The Effects of Electoral Rules Upon Legislators’ Campaign Promises and Legislative Performance - A Comparison of Taiwan Legislative Yuan between its Sixth Term (2005-2008) and Seventh Term (2008-2012)

Abstract

Prior literature has quite fully discussed about the effects of different electoral systems upon party systems. Some has paid attention to campaign strategies launched by political parties under different electoral systems. But few has explored the campaign promises made by individual legislators under different electoral systems. It’s even a vacuum in prior literature that has ever tried to study whether the degree of realizing these promises would vary with different electoral systems.This paper then aims to focus on these two related issues: 1. Whether the change of electoral systems would exercise impacts upon campaign promises made by legislative candidates;2. Whether that also further influences the degree of realizing the promises made by each legislator after s/he gets elected and performs her/his functions in a legislature.Two hypotheses are derived from prior theories and empirical studies for echoing these two issues. The first one is that a plurality with single member district system (SMD) would lead more to constituency – oriented campaign promises delivered by candidates than other systems do. The second one is that the SMD system would also be able to enhance the connection more between what a legislator promises before election and what s/he performs after being elected than other systems do. The paper uses Taiwan Legislative Yuan as a case. It further designs it into a quasi-experimental comparative framework, since Taiwan changed its Legislative Yuan electoral system in 2008 from a multiple-member district plus single non-transferable vote system (MMD & SNTV) to a mix one in which more than 2/3 of the seats (73/113) are elected from the SMD system. The paper then compares Taiwanese legislators’ campaign promises and related legislative performance after elected of the sixth term Legislative Yuan (2005-2008) to that of the seventh term (2008-2012). The paper will not only explore the effect of electoral systems upon campaign promises & legislative performance in a theoretical sense, but also like to further discuss which system may better enhance the tie between representatives and their constituencies. Finally, the paper expects to draw implications from this study so as to shed some light on representative theories & practices in a modern democracy.