| Under the leadership of the National Party (Kuomintang) authorities, Taiwan achieved thebasic implementation of modernization of economy in1980s, being crowned with the title of“one of the Four Asian Tigers”. Meanwhile, the authoritarians were forced to implementdemocratic reform under both the internal and external pressure of the island, thus Taiwan’sauthoritarian regime began to make its transition to democracy since then.Democratization, in the broadest sense of the term, includes the entire process of thetransformation of authoritarian regime to democratic system, the establishment and consolidationof democracy. Known as Silent Revolution, the democratic transition of Taiwan is relativelysmooth and mild. After the establishment of democratic system whose axis is election, Taiwan’sdemocracy encountered severe crisis in the process of operation due to the defect ofconstitutional regime and the obstruction of some historical structure factors such as ethic tear,national identity divergence and so on. Thus Taiwan is still struggling against the dilemma ofdemocratical governance so that the democracy cannot be consolidated and fade a lot, though thetransition has been completed for twenty years.As the theme of this paper, the transition, consolidation, and improvement of Taiwan’sdemocracy will be analyzed as continuous spectrum and historical process. This paper will belogically organized by describing the process of Taiwan’s democratic transition, analyzing itsreasons and characteristics, summing up its experience and lessons, and discussing its transitionand consolidation. And, the author will, by the method of structure analysis and behaver, explorethat how does the interactive mode and strategic choice of the political actors within authoritarianregime gradually drive the transition of authoritarian regime to democracy under specifichistorical situation when Taiwan possesses favorable objective conditions.The paper will be organized by five parts. In the first part, besides putting forward the originand significance of the study, and summarizing the research ideas and methods, the authordetermines the theoretical framework to the theme, and accomplished the definition andtheoretical review of concepts. In the second part, the historical process of Taiwan’s democratical transition is reviewed,the process of Taiwan’s democratization is dividedinto three periods in accordance with regime and time series. In the third part, the author analyzeshow dose the structure factors which are favorable to Taiwan’s democracy appear, combine,interact with each other, and eventually become the internal and external pressure forcing thepolitical elite within authoritarian regime to implement democratic reform; the author exploresthe influence of the features of Taiwan’s authoritarian regime to the characteristics of transition,and presents the differences of democratic transition between Taiwan and other countries in thethird-wave democratization. In the forth part, the author analyzes the challenges and problemsTaiwan encountered in the process of democratic transition and consolidation, and elaboration ofreasons causing these problems. In the fifth part, the author summarizes the experience andenlightenment of Taiwan’s democratic transition.Through the study of Taiwan’s democratic transition and consolidation, I thinks that, in acertain historical condition, if the rulers of the authoritarian regime take the initiative to promotethe gradual reform of political system, then the democratic transition is possible, and the rulingparty maybe will not lose its power immediately, probably will regain the consolidation of itsruling status on the contrary. Thus, in the period of democratic transition, the strategic choice ofpolitical elite is relatively more important, while in the period of consolidation, the structurefactors are of bigger importance, Certainly whether democracy can be consolidated eventually ornot, it depends on the specific historical and social basis of the country or region. |
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