Change Without Revision: The Prospect of Taiwan?s Constitutional Convention.

All democracies have some fundamental constitutional rules based on unwritten conventions rather than codified articles. Extending theories treating convention as the solution to coordination problems, this paper models the formation of constitutional convention as a repeated game and studies the conditions under which a convention of cohabitation can evolve in a semi-presidential regime where the appointment of prime minister requires no parliamentary consent. The model identifies several important conditions: the president's reserve powers, the strong legitimacy of the legislature, a centripetal electoral competition, and a considerably long horizon of the competing political forces. Using France as a successful example, this paper discusses the likelihood for Taiwan to follow a similar path. Many conditions require an overhaul of the current institutional environment but not necessarily another constitutional revision. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]