Taiwan used to be credited for the economic miracle it created and has been considered a role model as it underwent a "silent revolution" of democratic reforms along "the third wave of democratization." But do people in this country really enjoy the democratic outcomes that have been established?
It seems that what Taiwan has achieved in the last two decades was more of a "procedural democracy," rather than a "substantive democracy."
Embedded in this "hollow democracy" is the potential danger of political decay that might undermine the efforts that the country has made over the past years.
Taiwan was lucky enough to survive in the Asian financial crisis which originated in 1997. The KMT attributed a lot of the credit to its own crisis management skills. Nevertheless, what we have learned from the crisis was not simply how a government reacted to such a huge economic shock, but also the inherent institutional problems it revealed. Experiences from countries such as South Korea and Indonesia showed that it was mainly the "cronyism" -- the connection between government and business, be it conglomerate or organized crimes -- that constitutes the Achilles heel for countries that suffered from the economic disaster. The bad news is that Taiwan happens to be moving toward a similar path that those countries experienced, namely, the decline in political order and the possibility of political decay.
In Taiwan, the degrees of social mobilization and the expansion of political participation are high, especially since the lifting of martial law and the debut of open political party competition. However, the rates of political organization and institutionalization are relatively low. The result is potential political instability and disorder.
According to several public opinion polls, "black gold" politics and "government inefficiency" have become two main concerns for the public. Domestic polls coincided with the results of international surveys.
Illustration: yu sha
For example, the American Chamber of Commerce's annual report attributed "corruption" and "government inefficiency" as the most important concerns of foreign investors in Taiwan. The latest survey released by Transparency International also demonstrated that among 19 major trade and export countries in the world, Taiwan is ranked 17th in terms of degree of business-government bribery. The primary problem of politics and economics in Taiwan, therefore, is the lag in the development of institutions and rule of law behind rapid social and economic change.
What was responsible for this potential crisis and instability? The product of rapid social change and the rapid mobilization of new groups into politics, coupled with the slow development of political institutions. The KMT's causal thinking is that economic development promotes social stability and social development promotes political stability. And those two constitute the base for the KMT's long rule. That's the reason why both President Lee Teng-hui (
But in fact, economic development and political stability are two independent goals, and progress toward one and has no necessary connection with progress toward the other. In some instances, programs of economic development may promote political stability; in other instances they may seriously undermine such stability. This potential political decay, in most cases, is distracted by other elements such as independence-unification debates and ethnic disputes, and has become a real threat to Taiwan's political and economic system.
Political democratization involves the process of rationalization of authority, the replacement of a large number of traditional, religious and ethnic political authorities by a single secular, national political authority. It also includes the differentiation of new political functions and development of specialized structures to perform those functions. It entails increased participation in politics by social groups throughout society, too. But instead of institutional rationalization and differentiation, there was frequently a decay of the administrative organizations inherited from the authoritarian or totalitarian era and a weakening and disruption of the political organizations developed during the struggle for democracy.
Social mobilization increases aspirations. Economic development increases the capacity of a society to satisfy those aspirations and therefore tends to reduce social frustrations and consequent political instability. Social mobilization is much more destabilizing than economic development. The gap between these two forms of change furnishes some measure of the impact of modernization on political stability. The gap generates social frustration and dissatisfaction. In practice, the extent of the gap provides a reasonable tendency to political instability. The public opinions I mentioned earlier reflected such a crisis.
The reason for this relationship between social frustration and political instability are somewhat more complicated than they may appear on the surface. The relationship is, in large part, due to the absence of two potential intervening variables: opportunities for social and economic mobility and adaptable political institutions. Political participation becomes the road for advancement of the socially mobilized individual. Social frustration leads to demands on the government and the expansion of political participation to enforce those demands. The political backwardness of the country in terms of political institutionalization, moreover, makes it difficult if not impossible for the demands upon the government to be expressed through legitimate channels. Hence the sharp increase in political participation gives rise to political instability.
There are two possible ways to solve this social frustration;one is through revolution, the other is through alternating party admini-strations, which constitutes the last obstacle in Taiwan's democratic consolidation.
In the absence of strong and adaptable political institutions, such increases in participation also mean the accumulation of instability and underground business such as corruption and bribery.
In its concrete forms in Taiwan, we may call it "black gold" politics -- a money politics created by the KMT with its grassroots factions and organizations.
Why does democratization in Taiwan breed corruption? First, democratization in Taiwan contributes to corruption by creating new sources of wealth and power, the relation of which to politics is undefined by the dominant traditional norms of society and on which the modern norms are not yet accepted by the dominant groups within the society. Second, corruption in Taiwan's democratic transition also involves the KMT's incorporation of the rise of new groups with new resources and the efforts of these groups to make themselves effective within the political sphere.
The direct product is the rise of "black gold" politics and organized crimes' "laundering" into political offices.
In conclusion, political democratization and social mobilization tend to produce political decay unless steps are taken to moderate or to restrict its impact on political consciousness and political involvement.
This decay in political institutions has been neglected or overlooked in Taiwan.
When leading presidential candidates keep talking about how to continue further reforms or build up an "advanced democracy" in Taiwan, what they should bear in mind instead is how to keep Taiwan from moving toward potential political decay.
Liu Shih-chung is deputy director of the DPP's Department of International Affairs.
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