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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 The Psychological Cognition for Divided Government and Electoral Stability in Taiwan: The Cases of the 2000 Presidential and 2001 Legislative Yuan Elections

The Psychological Cognition for Divided Government and Electoral Stability in Taiwan: The Cases of the 2000 Presidential and 2001 Legislative Yuan Elections

Chung-Li Wu and Hung-Chung Wang
2003 / 05
Volume 10, No.1

pp.81-114
10.6612/tjes.2003.10.01.81-114
Paper

Abstract

The phenomenon of divided government seemingly has become the institutional norm at the various levels of governments in Taiwan. In view of its theoretically and practically political implications, we focus on the causes of divided government in Taiwan’ s national politics. Put it simply, we examine the contending perspectives: the voters prefer the system of checks and balances by divided partisan control of the executive and legislative branches, and intentionally votes for presidential and congressional candidates of different political parties; or, the electoral choice may have little to do with public preferences for divided or unified government but is heavily influenced by other determinants. We take advantage of the 2001 Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study (TEDS 2001) survey data of the general preference for divided government and examine if vote choice is on the basis of strategic considerations in the 2000 presidential and 2001 Legislative Yuan elections. The findings indicate that the variables of ethnicity, party identification, Taiwanese/Chinese identification, and the cognition for checks and balances emerge as statistically significant for accounting electoral stability/change and for the existence of divided government at the central level.

Keywords

divided government

electoral stability/change

checks and balances

arty identification