To what extent can political marketing narrow the legitimacy gap for a hybrid regime? This article examines this question through the case of Macao (2009–14). It finds that political marketing is insufficient to compensate for lack of democratic reform and may easily backfire to expose the problem of a structural legitimacy deficit.

By examining the origins of Macao’s 2014 protest against the Retirement Package Bill, this paper intends to answer whether Macao is encountering a governance crisis like Hong Kong’s. Through a careful comparison, it concludes that Macao and Hong Kong are unlikely to follow the same political development trajectory, as there are considerable differences in the level of social mobilization and governmental coercive capacity between the two cities.