It is impossible to understand the dynamics of Taiwan's politics without taking into account the roles of local factions, whatever their merits or faults. By definition, local factions refer to groupings whose goals are to influence the process of public policy-making and to control the operation of the political system at the local level. Although they usually choose their own candidates for elections, local factions do not have formal organizations and formal policy appeals like those of political parties. Moreover, the relationships between their leaders and followers are built on personal connections instead of organizational channels. Even though they are not parties, local factions in some respects provide checks and balances in the political system.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, local factions appeared as political coalitions across county or city borders. After the middle 1950s, a total of 98 factions were identified as operating in Taiwan. They could be found in all counties and cities except metropolitan Taipei. Today, their influence rarely extends beyond one county or city, and all counties and cities (except Taipei) have more than one local faction. There are currently over 100 local factions in Taiwan.
The elections for members of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly and the Legislative Yuan demonstrate the importance of local factions in Taiwan's political scene. Local factions have an important influence over both types of elections, but they are more powerful in elections for the Provincial Assembly. Generally speaking, candidates who are affiliated with local factions have a greater chance of being elected, and members who are endorsed by local factions in both legislative bodies are more influential than those who are not.
For the last four decades, a patron-client relationship has existed between the KMT and Taiwan's local factions. The relationship has enabled the party to consolidate its rule. Patron-client politics can be defined as a reciprocal exchange relation between two actors of unequal political power and socioeconomic status. In the case of Taiwan, the patron is the KMT, which offers both material and non-material rewards to its client supporters. In return for these favors, the clients, who are members of local factions, give political support to the KMT. The relationship is productive for both patron and client. The former is able to consolidate its power, while the latter is allocated political and economic privileges in return for their loyal support.
If and only if its domination and legitimacy are maintained would the ruling party of an authoritarian state allow its clients to monopolize economic interests and share some degree of political power. To date, this condition has prevailed on the island, and the KMT has provided decades of economic and political privileges for local factions. The system of sharing economic and political interests between the KMT and local factions provided the foundation of the island's political stability and the legitimacy of the regime.
The relationship has paid off economically for the members of local factions. Since 1951, according to a study by the present author, 81 out of 89 local factions were found to own more than one kind of local monopolized line of business. These include cooperative banks, credit cooperatives, non-credit cooperatives, credit departments of farmer's associations or fisherman's associations, and passenger transport corporations.
In the elections for members of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, most of the candidates who are affiliated with local factions (442 out of 518) owned at least one of these monopolized local lines of business. And the comparatively few candidates who were not affiliated with local factions (72 out of 774) owned one of the local monopolized businesses.
Beyond the question of economic privilege, one might ask whether the KMT provided local factions with enough opportunities and channels for political power-sharing. An investigation of the results of the same two categories of elections provides useful data on the patron-client relationship in the realm of political power. The KMT and local factions have close connections in these elections.
Within the KMT itself, local factions have much more influence in elections to the Provincial Assembly than in elections for the Legislative Yuan. Nevertheless, candidates affiliated with local factions supporting the KMT have more opportunities to be elected in both kinds of election, and the KMT's faction members in both legislative bodies have more influence than the non-faction members. This suggests that the patron-client politics of the past four decades makes it rather difficult to have a powerful opposition party. The pace of initiating party competition may also be affected.
The development of political democracy depends heavily on the institutionalization of party competition. During the last four decades, there has been a gradual breakdown of the authoritarian environment in Taiwan in the wake of its rapid social and economic growth and its greater integration into the international economic and political environment.
After the emergence of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the lifting of martial law, the ROC on Taiwan has moved into a transitional phase of political democracy, and it is certain that its institutionalization of party competition is an important step on the road of political democratization.
In order to promote democratization, it is quite important to restrict the influence of local factions and to enhance the discipline exercised by political parties at the same time. If the experience of other advanced industrial democracies is any guide, the reform of electoral systems will be crucial in this process. —Dr. Huang Teh-fu is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at National Chengchi University in Taipei.