People

Professor Kwan Nok CHAN 陳君諾

Associate Professor: Professor Chan’s primary research concerns the institutions that shape the consumption and distortion of information in different organizational settings. His current research explores how bureaucrats handle information and the impact of institutions on their choices.

Ongoing projects deal with different aspects of bureaucratic control in authoritarian regimes, such as administrative oversight, juridical intervention, internal reporting, and legislative decision-making.

He holds a PhD Degree in Public Policy from the O’Neill School of Public and Environment Affairs and the Department of Political Science, Indiana University Bloomington.

Courses

  • POLI3117 Web3 Entrepreneurship
    Description      course outline      list of speaker     
  • Current Projects

    • Information commons. Research student Qichang Ma leads a project on user collaboration in information commons. We perform additional analysis of content moderation on China's online platforms using the same dataset. Part of this project is supported by a GRF grant from Hong Kong's UGC.
    • Policy information. In her doctoral research, research student Mengqi Xie explains how the Chinese authorities organize environmental oversight and how Chinese business responds with expanded ESG disclosure. Research student Jiasheng Xiao investigates the institutional design for intelligence management across regional governments in the Greater Bay Area.
      [acknowledgments]
    • Bureaucratic control. Drawing empirical insights from the legal system in both modern and ancient China, research student Li Liao models the way leaders of authoritarian regimes manage the exercise of discretionary power by government bureaucrats.
    • Digital governance. Research collaborator Edward Chan Kei Fung is specialized in the regulation and governance of AI and immersive technologies. In partnership with Meta, we study regulatory efforts targeting Extended Reality (XR) applications in Hong Kong and other sites across Asia-Pacific. Research student Yunchen Zhu is developing a research project on the impact of smart city applications on street-level bureaucracy in Mainland China.

    Publications

    • "Public administration in authoritarian regimes: propositions for comparative research." Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration (2024): 1-23.
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    • "When blame avoidance meets transparency: local governments’ bandwagon strategy in environmental information disclosure in China." (with Shaowei Chen and Kai Jia). Local Government Studies (2024): 1-21. 
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    • "Using Virtual Simulations of Future Extreme Weather Events to Communicate Climate Change Risk" (with Terry van Gevelt, Brian G McAdoo, Jie Yang, Linlin Li, Fiona Williamson, Alex Scollay, Aileen Lam, and Adam D Switzer). PLOS Climate. Forthcoming.
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    • "Individual Perceptions of Climate Anomalies and Collective Action: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment in Malaysian Borneo" (with Terry van Gevelt, T Zaman, and M.M. Bennett). World Development Sustainability. Forthcoming.
      Awarded the 2022 Best Article Award for offering “an excellent example on an interdisciplinary approach by borrowing elements from psychology, economics and climate science with robust methodologies and insights from people living in climate-vulnerable areas.”Abstract      URL
    • "Social Expectations for Charitable Giving in China" (with Lin Nie and Wai Fung Lam). Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Forthcoming.
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    • "Elite Bargains and Policy Priorities in Authoritarian Regimes: Agenda Setting in China under Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao" (with Shaowei Chen and Wai Fung Lam). Governance. Forthcoming.
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    • Friction and Bureaucratic Control in Authoritarian Regimes” (with Shiwei Fan). Regulation & Governance. Forthcoming.
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    • “Legislative Rules in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes” (with William Bianco and Regina Smyth). The Journal of Politics. 81(2): 892-905. 2019.
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    • “Bureaucratic Control and Information Processing: An Institutional Comparison” (with Wai Fung Lam). Governance, 31(3): 575-592. 2018.
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    • “Policy Advocacy in Transitioning Regimes: Comparative Lessons from the Case of Harbour Protection in Hong Kong” (with Wai Fung Lam). Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 19(1): 54-71. 2017. 
      Abstract     URL
    • “Punctuated Equilibrium and the Information Disadvantage of Authoritarianism: Evidence from the People’s Republic of China” (with Shuang Zhao). Policy Studies Journal, 44 (2): 134-155. 2016.
      Selected as one of Editor’s Choice articles for offering “an innovative extension of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory to explain policy making processes in an authoritarian regime, providing new insights into a regime type understudied in the public policy field.” Abstract     URL
    • “How Authoritarianism Intensifies Punctuated Equilibrium: The Dynamics of Policy Attention in Hong Kong” (with Wai Fung Lam). Governance, 28: 549–570. 2015.
      Abstract     URL