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Abstract
The influence of partisan factor in electoral choice under the SNTV system has not been well understood and systematically studies in the past. Conventional wisdom suggests that an SNTV system tends to induce candidate-centered campaign and to suppress the importance of partisan consideration. The paper argues that partisan factor may be brought into voters' decision-making in many different ways. In some cases, it serves as a screening factor, in other cases, it is the dominant factor as voters are willing to follow their party's instruction under a vote-eqalizing scheme. This paper identifies four different modes of electoral choice according to the impact of partisan factor on voting behavior. The analytical framework is a preliminary trial based on the islandwide survey data of the 1991 election for the National Assembly.
Abstract
This paper examines the major parties' vote-equalizing strate-gies and the impacts of these strategies on candidates' vote-distribu-tion under a SNTV electoral system. From this perspective, this study tries to observe party competition and party politics in Taiwan since the 1980s. Based on a study on legislative elections from 1983 to 1995, this paper shows some research findings. First, the KMT uses the local factions and "responsibility zone system" to mobilize and allocate potential votes to her candidates. Therefore, the vote-distribution of the KMT candidates tends to be concentrated on some parts of the electoral district. On the other hand, the DPP and NP cannot be helped by the local organizations so that the vote shares of their candidates tend to be scattered across the district. Secondly, from a longitudinal perspective, the vote shares of the KMT candidates are getting scattered. This tendency has become evident since the end of the 1980s, when the opposition parties were gradually organized and institutionalized. Thirdly, the influence of the local factions has gradually become weak because of the devel-opment of social economy and the emergence of the opposition par-ties. All of these tendencies show that the KMT's campaign system which depends on vote allocation, local factions and grass-root organizations has become shaky.
Abstract
It is well recognized that intra-party competition marks a major consequence of the single nontransferable vote under multi-member district system(SNTV-MMD), currently used in Taiwan's legislature elections. A key issue in Taiwan's electoral study is thus how candi-dates, especially those from the same party, divide their votes a-mong various categories that differentiate the voters. Since the data set revealing this information is usually a large matrix of categorical variables, existing multivariate statistical methods are either inap-plicable or inadequate. This paper demonstrates that correspond-dence analysis is an appropriate statistical tool to solve this prob-lem. This method treats an n × m matrix as n vectors in an m-di-mensional space, and finds a k-dimensional subspace that maxi-mizes the variance of the projections of the n vectors. Utilizing this method, this paper first illustrates the Chi-square distance between candidates and the sub-district regions. It then designs indexes to describe the degree of vote concentration for each candidate, fac-tion, and party, and correlate it with the electoral performances of these actors. Statistical analysis indicates that, given the same vote share, inertia, and dimensionality, overnominating one candidate decreases the seat share of the KMT by 11.73%.
Abstract
Party and constituency are two major forces faced by legislators. They influence legislators' representative behavior in different degrees and in different ways. This paper examines how these two forces influence Taiwanese legislators' representative styles and behavior. Research findings show that the representative styles of Taiwan's legislators have changed radically since the mid-1980s.Many legislators changed from a party-oriented style to a constituency-oriented style. This paper suggests a possible reason for this radical change. Legislators have to build their personal vote because they face intensive party competition resulted from the emergence of an opposition party, the DPP. The legislators under a single non-transferable vote system cannot count only on their party to get re-election. Most of them have to show their distinctive characteristics and hard-working in the legislative Yuan and in their constituency. They may even deviate from the party line to get attention and support from their constituencies sometimes. Based on a case study on the third term of legislators, this research has several findings. First, approximately two-thirds of the legislators are constituency-oriented, and less than one-third of the legislators are party-oriented. Secondly, the representative orientations of legislators affect their representative behavior profoundly. Party-oriented legislators make more efforts in the law-making process, while constituency-oriented legislators make more efforts in their constituencies. Meanwhile, the party-oriented legislators follow the party line more than their constituency-oriented fellows do. Thirdly, the representative orientations of individual legislators are affected by their vote-getting styles, party affiliation, and constituency styles. The legislators who rely more on their constituency than party to get re-election, the legislators of KMT, and the legislators from homogeneous constituencies, are more likely to be constituency-oriented.
Abstract
It has been demonstrated that, as an indicator of the fragmentation of political system, the effective number of candidates running under the single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system converges to M+1, where M is district magnitude. How these candidates are to be grouped into parties, however, remains unanswered. I propose that the effective number of parties under SNTV is determined by electoral system as well as the voters' preference profiles. When the voters are idealistic and select the candidates according to their issue positions, the centrifugal tendency of SNTV fosters M+1 effective parties. When the voters care only about absolute gains, the need to maintain a stable distributive coalition encourages one-party dominance, unless regionalism hinders the formation of a grand national party. Using the percentage of agricultural population to approximate the proportion of realist voters, I show that this formula explains well the evolution of party systems in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Abstract
The axis of this paper is legislators' reelections, and the purpose is to explore legislators' reelections under SNTV electoral system. At the beginning, this paper discusses the fourth legislators' reelections in the fifth legislative election then examines the relationship between the major four factors, including party, personal performance, local faction and constituency, and legislators' reelections in order to find out the important variables of affecting legislators' reelections. Finally, this paper will use binary logistic model to build ”the model of legislators' reelections” for comparing the degree of all the variables affecting legislators' reelections. Research findings show that among all the four factors, party and personal performance are the most critical ones affecting the fourth legislators' reelections in the fifth legislative election. Speaking precisely, the nomination of party and legislators' performances (including legislative performance, services of the constituency and the news-exposures in term), which compare with the other legislators' in the same constituency are the important variables affecting legislators' reelection.
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
Taiwan has adopted a new mixed member system which carries significant differences from the long-implemented SNTV-MMD system for the election of legislators in 2008. Mainstream literature continues to discuss the electoral impacts on political parties and candidates by the new system while citizen's knowledge of the new system and its concomitant effects on citizen's behavior are less concerned. The purpose of this essay is to explore citizen's perceptions, participations and evaluations of this new system. Based on a 30-day rolling poll data, it firstly examines the distribution and change of citizen's knowledge of the new electoral system. It finds that citizen's knowledge of the new electoral system is not high. Also, citizen's knowledge is increased as election approaches when more campaign information is provided. It is followed by a discussion that citizen's age, education, media exposure, political interests, and party identification are closely associated with citizen's increase of knowledge. Then, by way of analyzing post election panel survey data, this essay makes clear that an increase of citizen's knowledge also contributes to citizen's intention to vote in election. However, citizen maintains a mixed assessment of the new electoral system that, compared with the SNTV-MMD system, the new electoral system is good for recruiting better candidates and the development of democracy but fears for causing social tensions. It also finds citizen's party identification plays a significant role in the assessment while citizen's knowledge of new system does not. In the discussion and conclusion section, it suggests a cautious perspective that citizen in Taiwan has only one experience of the new system. It is reasonable to argue that citizen's knowledge may increase as more elections are implemented under the new system. Meanwhile, based on the New Zealand experience and findings of this essay, more information of the new system, either from the government, mass media, or political parties, will contribute to citizen's knowledge of new system.
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.
Abstract
There are reasons to believe that both partisan and personal factors should be important in the voting decision in SNTV elections, but this has not been rigorously tested in previous literature. This paper presents evidence that both types of factors have significant impacts, but partisan factors are much more powerful than personal factors. In general, partisan factors dominate the candidate vote choice, and personal factors serve primarily as tiebreakers among candidates from the same party. Moreover, the importance that voters place on personal factors varies in different partisan contexts, and there is generally a partisan logic to these varying weights.Methodologically, this paper proposes mixed logit as an appropriate tool for modeling voting choices in SNTV and examines data from the five legislative elections in Taiwan from 1992 to 2004.
