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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 The Determinants of the Distribution of Indigenous Grants in Taiwan: Ethnic Minority Representation or Electoral Competition?

The Determinants of the Distribution of Indigenous Grants in Taiwan: Ethnic Minority Representation or Electoral Competition?

Ching-Jyuhn Luor and Wen-Hsueh Chen
2009 / 11
Volume 16, No.2

pp.167-207
10.6612/tjes.2009.16.02.167-207
Paper

Abstract

Based on the minority representation and distributive theories, the present study investigates whether the distribution of indigenous grants in Taiwan is determined by ethnic representation in the Legislative Yuan or electoral factors. By intuition, ethnicity-laden consideration might be the most important one in deciding the distribution of indigenous people-related benefits, in the sense that the ethnic groups represented more by the same ethnic legislators in the Legislative Yuan tend to receive more benefit than otherwise. However, statistical results in this paper show that indigenous legislators are not likely reaping disproportionate largess for the areas where their own ethnic groups account for most of the indigenous population. They care even more on others. Why? Maybe the legislators believe that simply asking votes by ethnic identification is enough so that pouring more benefits for their ethnic groups may not increase the marginal utility of the votes. They probably need extra votes from other ethnic groups for electoral safety. In addition, the statistical finding shows that disproportionate benefit goes to the higher turn-out rate areas, electoral competitive areas, and the areas where most indigenous legislators' votes are concentrated, indicating that indigenous legislators' electoral concern are more important than the ethnic one. This paper has implications on the design of electoral system of indigenous legislators in Taiwan. For those who worry that current electoral system of indigenous legislators leads to the disadvantaged position of minority groups among indigenous people, the evidences provided in this paper possibly alleviate their anxieties.

Keywords

distributive policy

minority

indigenous legislators

indigenous legislative electoral system

minority representation