Partisan Divergence and Public Support for the Courts of Taiwan

Abstract

AbstractThe role of the court system in national policymaking has long been a central issue in democratic theory. Two contending theories, the traditional view and the realist one, have been offered to explain the influence of the judiciary compared to other political institutions. Looking at the subject from Dahl's realist perspective, it is hypothesized that supporters of the ruling majority generally have a favorable attitude toward the courts,ceteris paribus. This study sheds some light on the issue of public support by examining the public's evaluation of the judicial system in Taiwan. It evaluates the impact of political factors (especially party identification) on public support for the judiciary, based on the results of a national survey carried out in 2014 to assess public attitudes toward the courts and other political institutions. The findings reveal that, compared with other institutions, the courts enjoy a relatively high degree of popular confidence. The results also confirm the realist view that supporters of the policymaking majority generally hold favorable attitudes toward the judiciary, whereas opponents of the ruling coalition tend to express lower levels of diffuse support for the courts.