Opposition Democratic Progressive Party Research Articles

Taiwan in 2016

The opposition Democratic Progressive Party won decisive victories in the Legislative Yuan and presidential elections. Despite these victories, 2016 proved to be a difficult year for Taiwan’s new ruling party. As 2016 drew to a close, polls showed that most of Taiwan’s population disapproved of Tsai Ing-wen’s performance as president.

Political entrepreneurship and the Ko-P phenomenon in Taiwan’s democratization

ABSTRACTTaiwan’s economic modernization and political democratization after World War II have been praised as good examples for emerging countries. As of 2014, Taiwan has successfully gone through four direct presidential elections and two rounds of peaceful transfer of power. However, continuing sectarian quarrels between the ruling Kuomintang and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party cast doubt on the suitability of democracy for a Confucian society. This pessimism is challenged by the emergence of a new political star. A political novice, Ko Wen-je (aka Ko-P), won a landslide victory in the 2014 Taipei mayoral election, which is seen as a phenomenon. It has significant political implications and has so far inspired changes in the political landscape. The adoption of entrepreneurial strategies, such as identifying problems, leading by example, and team creation, are unprecedented in Taiwan’s political campaign. The Ko-P phenomenon demonstrates a self-correcting mechanism in Taiwan’s political system and bodes well for the future of new democracies, particularly for the Greater China Region.

Lineages of Dissent: Popular and Artistic Resistance to Imperialism and Extraction on 'The Beautiful Island'

Lineages of Dissent: Popular and Artistic Resistance to Imperialism and Extraction on 'The Beautiful Island'

Voting Shift in the November 2014 Local Elections in Taiwan

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Strong rebuke to Ma Ying-jeou's government and policies and landslide victory for the DPP.On 29 November 2014, Taiwan held the largest series of local elections in its history, in a nine-in-one format combining polls for 11,130 positions, ranging from mayors of municipalities and cities (zhixiashi/shizhang...), county magistrates (xianzhang ...), city and county councillors (shi/xian yihuiyuan ?/????), township chiefs (zhenzhang ??, xiangzhang ??), and village and borough chiefs (cunzhang ??, lizhang ??), to indigenous district chiefs and councillors (zhixiashi shandi yuanzhumin quzhang, qumin daibiao??????????, ?? ??). All were elected for four-year terms. Two-and-a-half years into the second presidential term of Ma Ying-jeou, the nation-wide elections were seen as a mid-term test for his administration and a prelude to the next legislative and presidential elections in early 2016.(1)The big prizes consisted of the six special municipalities of Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and, for the first time, Taoyuan. They represent around 70% of Taiwan's 18.5 million registered voters, with the other 30% distributed among 16 counties and cities of smaller size or more rural character.Before the vote, four municipalities (Taipei, New Taipei, Taichung, and Taoyuan) and 12 counties and cities were held by the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) or its Blue camp allies, with a virtual monopoly over central and northern Taiwan, and only Ilan on the north-east coast being led by the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP mostly ruled in the south, heading the two municipalities of Tainan and Kaohsiung, along with Yunlin, Chiayi, and Pingtung counties. Due to media concentration and the national pre-eminence of the candidates, coverage of the electoral campaigning largely concentrated on the capital Taipei, where KMT candidate Sean Lien Sheng-wen ???, son of the former prime minister, vice-president, and KMT chairman Lien Chan ??, opposed the independent candidate Ko Wen-je ? ? ? , a National Taiwan University Hospital surgeon supported by the DPP; and on the central city of Taichung, where KMT mayor Jason Hu Chih-chiang ... attempted to win a fourth term against DPP legislator Lin Chia-lung ....The DPP and its Green camp ally, the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU Taiwan tuanjie lianmeng ...), mainly campaigned on the strength of local governance - its mayors repeatedly winning top positions based on popularity and local government quality in public opinion surveys - and on support for a renewed grass-roots and democratic spirit on the heels of the Sunflower Movement of last spring. But it also surfed on the low approval rate of Ma and the KMT, rising social and economic inequality, and widespread anger over government corruption and housing prices. In the Blue camp, the high level of popular discontent toward the KMT administration and the way the country has been ruled, and the tepid results of its main policies, including its trumpeted cross-strait economic and political rapprochement, left the KMT candidates with few national or local policy achievements to run with. In many cases, Ma was seen as so politically toxic that candidates declined to stand with him on a public stage. In a desperate attempt, Lien Sheng-wen and the KMT tried to nationalise and polarise the campaign into a classic Blue-Green battle around cross-strait relations and identity, pushing the "save the Republic of China (ROC)" card to rally deepBlue voters and prop up their campaign. It had the mostly opposite result of showing even more clearly the disconnect between today's mainstream national Taiwanese identity and the KMT mainlander old guard such as former premiers Hau Pei-tsun ??? and Lien Chan, aggravated by repeated vulgarities and expression of contempt and racism from the latter toward native Taiwanese. (2)Overall election resultsElection turnout was 67. …

Embracing or Resisting the Giant Neighbour

Since 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou and his Kuomintang (KMT) government in Taiwan have adopted the policy of seeking greater economic cooperation with China in exchange of reducing confrontation across the Taiwan Strait. By endorsing the ‘One China’ principle, the KMT government successfully resumed dialogue with Beijing and signed 18 agreements, ranging from allowing Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan to establishing a closer economic partnership. Yet President Ma’s self-claimed achievements in cross-strait peace received severe criticisms from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which accused KMT’s pro-China policy as selling out the democratic Taiwan to an authoritarian regime. This article examines the on-going debates between the ruling KMT and opposition DPP about proper strategies towards China, and how such debates make it unlikely for Taiwan to form an effective policy on cross-strait affairs. The differences between KMT and DPP on their respective China policies have led to prolonged distrust between both parties, and between DPP and Beijing. Facing an increasingly powerful China, both parties are short of better ideas to convince voters that their current policy will effectively secure Taiwan’s sovereign status or will be beneficial to enhancing Taiwan’s interests in the long term.

Ma Ying-jeou's re-election: implications for Taiwan and East Asia

Ma Ying-jeou's re-election means that there will not be a leadership change in Taiwan, but it still has significant implications. It forces the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to work out a succession for itself and confront the political reality that it must now persuade voters in Taiwan that it can manage relations with mainland China effectively in order to win the presidency again. It also requires Ma to define clearly the limits of his mainland policy in order to minimize Beijing's expectations of his second term, as no president of Taiwan can agree to move towards political integration without a popular mandate. On its part, Beijing has taken on board the significance of Taiwan's electoral cycle for managing cross-Strait ties and will put pressure on Ma to move forward over political integration and thus reduce the scope for a future DPP administration to reverse course. This notwithstanding, Beijing's Taiwan policy will ultimately be determined more by the result of the leadership succession in mainland China itself in the autumn of 2012. For USA and East Asia, Ma's re-election is a positive development as it minimizes the risk of a confrontation or a crisis across the Taiwan Strait. But it will not remove the main problems they have with China that are Taiwan related. For USA, arms sales to Taiwan will still be needed and will remain a source of tension with Beijing. For Southeast Asia, stability across the Taiwan Strait implies that Beijing can devote more attention and resources to the South China Sea territorial disputes and that it is likely to behave in a more assertive way.

Signs of Change? An Analysis of Taiwan's December 2009 Local Elections

Under special circumstances created by a government decision to partly merge and upgrade six counties and county-level cities to special municipality status, local elections took place on December 5, 2009 in areas covering less than half of Taiwan's population. The results are generally seen as an important, though small, victory for the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) (Guomindang), however, has remained in a stable position, while the DPP still has a long way to go towards a comeback.

Cross‐cutting issues and the consolidation of democracy in Taiwan

This article examines the cause of Taiwan's recent successful democratic consolidation. It argues that cross‐cutting issues in the electoral process allow democratic systems to periodically generate new winners. The prospect of reasonable certainty to win gives different political groups, including previously anti‐system or semi‐loyal groups, incentives to adhere to the democratic rules of the game. This process contributed to the democratic consolidation in Taiwan. More specifically, the non‐mainstream faction of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) party, which initially opposed democratization, and the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) which wanted more radical constitutional and political reforms, came to accept the post‐transition democratic regime due to the emergence of new electoral issues. New issues surrounding corruption and socio‐economic reforms allowed both the non‐mainstream faction of the KMT and the DPP to advance their interests through the democratic electoral process.

Political Change on Taiwan: Transition to Democracy?

Samuel P. Huntington categorized Taiwan's path to democracy as “transformation,” by which he meant that “the elites in power took the lead in bringing about democracy.” The ruling Kuomintang (KMT) would agree with this explanation, although the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which was established in 1986 in defiance of martial law, would argue that Taiwan's liberalization and democratization was carried out through a process of transplacement, in which “democratization resulted largely from the joint action by government and opposition groups”.

Taiwan’s 1991 second national assembly election

The author assesses Taiwan’s fifth competitive national election and its first ever nonsupplementary election. The electorate picked a “new” National Assembly, absent those elected on the mainland before 1949 or later appointed to fill vacancies. The election was a major victory for the ruling Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT) affording it perhaps its first real mandate — a product of the KMT’s good reputation for engineering economic development and in recent years political development as well (since it was largely responsible for getting the “elder parliamentarians” to retire). In addition, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party made a mistake by putting Taiwan independence into the platform. Two other parties contested the election but failed to win a significant number of votes. The new National Assembly will amend the nation’s Constitution which will make some important changes in Taiwan’s polity.