Many Taiwanese politicians put on an air or superiority whenever Hong Kong is mentioned. In their eyes, Hong Kong under “one country, two systems” simply cannot compete with Taiwan’s political development. This feeling of superiority is based on Taiwan’s higher ranking among democratic indicators. However, if we compare the two from the wider perspective of public sector governance, Taiwan falls behind Hong Kong on several issues.
The World Bank has done much to promote the concept of good governance over the past decade. When World Bank experts summed up the development of developing countries during the second half of the last century, they felt the quality of governance was a key factor determining the success of economic and social development.
The World Bank developed a set of indicators to measure governance quality and a system to regularly assess the quality of governance in different countries that includes six fundamental indicators: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption.
Worldwide Governance Indicators 1996-2008 (WGI) published by the World Bank last June, showed Taiwan in 2008 was ranked clearly ahead of Hong Kong in only one category — voice and accountability. Taiwan’s global percentile rank was 68.8, which means that in terms of public participation, expression and democratic monitoring, Taiwan was ranked ahead of 68.8 percent of the world’s countries and territories. Conversely, it also meant that more than 31 percent of all the 212 countries and territories taking part in the assessment ranked above Taiwan. Hong Kong’s percentile ranking was 60.6, and although that places it behind Taiwan, the difference between the two is not great.
As to all the other five indicators, Hong Kong was ranked far ahead of Taiwan. For political stability and absence of violence, Taiwan scored 71.1, while Hong Kong received 86.6. In government efficiency, Taiwan got 79.1 to Hong Kong’s 95.3. For regulatory quality, Taiwan scored 81.6 while Hong Kong scored a perfect 100 — world No. 1. For rule of law, Taiwan got 73.7 to Hong Kong’s 90.9. Finally, in the control of corruption category, Taiwan’s score was 72.9, while Hong Kong scored 94.2. In all of these categories, Hong Kong scored significantly better than Taiwan.
It is regrettable that, although Taiwan has established mechanisms for the expression of public participation and democratic monitoring, the public still does not enjoy the fruits of these efforts — good governance.
A comparison of the changing trends is even more worrying. The World Bank established these indicators in 1996, a watershed year both in Taiwan and in Hong Kong. In 1996, Taiwan held its first direct presidential election, for Hong Kong, it was the final year of British colonial rule. From 1996 to 2008, Taiwan fell back in four of the six categories, treaded water in one — regulatory quality — and improved in only one — voice and accountability. During the same period, Hong Kong’s ranking markedly improved in all six categories, particularly in political stability and government efficiency.
Why have democratic politics eroded the quality of governance in Taiwan? They have done so because of deformations and distortions to how the democratic system operates — how parties compete, the balance between the executive and the legislative branches, how the legislative agenda is set, supervision by the media and how society is mobilized.
In Taiwan, the complex relationships between the vicious struggle between the government and opposition on one hand and divided national identity on the other has derailed normal political competition and intensified polarization. The executive lost sight of professional ethics and morale among civil servants plummeted.
In Taiwan’s semi-presidential system, the executive and the legislative branches fought over the right to formulate policy. The trend was toward a stronger legislature and a weaker executive, with legislators tending to cater to special interests without having to shoulder full responsibility, and this led to disconnected national policies and the disappearance of fiscal discipline.
The quality of the legislative agenda was disproportionate to the legislature’s power as the legislative process became sloppy and slipshod and the agenda contradicted principles of representative democracy. A minority could paralyze the agenda and the speaker could arbitrarily decide the progress of legislation.
Civic and nongovernmental organizations felt alienated from both party and electoral politics and lost faith in public authority, while single-issue groups fought their battles alone, making it difficult to strike compromises. Vicious competition led media outlets to pursue sensational reporting, deliberately exaggerate opposition and clashes, and fuel populist discourse. This tendency toward the de-intellectualization of the media severely circumscribed the space for rational public policy debate.
In the past 10 years, Taiwan’s economic development has fallen further behind the rest of East Asia, and the public has grown dissatisfied with the workings of the democratic system. It is very difficult not to blame the deteriorating quality of public sector governance for this state of affairs.
To improve Taiwan’s international competitiveness, we must begin by correcting our distorted democratic system.
Chu Yun-han is a professor of political science at Taiwan University and president of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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