Transparency is advocated by western political scientists and pundits. But, on the whole, are western politicians any more transparent than Asian ones? The outcry about the justification for war in Iraq suggests they are not. So, is it not just a question of varying political traditions - two different games with distinctive, culture-specific sets of rules?
No, because the salient distinction that the advocates of transparency are really talking about is the perception and potential of openness.
When leaders and figures of authority are directly answerable, powerful psychological reverberations run through the population to which they report. That is why theorists put so much emphasis on consultation. In any number of contexts, psychologists have noted that when people are made to feel they have a 'voice' in an issue, they are more likely to embrace the outcome. The sense of involvement that openness fosters means that people are more likely to be reconciled, if not supportive, of decisions that are openly debated. Even when the decision does not correspond to what they wanted - their acceptance tends to be less grudging.
The alternative is the old paternalistic system, which has its merits. But it is by definition best suited to populations ill-prepared for an equal say in decisions that govern their lives. This, essentially, is the psychological argument underpinning the approach to governance often adopted by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, for example.
British Hong Kong was run along paternalistic colonial lines, of course. And many people may still yearn for a distant but familiarly dependable government, one that more or less looks after their most essential interests without demanding their participation. But when a population selects or acquiesces to the comforts of an opaque paternalistic system, they surrender their right to meaningful debate. Along with an equal say comes responsibility. Now, Hong Kong seems to have found itself in the no-man's-land between the two kinds of relationship to government.
However, there is a whole multitude of psychological phenomena lurking behind recent events here. The British system was not so bad that it could not be forgiven its weaknesses, especially since times leading up to 1997 were economically heartening. The British version of paternalism was embedded in colonialism, inseparable from associations with the badges of an historic, world-class narrative of ascendancy. Hong Kong people could emotionally invest in the vestiges of past British greatness. As long as times were good, they could map their new dynastic traditions on to the old colonial pomp. But, by stopping short of cultural identification with the British, they could also keep their psychological options comfortingly and pragmatically open.