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Abstract
In the case of some transitions from authoritarianism to democracy, it is prevalent to have the sentiment of nostalgia for the stable and orderly times of the past regime, particularly in the context of nascent democracies. This pilot study sheds some light on the issue by examining the public evaluations of government performance between the Chiang Ching-kuo administration and the present government in Taiwan. I take advantage of the ”2003 Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study” (TEDS 2003) survey date, using the technique of factor analysis to classify government-performance evaluations into two factors, ”liberty and democracy” and ”stabilization and income equality,” and then employing regression models to test the relationship between sociopolitical variables and the two factors. The findings confirm the research hypothesis of authoritarian nostalgia that the public perceptions of the Chiang Ching-kuo administration and the present government differ in terms of the political perspective and the socioeconomic standpoint. On one hand, the general public has perceived the achievement of ”liberty and democracy” since the democratic transition, and on the other has looked back with nostalgia to the impressions of ”stabilization and income equality” during the authoritarian period. The findings also reveal that the variables of educational attainment, political knowledge, Taiwanese consciousness, Taiwan independence preference, and the pan-green identification exert positive effects on ”liberty and democracy,” while the variables of mainlander ethnicity, Chinese consciousness, China reunification preference, and the pan-blue identification account for significant variance in ”stabilization and income equality.” This study concludes that authoritarian nostalgia is still potential for future research in this field of democratization.
Abstract
Since Malaysia’s independence in 1957, the United Malay National Organization (UMNO)-led Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition government governed Malaysia for 61 years, maintaining a competitive authoritarian system. However, Malaysia experienced its first-ever party turnover in May 2018. To understand the reason why Malaysia’s competitive authoritarian system collapsed, the existing literature suggests two key explanations for BN’s electoral defeat: increasing urbanization, and Mahathir causing a split among the governing elites. Combining the theoretical perspectives of party politics and ethnic voting, this paper argues that Parti Islam Se-Malaysia’s (Malaysian Islamic Party, PAS) change of policy objective also was a factor in explaining BN’s electoral defeat. Specifically, the PAS changed its goal from “office-seeking” to “policy seeking.” In order to promote Islam, the PAS cut ties with the opposition coalition that it had joined for the past 20 years, because the Democratic Action Party (DAP) conflicted with the PAS with respect to its Islamization policy. The PAS established a new party coalition and focused on promoting Islam, which helped the PAS gain support from the Malay Muslim voters who had not voted for PAS because of its previous alliance with the DAP. Accordingly, this study * Assistant Professor, Department of Diplomacy and International Relations, Tamkang University.
