Despite talk of a decline in the importance of political parties in modern democracies, parties remain essential players in the political process of liberal democracies. E.E. Schattschneider's comment that, "modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of political parties," still rings true over sixty years after the publication of his work Party Government. ~ Parties continue to play a critical role in recruiting political leaders, nominating electoral candidates, structuring public debate and organizing government. There is also a consensus among political scientists that institutionalized political parties are a prerequisite for democratic consolidation. 2 However, many of the newer democracies associated with the Third Wave of Democratization, in Samuel Huntington's terminology, have failed to develop such strong political parties. 3 Instead parties are often the personal tool of charismatic politicians, do not offer distinctive policy appeals and lack mass membership structures. With weak party identification among both politicians and voters party splits and mergers are unsurprisingly common. The prevalence of inchoate party systems in many new democracies has made their path towards democratic consolidation highly problematic. As Taiwan began its democratic transition in the late 1980s, it also falls into the category of a Third Wave Democracy. Over the past few decades, the transition of developing countries from totalitarian and authoritarian regimes towards democracy became a trend sweeping over the world from Eastern Europe to Latin America to East Asia. One common characteristic of such a movement was the breakdown of the incumbent political parties and the formation of opposition ones caused by democratic refonris initiated by the governing regimes. Following the arrival of the Kuomintang (KMT) regime on Taiwan in 1945, it ran the island as a one-party state for over four decades, cracking down harshly on any attempts to form a genuine opposition party. It was not until 1986 that Taiwan had its first taste of multi-party politics, when a group of democracy activists risked imprisonment by defying martial law regulations in forming the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). In 1993, a group of KMT party elite split from the KMT and formed the New Party (NP), which became a growing competitor to the two major parties in the 1990s. After