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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 ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan's national identity is unique, diverse, important, and an urgent task for the people in Taiwan. In this paper, national identity is treated as a latent variable and used self-identity and attitudes toward China to measure this vague concept. Besides, rational choice theory is used for people in Taiwan to "choose" their shallow national identity. Also, this paper is testing the relationship between economic confidence and consolidated democracy to national identity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party authoritarianism draws a great deal of attention among the students of party politics regarding its impact on democratic regimes. However, what constitutes such authoritarian party structure is usually taken for granted. Although the political culture and institutional structures, as macro-level factors, may shape party authoritarianism, we also see significant variance in party authoritarianism in a given political system. Why? This study proposes that understanding this variance requires paying more attention to micro-level factors. By conducting a comparative case study of four major political parties in Turkey, this work identifies four types of party authoritarianism: clandestine, benign, coercive, challenged. Using the principal-agent approach to party governance, this study argues that the incentive structures between the central party elite (the principal) and the local party leaders (the agent) shed some light onto the variance in authoritarianism across and within the political parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines young people's political and civic engagement in an established democracy (New Zealand) and in a new democracy (Taiwan) using extant theories to provide a glimpse of the political behaviour of young Taiwanese and New Zealanders. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the possibility on the maintenance of Taiwan?s new democracy by examining institutional factors presented by Juan Linz and Scott Mainwaring on the perils of presidentialism and multipartism ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is designed to explore the impacts of democratization on people's political attitudes by examining democratic values of two generations of university students who grew up during different stages of democratization in Taiwan. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In democracies with candidate-centered electoral systems, legislators must balance the demands of the more general and ideological interests represented by political parties against the demands of more the parochial and particular interests of their constituents. .x000d..x000d.I model legislators as agents of two principals, their parties and their constituents. Each of these principals can sanction the legislator, aiding or damaging her prospects for re-election. In a multiple principals framework, the challenge for the agent is to maximize positive sanctions net of negative sanctions..x000d..x000d.In systems with mixed electoral systems, we should see this tension play out differently for legislators elected under different tiers. For legislators elected from the party list, party and constituent interests will be almost perfectly aligned and will need very little cover. District legislators, however, will experience a greater tension. .x000d..x000d.I examine this logic in Taiwan. Drawing on a research design employed in several other countries, I test whether party cohesion among list or district legislators. I use an extended beta binomial model to analyze all roll call votes from February 1993 to January 2008. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [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]