Frustration is growing rapidly in and out of government over the logjam of bills awaiting passage by the ROC Legislative Yuan. According to government policymakers, legislative inaction is having serious economic consequences. Major infrastructure projects, many needed to help strengthen the island's competitiveness in world markets, have yet to receive funding. Other bills concerning critical administrative reforms have been bogged down by glacial-speed committee deliberations and seemingly endless political party infighting. No less worrisome, the public is becoming more and more irate about the number of known criminals who are elected to office--evidence of the underworld's expanding influence on government at all levels.
Students of democratic governments find none of these concerns unique to Taiwan. Legislative ineptitude, frustrated government planning, and worries about organized crime are pretty much common to all democracies. But one of the advantages of a young democracy is that it has the opportunity to learn from the experiences of older ones. In many cases such experiences have given rise to civic institutions to help counteract such problems, and study of such institutions would profit the ROC.
Power may reside in the people, but do they exercise it wisely? In a democracy, people get the government they deserve. If Taiwan voters elect legislators who prefer fisticuffs on the chamber floor to writing intelligent bills, or crooks who rip off the public for private gain, that's their problem. If they don't like the results, they can exercise their prerogative to recall public officials, or simply refuse to re-elect such people. The presence of inept legislators or criminal elements in government is not just a failure of law, or of the parties that nominate them. It is the public's failure as well, because such representatives were elected to office--and elected fairly, for Taiwan has a solid record of reasonably clean elections.
The problem for Taiwan's voters is that they have no efficient, reliable way of finding out about their elected representatives' attendance and voting records, committee participation, and effectiveness in drafting laws. Nor can they discover much about their personal backgrounds, political supporters, and campaign contributors. Moreover, there are no established sources of objective information and analysis concerning bills under legislative deliberation. How can voters make intelligent choices at the ballot box, and then hold elected representatives accountable, if they don't know such facts?
Turn to the US for some possible models, also found in other mature democracies. American voters, as well as the country's countless non-government organizations and lobbying groups, can choose from a wide range of established references when they want to find out what their elected officials are up to. Many useful sources are published by the government itself. One of these, The Congressional Record, is a daily record of the proceedings on the floors of the Senate and House of Representatives. This publication does have a counterpart in Taiwan. Twice a week, the Legislative Yuan publishes a daily record of what is said on the chamber floor (legislators can edit their remarks), and the lag time before publication is, in fact, shorter than the US equivalent.
But verbatim records are raw data. Voters need analysis. In the US, the private sector meets this need with a large number of publications that assess representatives' voting and attendance records, floor debates, committee proceedings, and much more. One of these is The Almanac of American Politics, which gives in-depth analyses of the president, senators, representatives, and governors, including evaluations of their political records. Then there's the long list of periodicals and other publications associated with the Congressional Quarterly. These cover everything from an annual Who's Who in Congress and biographical profiles of elected officials to studies covering the impact of European politics on US legislative priorities. Such private-sector resources are especially valuable because they give civil society greater strength in balancing the power of government. Taiwan as yet has no comparable publications.
For the record, at first the American public also had trouble learning much about legislative deliberations. From 1789 to 1873, there was no official record of debates, and private publications were haphazard and usually biased. The Senate didn't even admit reporters until 1802. And until the late 1970s, the Congress allowed its members to make substantial revisions and additions to The Congressional Record, thereby confusing what was and was not actually said on the floor. The introduction of television cameras full-time in the House (1979) and the Senate (1986) changed all that. Now the public has a verbatim record of what is said on the chamber floors.
Yet it is private, watchdog journals like the Congressional Quarterly and other analytical publications with a long record of fairness that make the real difference in voter awareness. Although comparatively few voters have the time to consult these sources regularly, they are essential reading for lobbying groups, civic organizations, and other non-government organizations with social, political, and economic interests in ongoing legislation. The information and analysis provided by such publications give US voters power that the Taiwan electorate still lacks.
The ROC government has an admirable record of telescoping major democratic change into a short period; now it's time for the public to do the same by starting up publications that illuminate the background and deliberations of elected representatives. In such knowledge lies real voter power.