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Academia 20
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Democratization in Taiwan
Academia Nr: 20 (September - Dezember / settembre - dicembre 1999)Eva Pföstl
Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui's recent controversial remarks have sparked the biggest crisis in relations between Taiwan and China for some years. Mr. Lee said that Taiwan sees its relations with China as a "special state-to-state relationship" rather than an "internal" one. China insists that Taiwan is an "inalienable part of Chinese sovereign territory".
Taiwan's swift transition from being one of Asia's most rigid dictatorships to one of its liveliest new democracies was bound to fray its vestigial ties with China. Taiwan's rapid democratization has brought to power the first ethnic Taiwanese, Lee Teng-hui, and quickly expanded electoral support for the main opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which openly favors a proindependence agenda. Only a small minority in Taiwan now favors reunification. Most of its people want a continuation of the separate status that has brought them prosperity and a measure of freedom.
Taiwan's Transition
Compared with many other countries that experienced democratic transition in the 1970s and 1980s, democratization in Taiwan was characterized by stability and gradualism. Moderation prevailed both in the ruling and opposition parties, and economic performance improved. Taiwan's successful transition can be attributed to several factors:
1. Favourable socio-economic factors
that resulted from Taiwan's sustained rapid economic development since the 1950s: The economic and social transformation of Taiwan produced a large middle class, distributed economic wealth to autonomous sectors of society, enhanced the influence of an increasingly independent mass media, and fostered the growth of a civil society.
2. Political factors:
Unlike the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the mainland, the Kuomintang (KMT) in Taiwan was not ideologically opposed to democracy. Its official ideology defined democracy as a goal of the regime. The absence of ideological constraints gave the KMT more flexibility to pursue political opening. In addition, Taiwan's authoritarian system contained a few semi-democratic institutional enclaves, such as local self-government and elections.The most important of these was the institution of semi-competitive local elections established in the late 1950s. The KMT's initial motivation for holding such elections originated from its dire need to establish a basis of popular legitimacy on an island where its early policy failures and brutal rule had thoroughly alienated the native Taiwanese population. However, even limited electoral institutions produced an important long-term impact. Specifically, semiopen elections allowed ambitious elements - within the KMT and outside – a legally sanctioned channel to compete for power, which gradually resulted in the weakening of the KMT and the rise of independent politicians. The practice of local elections also eventually forced the KMT to open up national political institutions (such as the Legislative Yuan) to elections. Electoral processes provided Taiwan's incipient opposition movement with a valuable mechanism to gain popular support, acquire campaign experience, and fine-tune their message. Semiopen elections brought the ruling regime both short-term benefits (a limited degree of legitimacy) and a sense of security: as the KMT learned how to use the electoral mechanism to control and contain political opposition, it less frequently resorted to more brutal means of repression and gradually became a soft-authoritarian regime.
3. Convergence of democratic yearnings and ethnic tensions:
Ethnic tensions both within the regime and between the regime and the opposition were an important factor in Taiwan's transition. In many ways, the democratic yearnings of Taiwanese societycoincided with the rise of Taiwanese ethnic identity and the demand to seize power from the mainlander-dominated KMT regime. Ironically, the KMT's own program of "Taiwanization" (the cooptation of native-born elites), which was implemented in the 1970s, greatly contributed to the convergence of ethnic identity and political mobilization, and eventually enabled many Taiwanese elites to be well positioned to challenge the mainlanders inside the KMT during the transition. Native Taiwanese elites accounted for 97 percent of the membership of the opposition DPP in 1989. The strong Taiwanese identity of the opposition movement provided a rare cohesive force to the fledgling DPP and helped it to meet its initial challenges. At the same time, the rising Taiwanese elite within the KMT deftly capitalized on the strong sentiments of Taiwanese identity amongst the population to defeat the more conservative mainlanders inside the KMT. This two-pronged attack on the old KMT power structure quickly led to the unchallenged dominance of Taiwanese elites in the top echelons of power.
4. External factors:
Taiwan's transition seems to have benefited from both worldwide and regional trends of democratization in the mid-1970s. The opposition movement received direct and indirect support from the U.S. Congress and Taiwanese immigrant communities in the United States. Fear of loss of American support also limited the ruling KMT's hand in dealing with the opposition. In a geopolitical sense, Taiwan's leaders seemed to believe that a democratizing Taiwan would be more likely to gain international, especially American, support in its rivalry with the undemocratic and increasingly powerful mainland. Indeed, Taiwan reaped enormous security (such as procurement of high tech weapons systems, especially from the United States and France) as well as political benefits from its democratic transition.
Democratic consolidation in Taiwan
In the early 1990s Taiwan's transition entered a phase of democratic consolidation characterized by: far-reaching institutional, especially constitutional, reforms (1992-1997) that further clarify the division of power amongst the different branches of the government and expand democratic participation, and the strengthening of the party system and the decline of the ruling party's electoral support and control over the legislative process. At first (until 1994) the KMT was able to unilaterally set the agenda because it possessed a three-quarters majority in the National Assembly, more than enough to pass constitutional amendments. Indirect election by the National Assembly was replaced by a national direct election of the presidency, thus greatly enhancing its democratic legitimacy. In addition, this reform shortened the term of office from six to four years and imposed a two-term limit. On the other hand it strengthened the president's powers by abolishing the requirement of the president's personnel appointments to be endorsed by the premier of the Executive Yuan. Taiwan held its first presidential election after the reform in March 1996, which the incumbent Lee won with 54 percent of the vote.
Another important constitutional reform is marked by two laws on local autonomy (July 1994) which extended the principle of direct elections, further clarified and enhanced the political autonomy of local governments, and weakened the KMT's control over local electoral processes (especially the nomination of candidates).
The second round of constitutional reform, carried out in 1997, posed greater challenges for the KMT which saw its share of seats in the National Assembly reduced to 55 % in the March 1996 elections; less than the 75 % required for amending the constitution. The KMT had to bargain with the DPP (increased to 30 % of seats) to pass constitutional amendments. Thus the amendments passed in June 1997 established a mixed presidential-parliamentary system based on the French model. Both the KMT and the DPP saw some of their major objectives accomplished. For the KMT, the the presidency was further strengthened (by giving the president the power to dissolve the Legislative Yuan and to appoint the premier without its approval). The DPP, perhaps anticipating that it would take control of the Legislative Yuan before the presidency, gained key concessions that would grant certain checks and balances against presidential power (for example the power to remove the premier with a no-confidence vote, to override a cabinet veto with a simple majority vote, and to initiate impeachment proceedings against the president.
These constitutional measures caused worries about the long-term impact of a strong presidency on Taiwan's democracy. Another measure - the effective abolition of the Taiwan provincial government through the "freezing" of its elections - caused a serious split within the KMT. The DPP had long sought this measure as a move toward de jure independence (since the maintenance of a provincial legislature implied that Taiwan was a province of a larger Chinese state). Lee Teng-hui's concession on this issue was denounced by the proreunification New Party.
The consolidation phase has seen the growing maturity and sophistication of Taiwan's party system. Prior to the transition, the KMT was the most well organized party and retained unmatched electoral dominance. In the 1990s, the internal split sapped the KMT's political strength and contributed to the erosion of the party's voter support. The single most important factor responsible for the decline of the KMT and the reshaping of Taiwan's party system was the defection of a large number of mainlanders from the KMT and their subsequent formation of the Chinese New Party (CNP) in 1993. The respectable showing of the CNP in the 1995 elections marked the beginning of a three-party system and established the CNP as a pivotal minority party in the Legislative Yuan. The greatest challenge to the KMT's hold on power, however, came from the DPP, which had gained increasing political support and sophistication in the early 1990s.
The KMT's political decline and internal division inevitably weakened its ability to control the legislative agenda. The emergence of the CNP as a minority party whose support could swing crucialvotes made the coalition politics in the Legislative Yuan more fluid and complex. In addition, the Legislative Yuan acquired a stronger institutional identity and became more cognizant of its constitutional power. The best example of this was the successful DPP and CNP opposition to Lee Teng-hui's appointment of Vice President Lien Chan as premier in 1996 on the grounds that it violated the constitution. Taiwan's Legislative Yuan has emerged as an increasingly mature, sophisticated, and independent center of power capable of countering the influence of the KMT-controlled executive branch.
The newly consolidated democracy in Taiwan, however, will be seriously tested in confronting domestic challenges. Its political institutions will need to develop procedures to protect minority rights, especially those of mainlanders who have seen their political influence decline and who fear further marginalization. Some scholars in Taiwan have found worrisome trends in the increasingly polarized conflicts, especially over the issue of national identity, and low levels of tolerance.
Official corruption, including vote-buying and rigged bidding on public works projects, remains another issue threatening good governance in Taiwan. There is evidence that Taiwan's criminal elements have successfully penetrated the political establishment, especially at local level. Law and order has also deteriorated significantly in the 1990s. In 1998 high-profile kidnapping and murder cases brought tens of thousands of ordinary citizens to the streets of Taipei to protest. Indeed, while polling results indicate that most people in Taiwan support the democratic reforms carried out under Lee's rule, they are critical of his government's handling of official corruption and violent crime.
Dr. Eva Pföstl, collaborates at projects of the section „Minorities and regional autonomies" at the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano
Bibliography
Minxin Pei, The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union, Foreign Affairs 1998 Jaushieh Joseph Wu, Taiwan's Democratization: Forces Behind the New Momentum, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997. Steven Hood, "Political Change in Taiwan," Asian Survey May 1997. Hung-mao Tien, ed., Taiwan's Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition: Riding the Third Wave, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995
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