Party Primaries in Taiwan: Continuing Appraisal

Abstract

T aiwan's gradual adaptations of U.S.-style political party primary elections (otherwise known s preliminary or n min ting elections) mark a significant trend among other developments in that island's democratization. We have joined a small group of observers to chronicle and analyze the introduction and acceptance, modification, or rejection of this nominating innovation.1 This article appraises trends in the nominating processes among Taiwan's three major political parties for elections in 1995 and 1996. Primaries have not typically been used by political parties outside the United States. In the U.S. they have become a fixed method for parties to use in determining which candidates to nominate for elective offices. The nomination function is perhaps the most singular feature distinguishing political party organizations from other political groups, wrote Richard G. Niemi and M. Kent Jennings.2 All political organizations, indeed all organizations, exhibit common functions, including membership recruitment and socialization, goal formation and adaptation, leadership selection, and resource acquisition and allocation. Niemi and Jennings observed that political parties rely uniquely on primary elections-relatively formalized elections for choosing nominees to oppose candidates from other parties-to fill a variety of offices. They might have qualified their generalizations to allow exceptions for parties that do not resort to primaries, particularly those in parliamentary systems in which leaders devote considerable attention to identifying and inducing talented persons to stand for parliamentary elections. Likewise, Niemi and Jennings could have taken note of occasional variations, perhaps harbingers of change in society at large, among nonparty organi-