 |
Decline of Kuomintang (KMT) Electoral Dominance, Factional Conflict and Bureaucratic Reforms in Taiwan
| |
| | Unformatted Document Text:
Decline of Kuomintang (KMT) Electoral Dominance, Factional Conflict, and
Bureaucratic Reforms in Taiwan
To date, scholars have paid great attention to understanding the variation in electoral
rules and elections in new democracies. There has been less focus on how electoral rules and elections, over time, affect the composition of the executive branch and thus the nature of government policies in new democracies. During the past decade, several of the world’s well-known one-party dominant systems lost control of their governments. Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and Taiwan’s Kuomintang Party (KMT) all lost effective
control of their governments. This paper focuses on
Taiwan and links the KMT’s decline in electoral performance directly to its ability to control the executive branch.
Taiwan recently adopted a series of administrative reform laws, designed to make the
bureaucracy more transparent and allow public participation in regulatory policies. The passage of these laws begs the question why chief executives support administrative procedural reforms that are designed to slow down and impose extra costs on the implementation of their policies? Theoretically, any executive -- either a president or a cabinet minister -- can have control problems within his own branch. In Taiwan, the declining electoral performance of the KMT meant that there was an increased threat of a successful no confidence vote against the KMT government. So, to shore up his position within the party, President Lee Teng-hui found it necessary to appoint ministers from a rival faction within the KMT, whose members favored more anti-corruption reforms than his faction. Consequently, the rival faction ministers confronted entrenched bureaucrats loyal to Lee, while Lee found himself in conflict with those same ministers, who he had been forced to appoint. These reformist ministers had an incentive to manage delegation to Lee’s bureaucracy. At the same time, Lee had an incentive to limit the power of the rival faction ministers. Administrative procedures designed to open up the bureaucracy to the public could serve both of these goals. Archival data, secondary sources, and interviews with key presidential advisors, senior career bureaucrats, and politicians confirm my hypothesis.
(DRAFT: Please do not cite)
Jeeyang Rhee Baum
University of California, San Diego
Department of Political Science
La Jolla, CA
(858) 822-0272
## email not listed ##
"Prepared for delivery at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2 - September 5, 2004. Copyright by the American Political Science Association."
|
| |
| |
|
|
Decline of Kuomintang (KMT) Electoral Dominance, Factional Conflict, and
Bureaucratic Reforms in Taiwan
To date, scholars have paid great attention to understanding the variation in electoral
rules and elections in new democracies. There has been less focus on how electoral rules and
elections, over time, affect the composition of the executive branch and thus the nature of
government policies in new democracies. During the past decade, several of the world’s well-
known one-party dominant systems lost control of their governments. Japan’s Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP), Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and Taiwan’s
Kuomintang Party (KMT) all lost effective
control of their governments. This paper focuses on
Taiwan and links the KMT’s decline in electoral performance directly to its ability to control the
executive branch.
Taiwan recently adopted a series of administrative reform laws, designed to make the
bureaucracy more transparent and allow public participation in regulatory policies. The
passage of these laws begs the question why chief executives support administrative procedural
reforms that are designed to slow down and impose extra costs on the implementation of their
policies? Theoretically, any executive -- either a president or a cabinet minister -- can have
control problems within his own branch. In Taiwan, the declining electoral performance of the
KMT meant that there was an increased threat of a successful no confidence vote against the
KMT government. So, to shore up his position within the party, President Lee Teng-hui found
it necessary to appoint ministers from a rival faction within the KMT, whose members favored
more anti-corruption reforms than his faction. Consequently, the rival faction ministers
confronted entrenched bureaucrats loyal to Lee, while Lee found himself in conflict with those
same ministers, who he had been forced to appoint. These reformist ministers had an incentive
to manage delegation to Lee’s bureaucracy. At the same time, Lee had an incentive to limit the
power of the rival faction ministers. Administrative procedures designed to open up the
bureaucracy to the public could serve both of these goals. Archival data, secondary sources,
and interviews with key presidential advisors, senior career bureaucrats, and politicians
confirm my hypothesis.
(DRAFT: Please do not cite)
Jeeyang Rhee Baum
University of California, San Diego
Department of Political Science
La Jolla, CA
(858) 822-0272
## email not listed ##
"Prepared for delivery at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, September 2 - September 5, 2004. Copyright by the American Political Science
Association."
|
|
 Convention | | Convention is an application service for managing large or small academic conferences, annual meetings, and other types of events! | | Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. | | Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! | | Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! | | Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. | | Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! | | Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! | | Click here for more information. |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Page 1 of 37 
