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Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy/Shelley Rigger

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Politics in Taiwan: Voting for Democracy/Shelley Rigger Politics in Taiwan Politics in Taiwan is an accessible and highly readable survey of the Taiwanese political situation covering the period from 1949 to the present. With a focus on the issue of democratization, Shelley Rigger covers Taiwan’s complicated and unique political history, and tells the story of how the Taiwanese, demanding a stronger voice in politics, drove their government to reinvent itself on a democratic blueprint. Taiwan’s experience of democratization is unusual. Taiwan began confounding theorists of political development more than thirty years ago; in the two decades after Taiwan weaned itself off US foreign assistance in 1965, it stood as a counter-example to modernization theories which saw a link between industrialization and democratization. When political reform took hold in the mid-1980s, it was driven by ethnic and political injustice rather than by the predicted class-based demands born of economic success. This book shows that Taiwan, unlike other countries, avoided serious economic disruption and social conflict, and arrived at its goal of multi- party competition with little bloodshed. Nonetheless, this survey reveals that for those who imagine democracy to be the panacea for every social, economic and political ill, Taiwan’s continuing struggles against corruption, isolation and division offer a cautionary lesson. This book is an ideal one-stop resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of political science, particularly those interested in the international politics of China and the Asia Pacific. Shelley Rigger is Brown Associate Professor at Davidson College, North Carolina. She has published articles on recent political developments in Taiwan, local factionalism, electoral behaviour, national identity and political opposition. Politics in Taiwan Voting for democracy Shelley Rigger London and New York In memory of Reverend Robert Donnell McCall and Virginia Montgomery McCall, dear friends of Taiwan First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. © 1999 Shelley Rigger All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rigger, Shelley Politics in Taiwan: voting for democracy/Shelley Rigger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. alk. paper 1. Taiwan—Politics and government—1945– 2. Democracy—Taiwan. I. Title. DS799.816.R54 1999 99–22354 320.95124’9’09045–dc21 CIP ISBN 0-415-17209-8 (pb) ISBN 0-415-17208-X (hb) ISBN 0-203-44902-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-75726-2 (Glassbook Format) Contents List of figures vi List of tables vii Acknowledgments viii Note on romanization x 1 Voting for democracy 1 2 Learning to vote: the origins of Taiwan’s electoral system 34 3 Party-state authoritarianism in the pre-reform era (1945–1972) 55 4 Electoral mobilization in the pre-reform era (1945–1972) 81 5 Political reform under Chiang Ching-kuo (1972–1988) 103 6 The watershed elections of 1989 131 7 The Lee Teng-hui years (1990–1996) 148 8 Continuing challenges to Taiwan’s democracy 178 Notes 194 Suggestions for further reading 217 Chronology 220 Index 224 Figures 1.1 Voter turn-out in elections 22 1.2 Dangwai/KMT vote shares 28 2.1 Ideal outcome versus poor outcome in SNTV-MMD elections 53 2.2 National Assembly, 1991 54 5.1 KMT performance in local and national elections 121 7.1 Factional nominations as a percentage of KMT nominees 150 7.2 National Assembly, 1991 159 7.3 Legislative Yuan, 1992 165 7.4 Legislative Yuan, 1989 166 7.5 Legislative Yuan, 1995 173 7.6 National Assembly, 1996 176 Tables 1.1 Elections in the Republic of China on Taiwan, 1946–1998 20 1.2 Seat bonuses in Legislative Yuan elections 23 2.1 Candidates per district 45 2.2 Sources of county and city revenue 49 3.1 Institutions of local government 62 3.2 Performance in special constituency elections 76 4.1 Split-ticket voting: DPP vote shares in the 1989 elections 100 8.1 Basic-level election results, 1990–1998 187 Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to Davidson College, which provided consistent research funding throughout this project and granted me a sabbatical to complete the book. Thanks also are due to the Chiang Ching- kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, which assisted me twice, once with a grant for dissertation research and again with a post- doctoral fellowship grant. Some of the data cited in this paper were collected by the research project “The Social Image Survey in Taiwan” funded by the National Science Council, Republic of China. The research project was conducted by the Sun Yat-sen Institute for Social Science and Philosophy, Academia Sinica. The data are released at the Office of Survey Research, Academia Sinica. I appreciate the assistance of these institutes. Thanks also to the Central Election Commission for providing ready access to recent election results. This book includes information from more than a hundred formal interviews with candidates, public officials, campaign workers, journalists and scholars. I am deeply grateful those who agreed to be interviewed, and to the many other Taiwanese who have shared their thoughts and experiences with me over my years of research and travel there. I owe a special thank you to Chen Chu, who introduced me to her colleagues in the Democratic Progressive Party. I also have received help and support from many generous and patient colleagues in Taiwan’s scholarly community, especially at National Chengchi University’s Election Studies Center, the Institute for International Relations, National Taiwan University’s Department of Political Science and the Academia Sinica. In particular, I wish to acknowledge my good friends Professor Hwang Jau- yuan of the NTU Faculty of Law, Ms Deborah Shen at the Free China Journal, Ms Fan Mei-yuan and Mr Wang Sheng-hong and his family. In the United States, I have benefited greatly from the wisdom and support of Ambassador Richard Walker and Professor James Myers at the University of South Carolina, Professor William C.Kirby of Harvard Acknowledgments ix University, Professor Alan Wachman of Tufts University, Ms Nancy Hearst of the East Asian Research Center at Harvard University, Professor Jean C.Oi, Professor Roderick MacFarquhar, and my colleagues in the Department of Political Science at Davidson College. Above all, I wish to thank Professor James A.Robinson, Regents Professor and Professor Emeritus of the University of West Florida, for all his help and encouragement over the years, and especially for reading this manuscript. His comments improved it greatly. Without my husband, David Boraks, I could not have written this book. His encouragement, good cheer, sense of adventure and intellectual companionship make all my work possible. Perhaps it is a sign of changing times that one of my deepest debts of gratitude is owed to Mrs Libby McAmish, who provided reliable and loving care to my daughter Emma during the crucial months of this project. Above all, I wish to thank the people of Taiwan. Their bottomless hospitality made researching this book a delight, and their fearless embrace of social and political change is an inspiration. The views expressed and errors herein are my own. Note on romanization Recognizing that most readers who have studied Chinese are comfortable with Pinyin romanization, I have used that system to transliterate Mandarin words, both in the text and in the footnotes. Most people in Taiwan use the Wade-Giles romanization system to transliterate their names, so I have followed this convention for proper names (some commonly recognized proper names are idiosyncratic; I have used those spellings to facilitate recognition). In the notes I have used Chinese name order for authors of Chinese-language sources and English name order for the authors of sources in English. 1 Voting for democracy Friday 22 March 1996 was a night of celebration in Taipei, Taiwan. Thousands jammed parks and public squares for huge rallies, then spilled into the streets for impromptu midnight marches. The warm, humid night had a carnival feeling. Vendors sold souvenirs of every description —from commemorative plates to videotapes of other political rallies. The scents of Taiwan’s favorite street foods—sausages, oyster omelets and tofu— mixed with the odors of traffic and sewage and incense that permeate Taipei’s crowded neighborhoods. What seemingly had drawn all of Taipei’s citizens out of their homes was not a holiday, but the final night of campaigning before the island’s first-ever direct, popular presidential election. The giant block party was a celebration of democracy, a celebration barely dimmed by Beijing’s missile tests just off the Taiwan coast. Four candidates and their running mates took part in the historic competition, and each stood before his supporters that night. On the grounds of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, an enormous mosaic of video screens towered over a stage draped in the white and blue of the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT). The screens displayed a succession of celebrities and politicians praising the party’s nominees, Lee Teng-hui, the incumbent president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, and his running mate, Lien Chan. As the rally ended, the crowd swayed in unison and sang Lee’s campaign theme song, “Hand in Hand,” while fireworks exploded overhead.
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