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Why do some authoritarian elections bring about democratic outcomes and not others? Building on distinctions between hegemonic and competitive electoral authoritarian regimes, this paper makes two arguments. First, elite calculations to liberalize or repress affect the type of election permitted. Second, de-institutionalization of party-state fusion must take place before authoritarian elections can become more competitive. Through a comparative study of two similar cases of hegemonic party regimes with different outcomes, this paper traces the conditions that forced Taiwan's electoral "opening" in the 1980s and the strategies that entrench the hegemonic rule of the People's Action Party (PAP) in Singapore. Despite recent liberalization, elections in Singapore are unlikely to bring about party alternation unless de-institutionalization, as in Taiwan, occurs to level the playing field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on a long term observation of the period from 1996 to 2004, tries to answer the following questions: Why have some issues evolved to be important political cleavages which shaping party competition in Taiwan, while some other issues have not? Why have some issues affected elections at some times, but not others? And finally, has there been any change in issue evolution because of the party turnover in 2000? Unlike most industrial democracies where issues of economy and wealth distribution are salient for party competition, issues of economy and wealth distribution are relatively not so salient for party competition in Taiwan. Some argue that this is so because the Taiwanese government's economic policies had successfully resolved the problems of wealth accumulation and distribution over the decades as economic development heated up. However, the Taiwanese electorate has not punished the ruling party even though the wealth distribution has deteriorated and the economy has declined dramatically since the beginning of 2000. Taiwanese have not chosen the party which is generally thought of as good at handling the economy affairs. This shows that most Taiwanese voters seldom vote according to the economy and welfare distribution even though many parties and candidates do emphasize economy and social welfare policies in their campaign platforms. In contrast, the independence/unification issue shaped by ethnicity and national identity has been considered as the most salient issue since the 1990s. Not only has it dominated political discussions of political elites and the public, but it also has shaped party competition and affected the transfer of political power. This paper tries to explore the reasons for these phenomena through two angles: that of elites, and of the public. This paper examines four issues, reform/stability, independence/unification, social welfare, and environment/economy, and shows how partisan elites frame and develop these issues to attain their political goals, and how Taiwanese voters respond. Research findings show that the independence/unification issue is the most likely to evolve into the most influential issue in Taiwanese politics. This is so because all major parties have a clear and distinct position on the independence/unification issues, and most Taiwanese voters have a clear-cut position on the issue. Furthermore, Taiwanese voters make political decisions based on the issue. After the party turnover in 2000, the parties' positions on the dependence/unification issue became even more polarized. The Pan-green's position on the dimension is moving toward an even more pro-independence stance. In the meantime, the Pan-blue's position is becoming even more pro-unification. The growing polarization between the two blocs has made the independence/unification issue even more salient and has had decisive impacts on Taiwanese voters' political attitudes and behavior. In contrast, because the diversities among parties in other three issues are getting closer since the party turnover, it is more difficult for a party to take all credits from the issues. In the near future, it is quite possible that all parties will still focus most of their efforts on framing and developing positions on the independence/unification issue rather than on other issue dimensions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests a theoretical framework to understand the evolving voting patterns in Taiwan. It attempts to link macro cleavage structures in the society with micro voting behavior through the meso-level elite maneuvering. This cleavage linkage viewpoint is certainly not new. As early as four decades ago, Lipset and Rokkan (1967) sought to specify the way in which the parties in the Western European polities emerged and stabilized around basic social cleavages. According to the Lipset-Rokkan model, parties in new electoral democracies will be inherently unstable unless they become linked to deep-rooted sources of cleavages. One major weakness of this macro sociological approach, however, is the missing link between existing social cleavages and individual voting choice. The latter field has been heavily influenced by the Michigan model and its extensions. This paper suggests fill in this gap with the meso-level factors of elite competition for mass support and their mobilization strategies. Political elites, by appealing to the deep-rooted cleavages, justify their power struggle with divisions in ideology and group identity. Such an appeal to group identity sets priorities in political agenda, which in turn shapes voters' preferences and provides the basis of individual choice of party preference and candidate. It is hoped that this perspective will integrate the macro-historical tradition with the micro-behavioral approach and improve our overall understanding of Taiwan's electoral politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to examine the change and continuity of the ethnic cleavage among the Taiwanese voters. Using the data collected by Election Study Center between 1994 and 2003, we sort out the pattern of party realignment in the 1990s. It is found that the Chinese mainlanders switched from the Kuomintang (KMT) to the People First Party (PFP), and that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) maintains its original Minnan social base as it attracts to more Hakka than before. Using Stokes? (1965) variance component model, we uncover the downsizing of the between-district variance across the elections and contend that party nationalization has take place since the late 1990s. The consequence of party nationalization is that the results of the presidential elections are partly driven by the ethnic coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The result of the 2000 presidential election ended the KMT’ dominant rule of Taiwan and marked the first regime turnover in more than five decades. Such a drastic power rotation certainly prompted a wave of elite mobility and replacement of a large scale in Taiwanese politics. It is thus interesting to investigate how the first regime turnover affected the mobility of the old regime’s elite and how the new government reshuffled and replaced the personnel in the executive branch. This paper extends Albert Hirshman’s (1978) concepts in "Exit, Voice and Loyalty" to the study of elite mobility after regime turnover. We sort out five attributes at the individual level, including sex, age, ethnicity, as well as one’s ranking and sector in the former regime, as independent variables, whereas exit, voice, and loyalty constitute three dependent variables. We propose a set of hypothesis that is to be tested against the data we collected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we employ longitudinal data to explore the change and continuity of political trust among the electorate in Taiwan. After the 2000 presidential election, whether the distribution of political trust will follow the rotation of ruling power is our research interest. We also would like to explore factors affect people?’s political trust, and how political trust might affect people?’s voting behavior. By employing 1992, 1995, and 1998 face-to face interviews after legislative elections, and other 8 telephone interview data during 1997 and 2001, we are able to explore the change and continuity of people?’s political trust in Taiwan. From our findings, we showed that the distribution of people?’s political trust declined during 1992 and 1998. However, as the 1997 and 2001 interview data showed, people?’s political trust rebounded after the 2000 presidential election. Among factors affected people?’s political trust, people?’s partisan preference toward the KMT, voters among the first generation, people with elementary school education were more likely to have higher political trust. However, people with the DPDD or the NP partisan preference were more likely to have lower political trust. After the 2000 presidential election, people with the DPP partisan preference changed their level of political trust, and became more likely to trust the ruling authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since electoral systems structure how representation works, it is not surprising that changes in electoral rules and their consequences always attract close attention. This paper intends to explore how some differences in less-high-profile rules might have caused divergent speed and extent of reaching some theoretically expected political consequences. We compare two East Asian countries, Japan and Taiwan, because both of them abandoned the decades old single nontransferable vote multimember district (SNTV-MMD) system and endorsed the similar mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system. Focusing on three differences between Japan and Taiwan, including dual candidacy, regional PR constituency, and PR threshold, we tap their possible consequences on macro-level party systems and district-level strategic voting patterns. Further careful comparative studies and rigorous causal analyses are called for to study this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the consequences of electoral reform on Taiwan with regard to two key points of interest. First, how would the move to a mixed majoritarian system, away from the previously semi-proportional SNTV system, impact the likely electoral outcome? Second, given that parties were aware of the likely mechanical effects of the new system, might this induce a change in the traditional pattern of party competition? Based on simulations of possible electoral outcomes, based on patterns of party bargaining and non-bargaining, we provide seat pay-offs that should have directed the strategic choices made by Taiwan's four main parties prior to the January 2008 ballot. Through formal modeling we are then able to assign the optimal strategies for the two largest parties, the Nationalist Party and the Democratic Progressive Party. We find that the eventual strategy of the DPP to not cooperate with its smaller coalition partner, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, was actually the optimal strategy. On the other hand, we find that, despite the framing of the Nationalist Party as the dominant force, the Nationalist optimal strategy was to bargain with its smaller coalition partners and run cooperative nominations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper constructs a theory of endogenous change in electoral institutions and applies it to explain the rise and fall of the single nontransferable vote (SNTV) electoral institution. Electoral institutions constrain voters' choices but the choices voters make also affect the survivability of political parties and prompt them to change the electoral institution. Voters' choices thus produce endogenous dynamics of electoral institutional change. For SNTV, a dominant party existed in Japan and Taiwan to help some politicians consolidate personal votes by allocating private goods among their core supporters. Yet, SNTV is also a proportional system that allows some voters to challenge one-party dominance by voting for minor parties. As a consequence, the seat share of the dominant party declines as the allocation of private goods becomes less efficient. Facing a change in the party system, some politicians are given the incentive to adopt a new electoral institution that may improve their electoral fortune. That is why, in both Japan and Taiwan, SNTV was replaced with a mixed-member system after the dominant-party system collapsed. The same logic can be employed to explain the likelihood of endogenous change in other electoral institutions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite almost two decades of democratic deepening in Korea, the streets of Seoul are still filled with unionists chanting slogans while the evening news programs rarely go a day without some story on a labor strike. In contrast, union mobilization has become a seasonal event in Taiwan and labor issues seem to have become integrated into the formal political process. This variation of union activism in post-democratized Korea and Taiwan is the main question this paper seeks to explain. This research asserts that political institutions created during the democratization process create incentives for the inclusion of unions into formal political channels. Greater institutional permissiveness combined with opportunities of union-party alliances moderate the mode of union mobilization by guiding unions to address the labor agenda through existing political channels (as in the case of Taiwanese unions). Unions alienated from political institutions, including electoral politics, are more likely to sustain radical mobilization strategies (as in the case of Korean unions). ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the KMT has adapted its strategies since its electoral defeats beginning in 2000. It outlines some of the key obstacles in the way of the KMT's successful adaptation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the national identity issue still predominate the political agenda in Taiwan elections, voters in the new democracy are making electoral judgments on not just what issues are more important but also which party or who can deliver the best. In this study, we introduce a model of performance politics in explaining Taiwan local elections, in which residents are closely concerned about their country's but also their own personal well-being. We argue that while partisan attachment and positional issues continue to guide electoral choices, Taiwanese voters are less concerned in local elections about what issues are more important than who can and how to best manage the valence issues. By valence issue, we refer to the issues that attract the broadest public consensus including economy and national security (Stokes 1992, Clarke et al. 2009). We employ the 2009 Taiwan Election and Democratization Study (TEDS 2009M) data to test a model of performance politics in Taiwan. Our findings indicate that Taiwan voters consider leaders' image and their capacity to deliver on valence issue in voting decisions. This study contributes to further development of the theories of issue voting and valence politics in the new democracy of Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay starts with a concern of Taiwan's recent elections that carry strong partisan competition and confrontations. In particular, the electoral impacts of provincial origins, party identification, national identity issue (defined as citizen's preference of unification, status quo or independence), and government performance are of central concerns. It argues that, citizen's provincial origins, due to Taiwan's unique political history, continues to play a significant role in citizen's vote choice. Also, citizen's national identity has been considered by many scholars as "the" most important issue in Taiwan election. This perception, albeit strong and popular, may come from partisan maneuvers. Or, candidates also tend to adopt a middle or ambiguous position to garner popular support in elections. The performance issue which is often regarded as less ideology-oriented also begins to exert certain impact in elections given citizens have more experiences of different governments in power. Face to face survey data of four presidential elections (1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008) and one telephone interview data will be used to analyze and compare the influence of these factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Taiwanese political parties have adjusted their candidate nomination systems since the outset of multi-party elections in the late 1980s. It is shown that there has been a great deal of variation in the degree of inner party democracy in Taiwanese parties. It is argued that inner party balance of power and election results can best explain this variation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on electoral reform in Taiwan. It aims at assessing whether reformers crafted anticipated outcomes. Most enduring democracies of East Asia have undergone major electoral reforms for parliamentary elections since their shift to democratic rule. The basic conditions of reform and the structural outcomes are discussed by comparing the pre and post-reform elections.

This study explores the relationship between mass partisanship and policy preference in Taiwan. By using recent survey data, first it focuses on a number of social and issue cleavages that may shape Taiwan's party system; then it investigates the extent to which an individual's partisanship affects his/her preference toward domestic budget spending. Our findings are two-fold: first, neither social-structural model nor issue-based theory can solely explain the formation of mass partisanship in Taiwan. However, national identity and its related issues remain the most dominant, if not the only factor, that divides Taiwanese voters into different parties. Second, an individual's partisanship plays a minimal role in shaping his/her preferences toward domestic government spending. This result implies that Taiwanese voters rarely obtain policy cues from their parties. Because partisanship could be both cause and consequence of policy preference, non-recursive models could be applied for future research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extremism is a common phenomenon in political world. Although it is not new, extremism has different sources and comes out in different forms. Among the many concerns about the political influences of extremists is their lack of tolerance. As Robert Kennedy bluntly stated, the danger about extremists "is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant." Treating Kennedy's statement as a hypothesis, this study aims to examine the tolerant attitudes of the "deep green supporters" in Taiwan through the survey data collected by the Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) Project of 2003. Specifically, this study intends to examine the following questions: Who are the deep green supporters? What are their key characteristics? In particular, are they less tolerant politically than the general population on the island? The findings shows that "deep green" supporters, while are expectedly willing to extend citizens' rights to people who share their political ideas, they do not object providing the same rights to others, including those whose ideas they oppose. Thus, the wisdom of some Taiwanese politicians of treating their opponents as enemies for electoral gains is questionable. Labeling opponents as "betraying Taiwan" or "selling out Taiwan" can only polarize the society. The net consequences would be to stifle rational debates on various policy issues and to impede the development of a "loyal opposition," both of which are critical to democratic stability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overreporting of votes in elections is an important topic for survey research, and it has received comparatively little attention other than in some western countries. This work employs Taiwan as the case and analyzes the propensity of non-voters to report that they voted in surveys. The main task is to present the results of a split-sample experiment in the "2004 Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study" (TEDS 2004L), which is designed to examine whether a survey context can reduce vote overreporting. The findings reveal that although the experiment through changes in the questionnaire context was still far from successful, it should be noted that vote overreporting is a field worthy of continued research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have produced a considerable amount of scholarship which significantly contributes to our understanding of how individual votes. What is under-explored in this scholarship is an analysis of the effects of external threats on vote decisions. Utilizing survey data collected by the Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) Project, this study examine the hypothesis that Taiwanese citizens' vote choices in the 2004 presidential election are conditional on their perceptions of threats, i.e., the possibility of military attacks from China and the likelihood of armed interventions by the United States on Taiwan's behalf. When respondents perceive a high level of threats, they are less likely to vote for candidates who proposed policies that would result in cross-Strait conflicts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]