The 2000 Presidential Election and Its Implications for Taiwan's Domestic Politics

Issues and Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 1-19

  Hsieh, John Fuh Sheng ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA   (United States)

Author keywords

Cleavage; National identity; Parliamentary form of government; Single nontransferable vote (SNTV); Single member district (SMD) plurality system

Indexed keywords

EID: 0012832145     PISSN: 10132511     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. According to the official figure released by the Central Election Commission (CEC), the KMT vote in 1992 was 53.02 percent. However, this was not comparable to the 1989 figure because the CEC changed the rules with regard to the labeling of candidates in the elections. Previously, all candidates who claimed to be KMT members, no matter whether they were nominated by the party, would be recorded as such, but since 1992 only those who obtained the party's nomination have been regarded as its candidates. In 1992, there were quite a few heavyweight KMT politicians who were not nominated by the party, but decided to run anyway. Many of these candidates did win the races, and returned to the KMT camp in the Legislative Yuan after being elected. By adding the votes received by those KMT-turned-independents, the KMT actually secured 60.5 percent of the vote, slightly more than it did in 1989.
2. See Gary W. Cox, "SNTV and d'Hondt Are 'Equivalent'," Electoral Studies 10, no. 2 (June 1991): 118-32; and John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, "The SNTV System and Its Political Implications," in Taiwan's Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition: Riding the Third Wave, ed. Hung-mao Tien (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), 193-212.
3. See Gary W. Cox, "SNTV and d'Hondt Are 'Equivalent'," Electoral Studies 10, no. 2 (June 1991): 118-32; and John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, "The SNTV System and Its Political Implications," in Taiwan's Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition: Riding the Third Wave, ed. Hung-mao Tien (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), 193-212.
4. See William H. Riker, "The Two-Party System and Duverger's Law: An Essay on the History of Political Science," American Political Science Review 76, no. 4 (December 1982): 753-66.
5. Christopher H. Achen, "Plurality Rule When Polling Is Forbidden: The Taiwan Presidential Election of 2000" (Paper presented at the Conference on Taiwan Issues held by the Center for Asian Studies, University of South Carolina, in Charleston, South Carolina, April 2000).
6. There were more than three candidates in this election. For simplicity, however, we focus only on the three major candidates.
7. See 〈http://udnnews.com/FOCUSNEWS/0319F/374839.htm〉.
8. Something similar took place in the Taipei mayoral election in 1994. See John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, Emerson M.S. Niou, and Philip Paolino, "Strategic Voting in the 1994 Taipei City Mayoral Election," Electoral Studies 16, no. 2 (June 1997): 153-63.
9. Another factor is strategic behavior on the part of candidates or parties to converge into two large camps. See note 3 above and Gary W. Cox, Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
10. Walter Darnell Jacobs and Harold Zink, Modern Governments (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1966), 45.
11. After the presidential election, the KMT controlled 116 out of 224 seats.
12. For a detailed discussion of the continuity and change in Taiwan's party politics, see John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, "Continuity and Change in Taiwan's Electoral Politics," in How Asia Votes, ed. John Fuh-sheng Hsieh and David Newman (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, forthcoming).
13. Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, "Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction," in Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, ed. Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (New York: The Free Press, 1967), 1-64.
14. Russell J. Dalton, Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in the Advanced Industrial Democracies, second edition (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1996).
15. See John Fuh-sheng Hsieh and Emerson M.S. Niou, "Issue Voting in the Republic of China on Taiwan's 1992 Legislative Yuan Election," International Political Science Review 17, no. 1 (January 1996): 13-27;
16. and "Salient Issues in Taiwan's Electoral Politics," Electoral Studies 15, no. 2 (May 1996): 219-35.
17. The wordings of these surveys, though not always the same, do not deviate too much from each other.
18. These are nationwide surveys except for the one conducted in 1994, in which the two major cities - Taipei and Kaohsiung - are excluded. Strictly speaking, therefore, the 1994 data and others are not comparable. However, the trend displayed in the 1994 data is consistent with what we obtain from others, so I include them here. However, the readers are cautioned that the 1994 data should be read with care.
19. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), chap. 8.
20. See John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, "Whither the Kuomintang?" (Paper presented at the Conference on President Lee Teng-hui's Legacy: Formation and Implications, Taipei, May 2000).
21. For a similar argument in the Japanese context, see J. Mark Ramseyer and Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Japan's Political Marketplace (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
22. The KMT has proposed a mixed system based on the Japanese model, which includes a large number of SMD's plus a few seats reserved for proportional representation (PR), with the allocation of seats in each part to be conducted separately. Such a system is not very proportional, and will definitely benefit the large parties, particularly the largest one. The DPP, on the other hand, prefers a different kind of mixed system, based essentially on the German model with the PR part being the basis for determining the overall distribution of seats among political parties. The DPP proposal is essentially PR, and favors small parties if the threshold for getting seats is not too high.