In a political campaign, candidates attempt to mobilize voters by using contributions from individuals, corporations, and political parties. It is an accepted fact of democracy that campaigns should attempt to outdo one another in both the amount they collect in contributions and what they spend on campaigns. Previous research has explored the incumbent advantage in campaign finance, but many interesting factors remain. For instance, is fund-raising aided by factors such as the closeness of an election or a candidate’s tenure in the Legislative Yuan? In this study, we explain campaign contributions using data from prediction markets and television news reports to account for variations in campaign spending. Our results suggest that incumbent advantage does indeed affect contributions and that DPP candidates outperformed other candidates in campaign finance. We also find that previous electoral margins and television news coverage contribute significantly to campaign donations, and that election betting has an impact on spending. These findings suggest that a political party’s general campaign can influence the election race of an individual candidate, and that contributors tend to bet on likely winners, deepening the influence of the electoral system on competing political parties.

This study attempts to unravel mnemonic manipulation in electioneering. The results of the 2018 nine-in-one election in Taiwan can be explained by the “Han tide” and its spillover effects, and so this study aims to decipher the emergence of the Han tide using a memory-studies approach. While admitting that other social factors played a role in the formation of the Han tide, this study suggests that four elements were found in Han’s electioneering: (re)defining the present as negative and (re)directing attention to the future, switching the commemorative focus from politics to economics, encouraging people to forget the political past and embrace the economic future, and employing an awakening narrative to evoke change. Moreover, four additional aspects were observed in the Han tide: canceling the challenges of counter-narratives by redirecting people’s attention, solving the issue of lacking a shared past with Kaohsiung City, downplaying and/or editing “out” the negative aspects of “our side,” and degrading the mnemonic framing and nostalgic capital of the Democratic Progressive Party. Although scholars of memory studies have shed light on politics in memory, this study argues that memory in politics should also be emphasized by investigating more empirical cases.

This paper examines partisan politics in the redistricting process in Taiwan in 2005-2007 to explain why neither major party was able to obtain its best plan in every city or county. Theoretically, the degree of partisanship depends on the extent to which guidelines constrain decision makers, the partisan composition of decision making bodies, and the sequence of action. In this specific case, there were four stages. Redistricting plans went through local election commissions, the Central Election Commission, the legislature, and negotiations between the speaker and the premier. At each stage, the effects of the guidelines, composition, and sequence are considered in detail. In addition, three counties are examined, illustrating the three common patterns: consensus, dominance by the local election commission, and partisan conflict. From a public policy standpoint, the framework presented in this paper provides a way to assess how various reform proposals would alter the incentive and constraints facing various actors. Politically, the framework suggests how future redistricting may differ from the 2005-2007 round, especially if Taiwan has unified government.

Although public opinion in Taiwan is increasingly in favor of gay rights, there is no corresponding trend at the elite level and no concrete policy changes have been achieved. Based on the logic of electoral competition and political socialization, this paper takes the 2014 elections for municipal councilors in Taiwan as an example and examines the factors influencing support for LGBT equality among local politicians. Theoretically, although the centrifugal effect of the SNTV system motivates candidates of the same party to differ from each other on a variety of issues, political socialization, on the contrary, encourages a more unified issue stance taken among party members. The results of multilevel models suggest that there is little linkage between the characteristics of constituents, the electoral rule, and candidates’ stances on gay rights. However, both partisanship and age play an indispensable role. Candidates who are members of the DPP or one of the liberal parties are more likely to support LGBT rights than their KMT counterparts.

Political machines are built to distribute spoils, buy support, and influence election outcome. Existing research argues that political machines target poor and illiterate voters because their votes are cheap to acquire with non-programmatic benefits. Using the case of Hong Kong, we critically examine the extent to which the ruling coalition utilizes non-programmatic benefits in elections where votes are generally too expensive to purchase. Using interviews with local councilors and data from the 2015 Hong Kong Election Study, we find that: (1) pro-Beijing parties tend to specialize in the provision of highly individualized services; (2) demand for these services tends to come from non-poor citizens; and (3) unable to monitor individual votes, pro-Beijing parties use services and benefits to influence the turnout of the recipients, rather than their vote choice. These findings suggest that the growing electoral strength of pro-Beijing parties in Hong Kong reflects their responsiveness to constituent demands.