Elite settlements in Taiwan

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 1998, Pages

  Higley, John ^a   Huang, Tong Yi ^b   Lin, Tse Min ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

^b Department of Government ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 18744429446     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. A democratic transition is completed when "a government comes to power that is the direct result of a free and popular vote, when this government de facto has the authority to generate new policies, and when the executive, legislative, and judicial power generated by the new democracy does not have to share power with other bodies de jure." Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 3.
2. In other words, is democracy the "only game in town" for all significant political actors, for a clear majority of the public, and for all government and nongovernment forces within a territorially integrated state? Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 6.
3. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 61, 87-115.
4. Giovanni Sartori, "How Far Can Free Government Travel?" Journal of Democracy 6 (July 1995): 101-11. This section draws on a comparative analysis of elite settlements by John Higley and Michael Burton, "Elite Settlements and the Taming of Democracy," Government and Opposition 33 (Winter 1998): 98-115.
5. Giovanni Sartori, "How Far Can Free Government Travel?" Journal of Democracy 6 (July 1995): 101-11. This section draws on a comparative analysis of elite settlements by John Higley and Michael Burton, "Elite Settlements and the Taming of Democracy," Government and Opposition 33 (Winter 1998): 98-115.
6. Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory Revisited. Part I: The Contemporary Debate (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House, 1987), 224.
7. Guillermo O'Donnell, "Illusions About Consolidation," Journal of Democracy 1 (April 1996): 34-51.
8. Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
9. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 61n. 1.
10. But cf. Michael G. Burton and Jai P. Ryu, "South Korea's Elite Settlement and Democratic Consolidation," Journal of Political and Military Sociology 25 (Summer 1997): 1-24.
11. For a detailed account of the student movement, see He Chin-shan, Kuan Hung- chih, Chang Li-ch'ieh, and Kuo Ch'eng-ch'i, Taipei-hsüehyun (Taipei student movement) (Taipei: Shih-pao Wen-hua, 1990).
12. Shih Min-te, a political prisoner who launched a four-year hunger strike while imprisoned, and Hsu Hsin-liang, an exiled dissident arrested after he slipped back into Taiwan, were among those released. Hsu and Shih became the DPP's successive chairmen in 1991 and 1993.
13. A handful of prominent intellectuals and dissidents (such as Peng Ming-min) who were invited nevertheless boycotted the conference.
14. See Higley and Burton, "Elite Settlements and the Taming of Democracy," n. 4.
15. The DPP's official "Democratic Grand Constitution" provided for a mixed presidential-parliamentary system similar to that of the French Fifth Republic. However, the radical wing's draft for a "Constitution of the Republic of Taiwan" proposed a parliamentary system with a strictly symbolic presidency.
16. Yao Chia-wen, a former chairman of the DPP and one of the participants, commented afterward that the definition of "nation" - whether it denoted Taiwan alone or Taiwan plus China-was disputed at every NAC session. Yao concluded that the NAC had to be judged a failure insofar as it was unable to reach agreement on this burning question. Harvey Feldman, ed., Constitutional Reform and the Future of the Republic of China (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), 27.
17. Those who argued against a direct popular election favored a system similar to the American electoral college, using National Assembly members as electors.
18. Tse-min Lin, Yun-han Chu, and Melvin J. Hinich, "Conflict Displacement and Regime Transition in Taiwan: A Spatial Analysis," World Politics 48 (July 1996): 453-81.
19. Taking responsibility for the DPP's defeat in the 1993 Taiwan Province gubernatorial election, Hsu had resigned from the party chairmanship, but he was reelected to it in 1996.
20. Because Taiwan officially retained its status as a province of China throughout the period of KMT rule, it also retained its own "provincial" government. The national government is long under the domination of KMT mainlanders, while native Taiwanese were more prominent at the provincial level. What to do about the "superfluous" provincial government, in whose continuation there have been strong vested interests, and whose abolition many in both Beijing and Taipei regard as an important step toward severing all political links with the mainland, has been a divisive issue in Taiwan throughout the 1990s.
21. Linz and Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition, 19-20n. 1.