Authoritarian ruling parties are expected to resist democratization, often times at all costs. And yet some of the strongest authoritarian parties in the world have not resisted democratization, but have instead embraced it. This is because their raison d’etre is to continue ruling, though not necessarily to remain authoritarian. Put another way, democratization requires ruling parties hold free and fair elections, but not that they lose them. Authoritarian ruling parties can thus be incentivized to concede democratization from a position of exceptional strength. This alternative pathway to democracy is illustrated with Asian cases – notably Taiwan – in which ruling parties democratized from positions of considerable strength, and not weakness. The conceding-to-thrive argument has clear implications with respect to “candidate cases” in developmental Asia, where ruling parties have not yet conceded democratization despite being well-positioned to thrive were they to do so, such as the world’s most populous dictatorship, China.
Bio:
Joseph Wong is the Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Democratization, Health and Development. Professor Wong was the Director of the Asian Institute at the Munk School from 2005 to 2014. In addition to academic articles and book chapters, Professor Wong has published four books: Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea (2004) and Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia’s Developmental State (2011), both published by Cornell University Press, as well as Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems: Learning to Lose, co-edited with Edward Friedman (Routledge, 2008), and Innovating for the Global South: Towards a New Innovation Agenda, co-edited with Dilip Soman and Janice Stein (University of Toronto Press, 2014). He is currently working on a book monograph with Dan Slater (University of Chicago) on Asia’s development and democracy, which is currently under contract with Princeton University Press. Professor Wong earned his Hons. B.A from McGill University (1995) and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001).
Philippines Conference Room, 3rd Floor, Encina Hall
616 Serra St., Stanford, CA
Joe Wong
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Political Science
University of Toronto
On December 2, CDDRL Research Associate Kharis Templeman and Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) Distinguished Fellow Thomas Fingar spoke about Taiwan’s recent local elections, which were a major defeat for the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and President Ma Ying-jeou. They were joined by Dennis Weng, a visiting assistant professor of political science at Wesleyan University, and Winnie Lin, a Stanford junior and research assistant for the Taiwan Democracy Project. The event was hosted by the Taiwan Democracy Project at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.
Templeman opened the roundtable by describing the “historic nature” of the November 29th elections. For the first time, all elected local officials in Taiwan from the mayor of Taipei down to rural village leaders - more than 11,000 positions in total - were chosen at the same time. In the highest-profile votes for mayors and county executives, the KMT suffered a drubbing. The ruling party's loss to an independent in Taipei was widely anticipated, but KMT candidates in central and southern Taiwan also were defeated badly in races that were expected to be competitive, and several more were upset in former party strongholds in northern counties and cities. The main beneficiary of the ruling party's troubles was the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which picked up seven local executive seats and made significant gains in local councils as well.
President Ma Ying-jeou attends a news conference in Taipei January 12, 2012.
According to Templeman, the election results were clearly tied to the ruling party’s poor image. President Ma, who until the election loss doubled as the KMT party chairman, had approval ratings in the teens for much of the past two years, and he struggled to win support for his policy initiatives even from members of his own party caucus in the legislature. The central government was also beset by a series of crises in recent months, including student-led protests against a trade agreement with China, a pipeline explosion in the southern city of Kaohsiung, and a wide-ranging food quality scandal. The resulting damage to the KMT party brand "nationalized" the elections and led to a consistent swing in support away from the party across races that normally turn on more local issues.
Weng took on the question of why pre-election polls were so dramatically wrong in several races. Election telephone polls in Taiwan are taken quite frequently and usually provide reliable forecasts of election outcomes, yet in this election they were sometimes off by 20 points or more. Weng highlighted the youth vote as a possible explanation: Voters under 40 were significantly more anti-KMT than other generations and might have turned out at a higher rate than expected. Because young voters are disproportionately likely to have cell phones and not land lines, telephone polls have a hard time capturing a representative sample of this subset of the electorate. In the past, these problems were muted, but they might have been large enough in this election to throw off the polls.
Lin, a Taiwanese citizen who returned to Taipei to vote, then gave the audience a first-hand account of the political currents in Taiwan during the days around the election. The high-profile Taipei mayor’s race stood out both for the fact that the KMT’s main opponent was an independent, Ko Wen-je, rather than an official nominee of the DPP, and for Ko’s unconventional campaign strategy. Ko produced no television ads and eschewed buying billboard ads or producing campaign flags, instead directing much of his campaign efforts to online outreach and playing up his "non-partisan" background. Lin emphasized the effectiveness of this social networking strategy in raising interest and support among her own friends and colleagues.
The panel concluded with a look at the impact the election results might have on cross-Strait relations. Fingar, a former State Department official and past chairman of the National Intelligence Council, suggested that authorities in Beijing were “disappointed, but not surprised” by the election results, which greatly strengthened the position of the pro-independence DPP. From past experience, Beijing has learned not to try to influence the outcome of elections in Taiwan, and despite its historical antipathy toward the DPP, it is prepared to deal with the party's representatives and even a potential DPP presidential administration in 2016 as "legitimate political actors" in cross-Strait relations. Chinese policy towards Taiwan is unlikely to be affected much in the short run by the KMT’s defeat, although Beijing might also interpret the result as a signal that Taiwanese voters have not yet gotten enough economic gains out of the cross-Strait relationship. More troubling from the Chinese leadership's perspective is that the vote was held at all: Taiwan's local polls reinforce that elections are "not ill-suited for all people who speak Chinese,” and the kinds of practical complaints about governance and corruption that contributed to the KMT’s defeat are also pervasive in mainland China.
Hero Image
Supporters wave flags after Taipei mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je won the local elections, in Taipei November 29, 2014.
On November 29, 2014, Taiwan's electorate will go to the polls to select thousands of ward chiefs, hundreds of council members, and dozens of mayors and county executives. This special roundtable will bring together experts who will analyze the results of the election and discuss the ramifications for Taiwan's future, including cross-Strait relations. The speakers will give a broad overview of the elections, put the results in historical perspective, and discuss relevant public opinion data.
Speaker Bios
Thomas Fingar is the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford during January to December 2009. From May 2005 through December 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2004–2005), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001–2003), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994–2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989–1994), and chief of the China Division (1986–1989). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control. Professor Fingar's most recent book is Reducing Uncertainty: Intelligence Analysis and National Security (Stanford University Press, 2011).
Kharis Templeman is the Program Manager for CDDRL's Taiwan Democracy Program. He received his B.A. (2002) from the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. in political science (2012) from the University of Michigan. As a graduate student, he worked in Taipei at the Election Study Center, National Cheng Chi University, and later was a dissertation research fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy. His dissertation examined the development of Taiwan’s competitive party system from a comparative perspective, including a large study of the origins and decline of dominant party systems around the world over the last 60 years. Current research interests include democratization, party system development in newly-contested regimes, and political institutions, with a regional focus on the new and transitioning democracies of Pacific Asia.
Dennis Lu-Chung Weng is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University. He received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2014. Prior to joining Wesleyan University, he was a business consultant, journalist and new anchor, as well as an instructor in Political Science at UT-Dallas. Dr. Weng's research interests include comparative politics, international relations, and political methodology. Specifically, his research focuses on political behavior, international political economy, international security And Asian politics. His dissertation explored a set of thematically related research questions on political participation and democratic citizenship in Asia, East Asia in particular. Dr Weng has presented papers at national and international academic meetings and conferences, and his research has been published in a number of Asian news media outlets.
Winnie Lin is a junior at Stanford University. She is majoring in mathematics and pursues a minor in Art Practice. She works as a research assistant for the Taiwan Democracy Project, and will be voting in the 2014 Taipei municipal elections.
Recently Ma Ying-jeou called upon Xi to finish Deng Xiaoping's revolution and begin the process of moving to a constitutional democracy. Is Taiwan a model of Chinese democracy? How would democratization in China impact the future of ROC-China ties? How would a democratized China affect US interests in the Asia-Pacific?
Dan Blumenthal is the director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on East Asian security issues and Sino-American relations. He is also the John A. van Beuren Chair Distinguished Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval War College. Blumenthal has both served in and advised the U.S. government on China issues for over a decade. From 2001 to 2004, he served as senior director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the Department of Defense. Additionally, he served as a commissioner on the congressionally-mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission since 2006-2012, and held the position of vice chairman in 2007. He has also served on the Academic Advisory Board of the congressional U.S.-China Working Group. Blumenthal is the co-author of "An Awkward Embrace: The United States and China in the 21st Century" (AEI Press, November 2012).
Dan Blumenthal
Director of Asian Studies
The American Enterprise Institute
President Ma Ying-jeou attends a news conference in Taipei January 12, 2012.
