Taiwan, still as a baseline case supporting for the differing mandate hypothesis

Abstract

This research note re-examines the recent debate on mandate divide hypothesis in Taiwan (Batto, 2012; Rich, 2014). Specifically, I focus on bill sponsorship, which is relatively free from party influence and therefore more suitable for testing whether being elected either in a district or through a party list yields different parliamentary behaviors. For an empirical test, I use an original bill introduction data made by the individual legislators served in the six legislative terms from 1992 through 2012. The result supports for the mandate hypothesis: the nominal tier legislators introduce more bills than the list tier members.