The Development and Transition of Party System In Taiwan’s
Democratization
Jih-wen Lin
Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica
Quiz Time
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Were you the leader of the KMT, how would you want to win the next
presidential election? Build an even closer relationship with Beijing? Or clean up
the corrupted politicians? What if you are heading the DPP?
Were you in the Beijing leadership, which party in Taiwan should be your main
target? The KMT? The DPP? Or the non-partisans?
Taiwan’s Party System on the World Map of Democratization
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The clues to the above questions can be found in Taiwan’s history of
democratization.
Unusual experiences with democratization: democratization from scratch;
relatively bloodless; preservation of ruling party’s powers but satisfy the “two
regime turnovers” condition; most important, the KMT and the DPP remain to be
the dominant parties.
Rule of law? The peculiar history of the Constitution of the Republic of China:
main text is quasi-parliamentary but almost not practiced (December 25, 1947);
the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion
(May 10, 1948 to May 1, 1991) gave president the supreme and unchecked
powers; seven constitutional amendments were added since 1991 but the main
text was untouched; almost impossible to revise the constitution again since
2005.
The two processes are correlated: Chiang Ching-kuo’s decease was a predictor
with immense impacts; the “main text” is frozen by international pressure but
political parties maximize their gains by “adding” the additional articles.
A question is: Have the social bases of political parties changed? This issue
attracts not only observers of Taiwan politics but also laymen who care about the
quality of democracy.
Demographic Bases of Taiwan’s Political Parties
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Party identification explains vote choice. But what explains party identification?
Economic interests? Sub-ethnicity? Or simply the parents’ (especially father’s)
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identification? We have to evaluate these factors by Taiwan’s transition from
authoritarianism to democratization.
A clue is the supports received by the KMT from the Min-nan (Hoklo)
Taiwanese, who should be most sensitive to the transformation. Figure 1 displays
the declining popularity of the KMT among the Min-nan Taiwanese. We can at
least mark 2000 as a juncture after which the political map becomes stabilized.
Just by looking at the change of support rates, sub-ethnicity is almost a
precondition of national identity, hence party identification. However, the data do
not show the rate of the “no response”.
Table 1. Partisan Identification and Sub-ethnicity (%)
Year
1990
Sub-ethnicity KMT
1995
1998
2000
2004
DPP
KMT
DPP
KMT
DPP
KMT
DPP
KMT
DPP
Min-nan
82
18
69
31
55
45
28
72
37
63
Hakka
90
10
79
21
66
34
51
49
55
45
98
2
93
7
87
13
75
25
90
10
Mainlander
Source: Taiwan Social Change Survey, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica
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Quiz: What happens after 2004? Any major change?
There is still uncertainty, and the “undecided voters” can be decisive. An often
mentioned but rarely studied phenomenon is local governance and the expansion
of the DPP’s southern territory. The DPP has a higher chance winning the county
magistrate elections, after which the Min-nan voters become more accessible to
the party. But there are other incentives as well. A hunch: does the rise of
“Taiwanese consciousness” accompany infra-structure building?
In contrast with the DPP’s independence-leaning strategy, the KMT represents
“stability”, at the risk of losing votes to its splinter parties.
How Do We Explain the Political Map?
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Now we use different data to show a longer pattern. The data reveal the absolute
support rate of the political parties and the camps they represent.
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Figure 1. Support Rates for the KMT and the DPP (1995-2012)
70.00%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00%
KMT
DPP
KMT+DPP
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Year
Source: Election Study Center, National Chengchi University
Figure 2. Support Rates for the Pan-Blue and the Pan-Green Camps (1995-2012)
Blue vs. Green
60.0%
50.0%
Popularity
40.0%
30.0%
20.0%
Time
Pan-Blue
Pan-Green
Source: Election Study Center, National Chengchi University
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Neutral
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
0.0%
1995
10.0%
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It appears that the support rates of the anti-independence pan-blue camp and the
pro-independence pan-green camp became relatively stable since 2000, with the
former almost always higher than the latter. Why then is Beijing worried,
especially when Taiwan held its presidential elections? Do the graphs illustrate
the results of Taiwan’s presidential elections?
How about the choices made by the “neutrals”?
The gap between the result of the presidential election and the political map
creates minority governments. How much does that matter?
Political Parties in Power
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Majority and minority governments: Guess which one has the greatest
non-partisan ministers? Why?
Can we evaluate the performance of the majority and minority governments by
legislative efficiency? Why or why not? Consider legislation as a sequential
game where the legislators are the last movers. Expecting the bill to be boycotted
by the legislative opposition, will the minority leader make any proposal? Why
would they sometimes deliver bills to the Legislative Yuan? What does
legislative rejection mean?
The Future
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Project your guess: Will Taiwan’s party system remain the same? Coming back
to the quiz, which party will claim the seats in the coming elections, especially
2016? Why?
Will the setback of the 2012 presidential race force the DPP to adjust its
cross-strait platform? How much does the platform affect the DPP’s social
bases?
The KMT? Who is going to run for 2016? How would the likely candidates
affect the KMT leadership?
Almost for sure, politicians will be situated in the combination of
semi-presidentialism and the mixed-member majoritarian system. Will that make
the DPP more moderate? Will that change the nature of partisan rivalry? How
much can Beijing influence the result of the competition?
References
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State-Building, Regime Transformation and the Construction of National
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Cheng, Tun-jen. 1989. “Democratizing the Quasi-Leninist Regime in Taiwan.” World
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Cheng, Tun-jen and Yung-ming Hsu. 1996. "Issue Structure, DPP's Factionalism and
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Riding the Third Wave, ed. Hung-mao Tien. Armonk, N. Y.: M.E. Sharpe.
Cheng, Tun-jen. 2006. "Strategizing Party Adaptation: The Case of the Kuomintang."
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Fell, Dafydd. 2004. Party Politics in Taiwan: Party Change and the Democratic
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