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The Study of Evolution in the Post-War Penghu Local Faction

Ming-Huei Tsai
2002 / 05
Volume 9, No.1

pp.113-136
10.6612/tjes.2002.09.01.113-136
Paper

Abstract

At present, the research of local factions in Taiwan seems to have omitted the in-depth study of local faction politics at off-shore island. In addition, lesser effort has been made on the declining issue of local factions in the past years. In this study, the historical and structural approach as well as field study method has been adopted. With the help of historical document and data collected from the in-depth interview, the researcher tried to discuss the formation and declining of Penghu local factions in the post-war. The following findings are emerged from this research: (1) Due to the pre-existing inter-group differential and competition of autonomy election, the competition among factions were emerged and the Penghu local factions were generated. In addition, the only competition field is the election for congress of county or province because the position of county mayor were controlled by the military force. (2) The faction itself is lack of strong structure because of the scarceness of Penghu local resources. Therefore, when the leader of faction has been changed or the members of faction were facing the conflict in profit could emerge the split and reorganization of faction. (3) In 1980s, the Penghu traditional political factions could not make adjustment to the rise of businessman-like politics and loss the influence to the local area. In addition, there had not been any political oppositions in Penghu during the martial law era. As a result, the relationship of alliance between Kuomintang and faction did not exist, which the local factions were served as the counter acting pressure of political oppositions for Kuomintang. In this case, local faction has been declined gradually.

Keywords

Local Faction

Local Autonomy

Clientelism

Military Control

Penghu