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Homenavigate_nextIssuesnavigate_nextBackissuesnavigate_nextVolume 31, No.1navigate_nextRepresentative Orientations and Representative Behaviors of Taiwan's Indigenous Legislators: A Content Analysis of the Bills Proposed between 1993-2008
Representative Orientations and Representative Behaviors of Taiwan's Indigenous Legislators: A Content Analysis of the Bills Proposed between 1993-2008
This research focuses on representative orientations and representative behaviors of Taiwan's indigenous legislators. By analyzing the contents of their proposed bills (1993-2008), the researcher would like to answer the following questions. Do these indigenous legislators represent their respective constituencies? Or they speak for the all Taiwan's indigenous peoples or just for their own people. If the indigenous legislators do not represent their respective constituencies, the next question is how to demarcate the existing indigenous district system to make the indigenous district system more reasonable and fit indigenous people's need. Furthermore, this research also would like to discuss the relationship between indigenous representative orientations and indigenous representative behaviors. Moreover, the research want to answer what the crucial factors to affect indigenous legislators' representative behaviors are. The research findings are as following: 1. Affected by electoral competition, the indigenous legislators tend to respond to ”electorate's interest”. However, to these indigenous legislators, the referred ”electorate” is not confined to the voters registered in their respective constituency but all indigenous voters. In other words, Taiwan's indigenous legislators regard themselves as the representative of the all indigenous peoples. 2. The establishment of Council of Indigenous Peoples and the tramformation of Indigenous Social Movement are two crucial factors to affect indigenous legislators' representative behaviors. 3. The numbers and contents of the bills proposed by indigenous legislators are highly affected by the political parties and the constituencies they belong to. Mountain indigenous legislators are more active than Plain-land indigenous legislators and indigenous legislators elected from proportional representation system. Furthermore, the legislators of Non-Partisan Solidarity Union are more active than other political parties'. 4. 93.3% of the bills are proposed by 10 indigenous legislators, which emphasized on indigenous education, economic development in indigenous area, autonomy of indigenous peoples, reserved land ownership and natural resource management, and compensation.
