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Contrary to a long held belief in post-authoritarian Taiwan in the omnipotence of democracy to ensure the island's autonomy in the face of China, this paper argues that toward the end of the second Chen Shui-bian administration the 'marginal utility' of Taipei's use of democracy in garnering international sympathy has been drastically decreasing; recent examples include its failure to persuade major members of the 'liberal democratic community', the United States in particular, to support or at least acquiesce in its proposed referendum on joining the United Nations under the name of Taiwan held alongside the presidential election in March 2008. The underlying reason, however, is not found in the blame game between Taipei and Washington as to whether the United States is bowing to Chinese pressure at the expense of Taiwan's democratic deepening, or Taiwanese ruling elites' tactic of mobilising mass support is unnecessarily provocative which could end up drawing the US into an unwanted conflict with China. Rather, this paper suggests that the quarrel is indicative of the emergence of a new standard of civilisation based on the degree of democratic-ness in world politics. While mainstream security discourse in Taiwan has been deeply embedded in the binary structure of a democratic, peace-loving Taiwan versus an authoritarian, war-like China, in urging Taiwanese leaders to 'responsibly' strike a balance between promoting their political values and protecting their people's vital interests, senior US officials too unwittingly reproduce the rhetoric of democracy as civilisation. Unable to comprehend the operation of this civilised/barbarian trope in which Taiwan as a 'maturing' democracy (meaning potentially trouble-making) has been located between the West and the rest for the purpose of strategic appropriation, Taipei mistakenly believes that it has occupied the moral high ground vis-a-vis the great powers to 'go it alone' as seen in the UN referendum. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper wants to study how the PRC perceive the Taiwan Problem and explain how it made and implemented Taiwan policy incrementally from three perspectives(individual actors,domestic structures, and contextual constraints). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper evaluates the factors that influences the military's restraint in democratizing South Korea and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that statehood choices are influenced by both symbolic politics and pragmatism. The existing accounts of statehood choices in Taiwan emphasize primordialism and ignore the potential effects of tangible considerations. We provide a theoretical argument of how self-interests might affect public opinion on the “unification vs. independence” issue in Taiwan. Using responses to a set of specially designed survey questions, we distinguish between two groups of people whose opinion on the issue is either conditional or unconditional. We argue that the conditional group is more susceptible to pragmatic concerns while the unconditional group is more susceptible to symbolic politics. We conduct a micro-level, empirical analysis to test the differential effects of pragmatic and symbolic factors on the two groups. Our conclusion addresses the theoretical and policy implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests the argument that SNTV is subproportional. This test is superior to previous tests because the data are from a country not previously examined and include multiple parties and a change in government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the relationships between religion and state in Mainland China and Taiwan after 1949, trying to explore their experiences in the past, and to tell the possible development tendency in the future. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan?s weakly-institutionalized party system can be attributed to the short period of time of competition, the personalization of campaigns and intra-party factionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan?s old ruling party, due to its strong institutional capacity, had being able to benefit from economic liberalization by distributing new rents to rebuild support coalitions to maintain political power during democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Post-rationalist PE perspective is used to inspect Taiwan?s debate over the movement of wafer fab to China. Besides materialist interests, non-materialist discourses have resulted in a less predictable but contested sphere for public discussions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]