Sun, May 06, 2001 page8

• Pork barrel politics has heavy price

  • By Wang Yeh-lih 王業立
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  Kaohsiung City Council recently released the results of a public opinion poll showing that the city's mayor, Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), had a public approval rating of only 30 percent or so. Even fewer Kaohsiung residents -- a little over 20 percent -- are, however, said to be satisfied with the city council. Coincidentally, recent poll results released by the Shanshui Public Opinion Research Company (山水民意研究公司) showed that an astounding 76 percent of the public were dissatisfied with the Legislative Yuan's performance -- in contrast to a mere 10 percent who said they were satisfied. The poll results show very low public satisfaction rates for public representative bodies, whether in the central or local governments.

  One bizarre thing is that even though the public is generally dissatisfied with the representative bodies, high proportions of incumbent representatives still manage to get re-elected. Only 10 percent of the public, for example, are satisfied with the performance of the current legislature, but a vast majority of the incumbent legislators -- be they from the KMT, DPP, or PFP -- are still likely to get re-elected in the year-end elections. How should we interpret this apparent contradiction?

  In fact, Taiwan is not alone in this experience. In the US, despite widespread public dissatisfaction with Congress, an average 90 to 95 percent of the 435 House representatives manage to get re-elected in the biennial elections. In other words, once elected to the House of Representatives, most people can be sure of re-election.

  One possible cause of this phenomenon is that representatives often use various types of "pork barrel" legislation to benefit their constituencies and provide solid service to their constituents in order to consolidate their voter bases. Even though the general public will eventually have to pay for whatever pork barrel benefits they receive, voters who directly benefit still support the re-election of their incumbent representatives, even as they criticize Congress' poor overall performance. It is as if only representatives from other constituencies perform poorly.

  This phenomenon is even more conspicuous in Taiwan. Representatives at all levels know very well that the most important political capital comes from spending more time on their grassroots supporters and providing services to voters. On top of this, Taiwan society attaches considerable importance to personal connection networks. The representatives enjoy strong "incumbency advantage" from small-scale construction funds, influence-peddling and various other types of voter services -- both legal and illegal. Even though the general public is dissatisfied with the overall performance of representative bodies, people often give fairly good evaluations for representatives from their own constituencies. Such evaluations are based on the services the representatives provide to voters, rather than their overall performance of their jobs.

  Also, Taiwan operates a "single non-transferrable vote with a multi-member district" electoral system for its representative bodies at all levels. The system aggravates the contradictory nature of public approval ratings for collective and individual performance. In a multi-member district system, candidates can get re-elected with support from a small, specific group of voters. They neither need nor want to seek sympathy from the "majority" of voters in the constituency. Representatives at all levels therefore use whatever extreme methods and antics they can to win benefits for small, specific groups of voters. So while it is quite reasonable to ask how there could possibly be high approval ratings for legislative bodies inhabited by such representatives, ironically, these representatives manage to get re-elected time and again.

  The poor performance of Taiwan's public representative bodies can be traced to defects in the country's political culture and flaws in the design of its political system. We need reforms -- not cynical criticism -- to deal with the ills and gradually restore public confidence in representative democracy.

  Wang Yeh-lih is a professor of political science at Tunghai University.

  Translated by Francis Huang
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