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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.
Abstract
Taiwan is the only democratic country currently using Single Nontransferable Vote System (SNTV) to elect its national-level representatives. The main purposes of this article are, from the perspective of measurement, to explore the appropriateness of traditionally defined categories of errors committed by political parties in SNTV and suggest a more precise taxonomy. In addition, the author attempts to apply the advanced taxonomy to the measurement of Legislative elections and, accordingly, to evaluate the electoral performance of the two prominent political parties in Taiwan, i.e., the KMT and the DPP. Finally, the never-been-proved phenomenon of large parties' over-representation in Taiwan will also be tackled, using data gathered under the guidance of the taxonomy. The major arguments and findings of this article are as follows: first, the traditionally defined error committed by political parties is not precise. The author also finds it better to define errors from the perspective of electoral outcome rather than from the point of whether optimal number of candidate has been nominated. Second, political parties have to pay the highest price for committing error of ”undernomination and fail to equalize the vote.” Third, the DPP outperforms the KMT in all of the indicators used in this article. Lastly, but not the least, the key to the over-representation of large parties in SNTV lies in the errors committed by other large parties and small parties. District magnitude, however, does not play a role in explaining the phenomenon. It is the author's hope that the advanced taxonomy proposed by this article can help to shed light on many other issues in the literature.
Abstract
This paper explores the impact of alterations to electoral systems on legislator campaign promises and to what extent legislators keep these promises in later legislative performance. We advance 2 hypotheses: 1. Legislators elected in single member plurality (SMP) system have a greater tendency to propose locally oriented campaign promises than those elected through proportional representation (PR), but will not be more likely to advance social welfare campaign promises; 2. Legislators chosen through SMP will put forth greater effort to actualize campaign promises in various legislative activities.This research performs a quasi-experimental comparison on Taiwan's Legislative Yuan. The 6th Legislative Yuan (2005-2008) utilized a single non-transferable vote system (SNTV), which was a hybrid system similar to PR, while the 7th Legislative Yuan elections were primarily an SMP hybrid two ballot system. We record data for the campaign promises district legislative candidates officially announced during the 6th and 7th term elections to explore the influence of electoral system alterations on national legislators' campaign promises and legislative activities aimed at realizing these promises.Our study essentially verifies the two hypotheses. SMP leads legislators to advance larger numbers of locally oriented campaign promises, while there is no difference between SMP and PR with respect to social welfare campaign promises. SMP system also spurs district legislators to utilize official and observable legislative activities, such as legislative proposals and interim proposals, in adhering to campaign promises. With respect to these findings, we further explore responsiveness and accountability in the SMP and PR systems, as well as its impact on social welfare policy, in order to further reflect on the present trend toward greater respect for PR system in democratic constitutional design.
