This study provides a new dataset on the ideological positions of political parties in Hong Kong, which is a hybrid regime with electoral elements. Using this dataset, the study challenges the non-ideological view of party competition in Hong Kong by identifying an ideological dimension to the elections held between 1998 and 2016. It is shown that parties do position themselves along an identifiable left–right spectrum, with shifts that can be meaningfully interpreted, and that the aggregate ideology of the electorate appears to be linked to the level of economic growth. The ideological dimension provides a novel perspective on local politics that looks beyond the dominant pro-democracy versus pro-Beijing divide while also shedding light on the recent changes underlying the latter. This study provides valuable objective data for analyzing political competition dynamics and contributes to the comparative literature by incorporating Hong Kong into the framework of the manifesto coding project.
