Change and Continuity of Social Cleavage in Taiwan.

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]