Comparative Party System
Mar. 16, 2005
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citizens to develop long –term and stable party identification.
The low legitimacy of parties means people don’t have trust in political parties.
According to the surveys of East Asia Barometer, party ranks the least-trusted institution
in Taiwan.
Low legitimacy of parties makes the system unstable(Mainwaring,
1999:35).
Weak party organization indicates the politicians are not loyal to their
parties and they often switch parties.
Take James Soong for example, he withdrew
from the KMT because he was not nominated for the presidential candidate and then ran
as an independent in 2000 presidential election.
Although he didn’t win the presidency,
he got significant amount of vote share that was very close to that of the incumbent.
With a strong support base, he created the People First Party (PFP) shortly after his
defeat.
At present, the party system in Taiwan is weakly institutionalized.
It has the
characteristics of unstable party competition, weak party roots in society, low legitimacy
of parties, and weak party organization.
The Evaluation of Institutionalized Party System: Four Features
In this part, I am going to assess if Taiwan’s party system is weakly institutionalized
by evaluating the four features of the party-system institutionalization that Mainwaring
laid out in his book.
They are patterns of party competition, party roots in society, the
legitimacy of parties, and party organization (Mainwaring, 1999: 26-36).
I will focus on
the period after 1986 since it symbolizes the end of authoritarian era and the beginning of
democratization.
Patterns of party competition: electoral volatility
Electoral volatility refers to how parties compete with each other.
It means the
Convention