Journal of Electoral Studies

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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 The Openness of Political Market and the Breakdown of Local Factions

The Openness of Political Market and the Breakdown of Local Factions

Chin-Shou Wang
2007 / 11
Volume 14, No.2

pp.25-51
10.6612/tjes.2007.14.02.25-51

Abstract

During the authoritarian period, the typical organizational structure of clientelism was the pyramid shape. It provided several advantages for the clientelist elites and the KMT. The limited openness of electoral politics helped maintain the pyramid-shaped organizational structure of clientelism. The structure of broker organizations is one of the main factors shaping the mobilization capacity of clientelism. The better the brokerage organizational structure, the easier it is for patrons to mobilize brokers and clients. The more fragmented the brokerage organizational structure is, the more difficult it is for patrons to integrate them. Fully competitive electoral politics increases the competition among clientelist elites. The competition speeds the trend toward fragmentation of brokerage organizations. During the authoritarian period, local factions rarely supported more than one candidate at the same time in elections. Therefore, local factions did not face the coordination problems they would later face under the SNTV system. The KMT did encounter these coordination problems. On one hand, it used local factions to differentiate candidates. On the other hand, a certain amount of hard-core supporters helped the KMT divide votes optimally among its candidates. Fully competitive electoral politics gave clientelist elites an opportunity to access the state resources, which were no longer limited to the local level. However, under the Taiwanese specific electoral institution, Single Nontransferable Vote (SNTV) system, the new competitive politics not only increased inter-factional conflicts within the KMT, but also intra-factional conflicts. These intra-factional conflicts precipitated the breakdown of the factional organizational structure.

Keywords

political market

local factions

KMT

electoral institutions

SNTV