Comparative Party System
Mar. 16, 2005
1
The Degree of Institutionalized Party System in Taiwan
Chia-yin Wei
Ph.D. Student
Department of Government
University of Texas at Austin
## email not listed ##
Abstract
This paper analyzes the evolution of Taiwan’s political parties by applying
Mainwaring’s criterion-the degree of institutionalized party system.
After assessing the
degree of institutionalized party system, it is evident that the party system in Taiwan is
weakly institutionalized.
The weakly institutionalized party system can be attributed to
three factors: the short period of party competition, the SNTV electoral system, and the
intra-party factionalism.
Also, the weakly institutionalized party system results in
individualism in campaign and policy instability.
However, I argue that it may not be
too early to conclude that Taiwan’s party system is weakly institutionalized since the
history of political parties is still not long enough to develop a concrete party system.
It
still needs a longer time span for scholars to observe the evolution of Taiwan’s party
politics in the future.
Paper Presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Southwestern Political Science
Association, March 23 – 26, New Orleans, LA
.