Wed, Jan 17, 2024 page8

• Smaller parties are down, but not out

  • By Linus Chiou 邱士哲
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  The elections Have shown that many voters are willing to support a third party to break the longstanding blue-green deadlock.

  Most of these voters have consolidated under the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), which has a capricious platform designed to score easy political points. Its formal and informal ties to several controversial politicians, including former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Tainan City Council speaker Lee Chuan-chiao (李全教) and Chinese Sunshine Promotion and Care Association chairperson Tsai Chun-chou (蔡春綢), weaken its claim to be the sole representative of an incorruptible, new political force that rejects “black gold” corruption.

  The failed blue-white alliance revealed that the TPP is willing to act as a power broker rather than as an independent challenger to the “status quo.” Whether the TPP is willing to back incoming KMT legislator-at-large Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the embodiment of pan-blue populism and the first mayor in the history of Taiwan to be recalled, as the legislative speaker remains to be seen.

  Still, the TPP’s popularity is a testament to the immense potential of online campaigning to reach voters and lower entry barriers. A party can no longer campaign solely using traditional means that rely on deeply rooted local community networks.

  For many younger voters, “TikTok politics” is becoming the norm, to the detriment of long-formed and nuanced debates. This shift might widen generational gaps and challenge how interest groups communicate within civil society.

  For smaller parties, online campaigning is a double-edged sword. The tendency toward reductionist thinking is well-documented in online discourse, reducing smaller parties or candidates to single-issue parties or nonserious contenders. A large online following can also create a false sense of security for supporters. That popularity does not always translate to votes. The TPP is likely the most popular political party on social media, but it still finished third.

  Amid the TPP’s rise, smaller parties with more consistent platforms, such as the Taiwan Statebuilding Party, Green Party Taiwan and New Power Party (NPP), have been overlooked. The NPP won 2.57 percent of the party vote for legislators-at-large, while the Taiwan Statebuilding Party and Green Party Taiwan won less than 1 percent each.

  Some say that the legislative election was a complete failure for small parties, a hindrance to a plurality of voices being represented nationally. Political scientist Emmy Lindstam, who studies niche parties in European politics, wrote that “voters may switch to niche parties not because they sincerely prefer those parties, but because they hope to signal the importance they attach to a certain, overlooked issue to their preferred mainstream party.”

  However, this switch might also be the result of voters believing that “there is ‘less at stake’ in local elections than in general elections.” Therefore, people might find it easier to vote for smaller parties during the 2026 local elections, to signal to mainstream parties the importance they attach to overlooked issues.

  Taiwan’s democracy welcomes new and diverse voices in politics, and certainly benefits from the inclusion of smaller parties to address the failings of the neoliberal establishment. The TPP’s lackluster track record of governance in Taipei and Hsinchu City, its association with politicians with ties to corruption and its preference for spectacle over substance suggest that its monopoly of third-party voters might not be secure in future elections. For new parties to succeed, their raison d’etre must be clear and not fall into opposition roles for opposition’s sake. It might seem like an agonizing defeat for small parties, but there is still much to look forward to in the local elections.

  Linus Chiou is a graduate student at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.
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