seats for farmers
From The Economist 20161015

Audio:

0:00




Of the 70 members of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, half represent “functional constituencies”, composed mostly of local industries, professions, trade unions and other interest groups. These constituencies date back to 1985, when Hong Kong’s British rulers, in a fit of amateur sociology, decided to give political voice to “major sectors of the community [with] common social, economic and occupational interests”.

They are not representative in any democratic sense. Nor can they even claim to reflect Hong Kong’s evolving economy. Agriculture and fisheries, for example, now accounts for less than 0.1% of Hong Kong’s GDP, but still has a seat. Labour provides over half of Hong Kong’s output if the professions are included, or over a third if not. (The best proxy for labour’s contribution is the share of national income paid in wages.) But it has only three seats.


A more rational allocation of seats would reflect each constituency’s economic contribution, as measured by profits, wages or both. That is not easy to calculate, given Hong Kong’s coarse statistics, and such a distribution of political power would be no more democratic. But it would be a little less idiosyncratic.


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