Limited And Unlimited: A Comparative Study Of Political Competition Between Singapore And Taiwan

Political Competition, just as its name implies, it’s a kind of competitive activity in the field of human society’s politics. As a communal understanding, it had been born accompanied by emergence of human’s political activity,the history of it is much longer than democracy. Political Competition don’t have much ideology color, it’s closer to a kind description for human’s political activities. But let us feel puzzling was the fact that, mature research results about the ancient and significant political phenomenon are very limited, even its concept is ambiguous in modern politics, we have to say this is a regrettable thing. When we look back through history, we can find that Political Competition is existed in all political systems’ rise and fall, and it will always develop with human’s political change in the future.In this connection, the research of political competition classification and systematic compare the situation of political systems’ changing and running between countries/areas with different types of political competition, will help people to think about and solve all kinds of political issues are faced by various countries/areas, it also help people to track out a new political research approach which is different from traditional political democratization approach, it’s realistic meaning and theoretic meaning are significantFirstly, we should make political competition’s concept more clear and accurate, that need us to analyze competition and competition of human society’s connotation as the beginning of the study, through uniting competition’s general characteristics and human society’s specific laws to conclude and deduce. Secondly, we should analyze the relationship between political competition and modern democracy, and divide political competition into limited political competition and, which basis for the interactive relationship between political competition’s intensity change and modern democracy’s political base. At the same time, clear and define concepts for two types of political competition. Thirdly,future study political competition’s structure of institutions, including the stimulating mechanism and pattern for political resources, the renewal mechanism for political resources, the constructing and maintaining mechanism for political values, the incentive mechanism for political competition behaviors, etc.Singapore and China Taiwan are limited political competition’s typical example and unlimited political competition’s typical example in the world. This thesis make a systematic and comparative analyze about their political competition from the present situation of system,forming process,system’s consequence.First of all, the reason of author judge and distinguish these two areas’ political competition is based on basic situation about Singapore and China Taiwan’s structure of the political system, political active subjects, political resources distribution and power contrast, operation situation of political competition, etc. Their structure of institutions are very different between the limited political competition of Singapore and the unlimited political competition of unlimited political competition, a horizontal comparison for them will help people better looking and understanding their differences. Secondly, Historical institutionalism is an idea theory tool for analyzing the forming process of Singapore and China Taiwan’s political competition. Put political competition as primary analysis object, through making historical stages for Singapore and China Taiwan’s changes of political system after World War II, the development path of Singapore’s politics can be described as“non-competitive—the formation of limited political competition—the consolidation of limited political competition”, and the development path of China Taiwan’s politics can be described as “political monopoly — limited political competition — unlimited political competition ”. Why their political competition developed into different direction from similar origin? It is chiefly because they had experienced different combination for influence factors’ intensity index and time sequence on the “Critical Juncture” of institutional change. In addition, these major causes which result that Singapore and China Taiwan’s political competition system are very different also include major political actors, path dependence and accidental factors in the process of institutional change. Lastly, the compare analyze with system’s consequence of Singapore’s limited political competition and China Taiwan’s unlimited political competition is focused on the influences of political competition for democracy’s political basis, the operation of political market, the development of society and economy. Through the comparison, it can be find that, the difference of political competition models caused development gap between Singapore and China Taiwan on political performance, economic development, social progress had became enlarge since the 1990 s.The perfect political system is inexistence in the world, eternal and immobile political competition is also inexistence. Therefore, we need to the possible trend of Singapore and China Taiwan’s political competition model in the future. Singapore’s limited political competition own excellent performance during the practice, but it contains potential defects and realistic frangibility. It can maintain stability in the foreseeable future, but it will experience more challenges in mid-and-long term. China Taiwan’s unlimited political competition have formed stable sustaining environment, it’s current situation is difficult to adjust, the rising of current “Taiwan independence forces” and Populism probably put Taiwan into spiral political decay.The development history and practical experience of Singapore and China Taiwan’s political performance will help people to better understanding the relationship between political competition and modern democracy and the great influence of different political competition for human activity such as state’s political development, economic development,social operation, etc. For backward country, unlimited political competition is a terrible choice, it will bring more barriers rather than assistance for the development of country and the improvement of people’s life, but the limited political competition which can help improve governmental efficiency and maintain political system stability may be a feasible choice.