The State of Political Science in Taiwan ( )

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1 The State of Political Science in Taiwan ( ) Yujen Chou Luke Yuan-Che Hsiao I. Background During the past 14 years, Taiwan has experienced five constitutional revisions. These revisions not only changed Taiwan s presidential and legislator electoral systems, the executive-legislative relationships, but also expanded constitutional role of the president. In 1996, Taiwan s electorate, for the first time, elected their president through direct popular vote which indicated that Taiwan started its democratization process. Furthermore, in the 2000 presidential election, the oppositional party s candidate won and resulted in the first party turn-over in Taiwan. Moreover, the Nationalist Party (KMT) which lost the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections not only won more than 70% seats of the congress just two months before the presidential election, but also won back power again in the March 2008 presidential election which indicated that Taiwan s second party turn-over. In Samuel Huntington s view, this means that Taiwan s democratization should have been consolidated. 1 According to Taiwan s 1997 Constitutional Amendment, its constitutional system is quite similar to that of the France system. Whenever the president s party could dominate the congress, the political system will move to president system. On the other hand, if the president s party failed to dominate the congress, the political system will be alternated into dual leadership. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) never dominated more than half seats in the Legislative Yuan (Congress) since Although the DPP become the biggest party in the congress in 2002, it still failed to master the congress. Furthermore, the premier is appointed by the president, requiring no consent of the congress since This revision deprived of Yujen Chou is Professor and Chair of the Department of Public Administration and Policy, National Taipei University as well as President of the Chinese Association of Political Science. His research interests include political economy, constitutional system, executive-legislative relationship, and Taiwan s politics. Professor Chou can be reached at <elites@ms17.hinet.net>. Luke Yuan-Che Hsiao is associate professor of the Department of Public Policy and Management, I-Shou University as well as Secretary-General of the Chinese Association of Political Science. Professor Hsiao can be reached at <polmagt@yahoo.com.tw>. 1 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1

2 the right of the congress to approve the president s nomination of premier which made it possible for the president to insist minority government. Although the premier may request the congress to reconsider the passage of a bill that it deems difficult to execute; but, should more than one-half, rather than the original two-thirds, of the total number of congress members uphold the original passage of the bill, the premier shall immediately accept said bill. These changes allowed the president to appoint someone who is not a member of the majority party in the congress. That s why, for the past eight years, all six cabinets appointed by the president were minority governments. However, even the executive branch can initiate statute and budget, it is impossible for them to be passed without support of the opposition, which dominated more than half seats in the congress. This political structure not only resulted in serious conflicts between the executive branch and the legislative branch as well as the ruling party and the oppositional parties, but also stalemating Taiwan s governmental process 2. In addition, under the leadership of the DPP, the ethnic conflicts become more serious than before. Moreover, the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China was under strict regulation which in some degree weakening Taiwan s economic competitiveness. Since 2000, the DPP minority government strengthened the power of the congress in counterbalancing the president and the executive branch. Those statutory or budgetary bills that related to sensitive political stance were strongly boycotted by the opposition. Moreover, though some resolutions passed by the congress were deemed difficult to execute by the executive branch, the executive branch surrendered its right to request the congress to reconsider the bill because the opposition dominated more than half seats in the congress, which allowed them to uphold the original bill. There were many cases that the ruling party was forced to accept the congress resolutions or failed to turn down the congress decision through request the congress to reconsider the original resolution. 3 In 2005, the seventh constitutional amendment halved the number of seats in the Legislature Yuan from 225 to 113 and changed the legislative term of office from three to four years. Moreover, Taiwan replaced its original single-non-transferable vote (SNTV) system by the single-district, two-vote system. There is no doubt that the 2 The party composition in Taiwan can be classified into pan-green and pan-blue. The former includes the DPP and the Taiwan Solidarity Union, which in sum controlled around 100 seats in the congress. The latter includes the KMT, the People First Party and the New Party, which in sum controlled more than half seats in the congress. Besides, 13 seats belong to the Non-Party Union, which used to be prone to vote alone pan-blue lines on most occasions. 3 Yujen Chou, Changing Constitutional Roles of Legislative Yuan, Taiwan Development Perspective 2007, pp Taipei: National Policy Foundation. 2

3 related change on electoral system will directly or indirectly affect the development of each political party and the results of election. Under this new electoral system, the oppositional KMT had a slide victory in the 2008 congress election which will allow it to effectively dominate the executive branch and the legislative process in the coming four years. II. State of Political Science in Taiwan ( ) Based upon the background introduction, it will be easier for us to introduce the state of Taiwan s political science during the past decade. In , there was a project authorized by the National Science Council in Taiwan, which tried to investigate the popular and future-oriented research issues of political science in Taiwan. In this project, it used four criteria to find out the popular and future-oriented research issues. These criteria including: A. issue that is unique to Taiwan, B. issue that local research has international competitiveness, C. issue that has developed in other countries and has potential to become important research issue in Taiwan, D. issue that may promote cooperation among different subfields and disciplines. 4 Through the web poll, this project received 271 samples (32.11% of the whole) from local political scientists. According to the findings of this research, the issue constitutional system and electoral system is conformed to rule a, b and d, the issue sovereignty, national identity and conflict is conformed to rule a, c and d. With regard to the issue democracy and governance and mixed methodology and methods, both conformed to rule c and d. The sampling of this survey is presented in Table 1 and 2. Among these four issues, we could find that more than 85% agreed that all but the issue mixed methodology and methods were popular issues for political scientists in Taiwan. However, only more than 80% agreed that democracy and governance could be a future-oriented research issue in Taiwan. This result might be related to the poor performance of the DPP government and its challenge to the constitutional rules by minority governments and administrative decrees. 4 Huang Chi, et al., , Popular and Future-oriented Research Issues in Political Science, Project authorized by the National Science Council, Taiwan. NSC H B9407 & NSC H B

4 Criteria Issue Table 1 relationship between 4 issues and 4 criteria constitutional system and electoral system sovereignty, national identity and conflict A B democracy and governance mixed methodology and methods C D Table 2 Taiwanese political scientists opinions about whether the 4 issues are popular (P) and future-oriented (F-O) constitutional system and electoral system sovereignty, national identity and conflict democracy and governance mixed methodology and methods P vs. F-O P vs. F-O P vs. F-O P vs. F-O agree 86.8% vs. 68.5% 84.8% vs.75.5% 87.9% vs.82.5% 55.6% vs. 65.4% disagree 9.8% vs. 28.0% 12.4% vs.21.8% 10.1% vs.15.2% 40.9% vs. 30.7% could not judge 3.5% vs. 3.5% 2.7% vs. 2.7% 1.9% vs. 2.3% 3.5% vs. 3.9% According to the findings of this project, the issue constitutional system and electoral system, sovereignty, national identity and conflict as well as democracy and governance were the most popular research issues for Taiwanese political scientists. As we mentioned earlier, Taiwan has experienced five constitutional revisions since These revisions changed Taiwan s political structure and electoral systems. The direct popular vote of president significantly strengthens his power in relative to the premier and the congress. However, although the president could dominate the nomination of premier, he still couldn t control the policy-making process in the congress. These not only resulted in serious conflict between ruling party and oppositional parties, but also weakened the government s capabilities to perform well. In other words, the constitutional revisions directly or indirectly affected Taiwan s political process. That s the reason why so many political scientists concentrated their research on the constitutional change and its impacts upon political process. In the past decade, owing to the continuous debate over Taiwan s constitutional orientation, there were many political scientists dealt with the constitutional choice among presidential system, parliamentary system and semi-presidential system. 4

5 Although the 1997 constitution revision authorized the congress right of no-confidence vote against the premier, the congress never tried to utilize it to counterbalance the executive branch owing to the pressure of congress reelection. Although the minority governments could survive, they couldn t work smoothly without the support of the congress. Unfortunately, Taiwan fell into endless political confrontation in the past eight years. The serious deadlock problems raised by the DPP minority government therefore attracted many Taiwanese political scientists to research divided government and unified government, minority government and majority government. Some political scientists even suggest that the approval right of the congress should be restored to avoid minority government. Finally, for many political scientists, the impacts of the change of congress electoral system from SNTV into separated single district, two votes system were very critical. This revision might change Taiwan s party system into two-party system and then restricts the room of small parties 5. Secondly, to be a sovereign state, the Republic of China (Taiwan) faced strong challenge from the People s Republic of China (Mainland China) in the past decade. To prevent Taiwan from independence, mainland China continuously boycotted Taiwan s participation in the international organizations and its formal diplomatic relations with other countries. Now, there is only less than 25 countries remain diplomatic relationships with Taiwan. However, under strong pressure from mainland China, the ratio that supported Taiwan independence continues to grow up in Taiwan. Moreover, in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the pro-independence party s candidate was elected by Taiwan s electorates which resulted in continuous and more serious political confrontation between Taiwan and mainland China. Taiwan and mainland China has been divided more than half century since 1949 and both have dramatically different political systems and economic systems. For most people in Taiwan, their national identity is Republic of China (Taiwan) rather than People s Republic of China. Consequently, research of sovereignty and national identity become so popular among those political scientist who were majored on international politics and cross-strait relations. Political scientists in Taiwan also concerns about the implications of Taiwan s experiences for the traditional concept of sovereignty. Moreover, the United States and other countries were also involved in the confrontation between Taiwan and mainland China. That s might be the reason why some of our political scientists paid their attentions to conflict and cooperation. Thirdly, public administration is the fastest growing sub-field of political science for the past decade in Taiwan. We have only ten departments of political science, but 5 In the 2008 congress election, the KMT won over 70% seats in the new congress, the ruling party won only 25% seats. There was only very few opportunity for the small parties to participate in the congress. The new electoral system might remain Taiwan a two-party system for a long time. 5

6 there are around 30 departments of public administration. The NSC research founding for research issues that related to public administration was quickly increased in the past three years. According to Huang s findings, democracy and governance is the most popular issues among pubic administration and policy. Under these issues, the major directions for our political scientists were democratic accountability of governmental operation, role and constraint of government as well as design and reinvention of public policy. As we mentioned earlier, the DPP minority governments performance were not good enough. Moreover, the problem of corruption was also very serious in the DPP government. That s might be the reasons why so much political scientists concerned about check and balance, administrative efficiency, legislative-executive relationships, responsibility, transparency and accountability, inter-agency and intergovernmental relationships, institutionalization of party turn-over, the credible commitment and neutral competence of government, the performance management, the relationships between government and business or the third sector, the quasi-government organization, theory of deliberative democracy, participatory policy analysis and participatory planning process; the participatory institutions of public resource distribution and management, the distributional justice, and the e-government. Furthermore, under the democratization process, the paradigm of the public policy in Taiwan transformed from top-down model to bottom-up. What the political scientists paid more attention were public policy design and decision, public policy analysis and evaluation, as well as the maintenance and reform of public policy. III. Conclusion During the past decade, Taiwan experienced the challenges of divided countries and minority governments. These two challenges greatly affected the research focus of Taiwanese political scientists. We tried to rediscover a new interpretation of the concept of sovereignty. Besides, we are dealing with the problems that the minority faced and tried to find a better constitutional structure for Taiwan. Fortunately, in 2008, the KMT won both the congress and presidential election which will temporally terminate the problem of minority government. Nevertheless, the potential constitutional challenge still need us to do further research and find out resolutions. Taiwan has a second party turn-over this year and it indicates that Taiwan s democratization should have been consolidated. However, whether Taiwan s future political change will prove Samuel Huntington s theory of democracy consolidation still need time to examine? In our 2009 annual conference, Democracy Consolidation in Taiwan will be our main research issue and we hope that Huntington s theory is correct. 6

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