Local Factions, Farmers' Associations And Electoral Mobilization

Talking about Taiwan's politics, in particular, Taiwan's local politics, local factions will surely be mentioned. To some extent, Taiwan's local politics is actually the Factional Politics. For decades, in local elections, local factions have always played a very important role. Local factions and the authoritarian Kuomintang regime constitute an interdependent relationship of political power, which becomes an important feature of Taiwan's socio-political structure.In the operation of local politics in Taiwan, Farmer's Associations throughout the rural area have also got considerable attention. As Taiwan's largest and most in-depth grass-roots people's organizations, Farmer's Associations are closely related to the local political environment in Taiwan. Therefore, when local elections hold, all local factions covet the mobilizing force of Farmer's Associations and struggle for the control of it.Through the analysis of the history of Taiwan's local factions, this paper argues that local factions originated from a combination of network, which was initiated by blood, geography, and relationships. By using local elections to win the local forces, KMT formed a patron-client system. In this process, KMT consolidated its authoritarian rule in Taiwan with a relatively small cost, while local factions continued to become stronger and enter the local power system as an agent of KMT at the local level so that they could exchange for substantial economic benefits with ballots.Then, this paper analyzes the development of Farmer's Association and its function. Farmer's Associations have pivotal position in socio-economic activities in rural areas. They have a wide range of human resources and a lot of money, thus local factions are bound to fight for control of Farmer's Associations. Then through the analysis of organizational structure and the internal electoral system of Famer's Associations, this paper found that local factions can control t Famer's Associations with a relatively easy attempt so that they can mobilize farmers to vote for them in local elections. The mobilization structure of local factions is essentially a multi-level large-scale human network of relationships.This paper argues that, under the authoritarian regime, KMT and local factions emerged patron-client system characteristics. But in another level, the local faction's internal structure and the interaction between the public is more manifested as the expansion of the network of relationships. The patron-client system and the network of relationships closely connected via the ambition for power of local elites and created the patron-guanxi system, an unique mobilization structure and behavior patterns of local factions, which may be a better and more comprehensive theoretical model.