Intermediate Power Networks With Taiwan's Democratic Process

This dissertation is on democratic politics in Taiwan, studying why the smooth democratic transition can't bring an effective function of democracy? To answer this question, this paper analyzes the changes of social structure in Taiwan since 1949, and analyzes the influence of these changes to the democratic transition process and the democracy operations in post-transformation period.Taiwan has gone into the logic of China state-building since the recovery in 1945. And in the beginning of recovery, Taiwan experienced three important historical events, "228",land reform and local autonomy. After 228 and land reform, the traditional middle structure, i.e. gentry class, was completely collapsed.In local autonomy, some people who interested in local elections relied on traditional networks of social relations to mobilize votes.The KMT bought off the local elites on one hand, and limited them on the other.the local factions came into being. Meanwhile, the private capital grew in the process of Taiwan's economic development. The latter two grew in strength and became a third realm beyond the KMT party-state system and grass-roots society, I call it the middle powers.There are 2 mechanisms by which the middle powers interact with the party-state system and grass-roots society. The first one is broker mechanism.On one hand, the middle powers play a broker role with which party-state system mobilize grass-roots society, on the other, broker the interests of civil society. From such a"double brokerage" process, the middle powers maximize their own interests.The second mechanism is informal politics, i.e. Guanxi mechanism.That is non-institutional interpersonal interaction.In the 1980s, Taiwan's internal and external political and economic situation changed significantly, forcing the party-state system to return to constitutional democracy.In fact, Taiwan's democratic transition need accomplish two difficult tasks and achieve a "double transformation".The first task is party-state system transit to democracy, and the second is the KMT transit to democratic elections party. The middle powers play a key role in the successful political transition and help Taiwan regime realize"soft landing".On the one hand, the middle powers inhibited and dissolved the peasants and the labor movement by virtue of its "broker" as well as "Guanxi" mechanism,so that the middle class(SME owners and white-collar) became the leading force of social movements in 1980s.Taiwan's middle class standed to improvement and opposed the revolution, which left the KMT time and space to control the democratizing process.On the other, middle powers helped the KMT continue to win local and "central" elections, reduce the resistance of the KMT separating from state and moving from a "state" to "society".And thus it contributed to the smooth democratic transition in Taiwan. Meanwhile, in the process of moving, the KMT transited to democratic elections party.However, the middle powers have been expanding in the process of democratic transition, and brought a series of negative effects to post-transition democracy operation.Firstly, the middle powers rely mainly the "broker" and "Guanxi" mechanism to mobilize votes.In order to maximize the mobilization of votes, the middle powers have to consolidate, strengthen and expand its network by money or even evil forces. Thus the phenomenon of bribery tickets increases.Secondly, the middle powers hurt the public interests to pursue their own interests, but its interaction with the public power is not by institutional process, but by "private transaction" approach, thus collusion and money politics come into being. Thirdly, there are two competing models of social mobilization, i.e. "class mobilization" and "ethnic mobilization" in Taiwan. In order to alleviate class mobilization and resolve the discontent to the money politics, the middle powers promote the "ethnic mobilization".This leads to populist-style democracy in Taiwan. Fourth, the populist mobilization and money politics cause governance capacity of Taiwan authorities fall significantly. The democratic troubles in post-transition are rather the inevitable product of the middle powers than a phenomenon of immature democracy.In order to go out of democratic troubles and deepen democracy, Taiwan must strengthen public power and civil society building. In the former case, the middle powers make public power to a "involution" development momentum with "broker" mechanism, on the other hand, it erode the democracy and institutionalization through the "Guanxi" mechanism.In the latter case, the middle powers strengthen their "Renqing" and "Guanxi" with grass-roots society. Although various community organizations evolves, but they are would rather in accordance with "brokers" and "Guanxi" mechanism than genuine civil society groups.So the middle powers may inhibit democracy deepening and cause long-term plight of Taiwan's democracy.