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MING-SHO HO AND CHUN-HAO HUANG
Movement Parties in Taiwan, 1987–2016
A Political Opportunity Explanation
ABSTRACT
This article examines the development of ‘‘movement parties’’ in Taiwan by
applying the political opportunity perspective to understand how external condi-
tions impacted their electoral path. We explain the rise and fall of movement
parties by changes in electoral system, level of movement activism, and the
permeability of the DPP.
KEYWORDS: movement parties, political opportunity, electoral system, Sunflower
Movement, Taiwan
INJANUARY 2016,TAIWAN’SDEMOCRATIC PROGRESSIVE PARTY (DPP) won
the presidential election and the legislative majority, marking the first time
that the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party, KMT) lost control of both the
executive and legislative branches of the government. In the wake of this
landmark landslide, scholarly attention mostly focused on the future devel-
opment of the two major parties. With a larger-than-expected electoral man-
date, will the DPP government secure a peaceful relationship with China
without accepting the terms dictated by Beijing? The KMT had ruled post-
war Taiwan except for eight years, in 2000–07; however, the recent disas-
trous defeat prompted an acute existential crisis, which cast doubt on whether
the KMT could manage a political comeback. True, the subsequent evolu-
tion of the two mainstream parties will largely shape the contour of Taiwan’s
politics. Nevertheless, the 2016 election also witnessed the triumphal debut of
the New Power Party (Shidai Liliang, NPP) as the third-largest party in the
MING-SHO HOis Professor, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University in Taipei.
CHUN-HAO HUANG is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology, Tunghai University,
Taichung, Taiwan. This study was partly funded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology
(104-2420-H-002 -010 -MY2). The authors are thankful for the comments by anonymous
reviewers. Emails: <mingshoho@gmail.com>, <Kaze0515@gmail.com>.
Asian Survey,Vol.57,Number2,pp.343–367.ISSN0004-4687,electronicISSN1533-838X. ©2017 by
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission
to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and
Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p¼reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/
AS.2017.57.2.343.
343
legislature by winning five seats, surpassing the People First Party and the
Taiwan Solidarity Union. The NPP originated from a plethora of political
activisms energized by the Sunflower Movement in early 2014, in which
a student-led protest disrupted the Legislative Yuan for more than three
weeks. The spectacular transformation of illegal legislature occupiers into
elected lawmakers testifies to the unusual resilience of Taiwan’s democratic
institutions.
As with the Spanish Podemos and the Greek Syriza, the NPP’s success
demonstrated how massive anti-government contention could engender
a major reconfiguration of the political landscape. This article uses the con-
cept of ‘‘movement party’’ to understand the particular process of how social-
movement activism surges and reshapes the agenda of national politics. In
Taiwan’s context, the NPP represents the culmination of nearly three decades
of effort by civil society activists to elect their own representatives, rather than
relying on the sponsorship of more established politicians. We review their
successive attempts since the late 1980s in order to pinpoint the conditions
conducive to the NPP’s success.
Moreover, a closer look at the development of Taiwan’s movement parties
sheds light on a contemporary theoretical issue in political sociology as
a growing awareness emerges that the interaction between social movements
and political parties should be brought back into the research agenda. Both
involve organized and sustained activism to promote or resist social change
via the multiple channels of the modern state.
1
Taiwan’s two mainstream
parties, for instance, were not averse to unruly protests, especially when they
were out of power. That the DPP hailed from the pro-democracy movement
easily explains its proclivity for protest activism, as evidenced in its support
for the Sunflower Movement once the protestors had occupied the legisla-
ture. The KMT also appeared willing to support or mobilize protests as long
as they served the political purpose at hand. The KMT’s involvement in the
2006 Red-Shirt Army movement against the DPP President Chen Shui-bian
was a noticeable case. Less than two weeks after the new DPP government
was inaugurated in May, the KMT staged a protest rally of pig farmers to
oppose the importation of American pork.
2
The received wisdom, however,
1. Jack Goldstone, ‘‘More Social Movements or Fewer? Beyond Political Opportunity Structures
to Relational Field,’’ Theory and Society 33.3/4(July 2004): 333–365.
2. Central News Agency, May 13,2016, <http://goo.gl/ugn9zq>, accessed June 28,2016.
344 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
tends to adopt a polarized perspective of political parties as institutional and
rational, while social movements are extra-institutional and disruptive.
3
The insufficient attention to movement–party interaction in part originates
from the focus on electoral studies in political science and on social movements
in sociology. Discipline-based specialization promotes in-depth and accumu-
lated knowledge at the expense of neglecting overlapping areas, so that students
of political parties fail to embed parties in the ‘‘dynamic political interrelation-
ships with state and society.’’
4
On the other hand, there are worries about the
narrowing of the intellectual horizon with social-movement studies that focus
on mobilization only, rather than posing larger questions about the formation
of political identity.
5
McAdam and Tarrow, two leading scholars who shaped
the contemporary study of contentious politics, have acknowledged that they
overlooked the role of political parties, urging that more attention be paid to
the ‘‘reciprocal relationship between elections and social movements.’’
6
This article examines the successive attempts to organize movement parties
in Taiwan since the waning of authoritarian control. We identify the level of
movement activism and the permeability of mainstream parties as two facil-
itating opportunities for launching the political project of organizing move-
ment parties, if not for their electoral success. To put it simply, social-
movement activists are more likely to form their own parties when (1) street
protests are intense and effective and (2) established parties are not amenable
to letting the movements exert influence from within. In addition, as will be
observed, (3) changes in the electoral system play a critical role in shaping the
movements’ campaign strategies.
In South Korea’s 1987 transition to democracy, militant social movements
and the personality-based opposition parties followed parallel trajectories.
Taiwan’s pattern witnessed a closer interaction between them.
7
Nevertheless,
3. Diarmuid Maguire, ‘‘Opposition Movements and Opposition Parties: Equal Partners or
Dependent Relations in the Struggle for Power and Reform,’’ in The Politics of Social Protest:
Comparative Perspective on States and Social Movements, ed. J. Craig Jenkin and Bert Klandermans,
199–298 (London: UCL Press, 1955).
4. Stephanie L. Mudge and Anthony S. Chen, ‘‘Political Parties and the Sociological Imagina-
tion: Past, Present and Future Directions,’’ Annual Review of Sociology 40 (July 2014): 305–330.
5. Andrew G. Walder, ‘‘Political Sociology and Social Movements,’’ Annual Review of Sociology 35
(August 2009): 393–412.
6. Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow, ‘‘Ballots and Barricades: on the Reciprocal Relationship
between Elections and Social Movements,’’ Perspectives on Politics 8.2(June 2010): 529–542.
7. Yoonkyung Lee, ‘‘Diverging Patterns of Democratic Representation in Korea and Taiwan:
Political Parties and Social Movements,’’ Asian Survey 54.3(May/June 2014): 419–444.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 345
there is an enduring tension between movement activists and the opposition,
as the latter has often abandoned its movement allies for political exigencies.
Taiwan’s movement activists are constantly frustrated by their unfaithful
political sponsors, and there exists a group of unrepresented constituencies
that would like to vote for more uncompromisingly progressive candidates
than the DPP nominees.
THERISEOFMOVEMENTPARTIES
The main business of mainstream parties in democracies across the world
consists of winning office through electoral campaigns. For this paramount
purpose, party platforms need to be flexible to accommodate ever-changing
circumstances without appearing to abandon their core constituencies.
Anthony Downs describes the behavior of mainstream parties, which ‘‘do
not gain office in order to carry out certain preconceived polices’’ but
instead ‘‘formulate policies’’ to obtain power.
8
For mainstream parties,
ideologies, platforms, and policies are secondary to the imperative of
electoral viability.
Movement parties follow a contrasting logic since they embody a particular
cause and their electioneering is often the extension of protest activism. They
are based more on core values since their target constituencies form a partic-
ular community, in clear distinction from mass voters. Hence, nascent move-
ment parties seldom cater to the median voter, but instead mobilize minority
niche voters who are either victims of social injustices or ideological followers
of the movement’s cause. Having successfully established their initial footing,
movement parties face a tactical dilemma of whether to become more main-
stream. The nineteenth-century European social democrats started with the
socialist program of nationalizing the means of production, and yet the need
to secure the support of non-worker voters necessitated a moderate turn.
9
The European green parties followed a similar route as their realistic wing
gained ascendancy over the fundamentalists’ insistence on ‘‘grass-roots
democracy’’ to increase their electoral competitiveness.
10
8. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy,137 (New York: Prentice Hall, 1957).
9. Adam Przeworski and John Sprague, Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1986).
10. Herbert Kitschelt, The Logic of Party Formation: Ecological Parties in Belgium and West
Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
346 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
Understanding that the meaning of ‘‘social movements’’ varies in different
contexts, this article adopts a narrower definition to exclude those collective
actions that aim at changing the nature of the polity, for instance a democratic
movement, or the status of statehood, which in Taiwan’s context includes
pro-independence and pro-unification (with China) movements. Juan Linz
and Alfred Stepan maintain that (1) democratic consolidation means that
democracy has become behaviorally, attitudinally, and constitutionally ‘‘the
only game in town’’ and (2) democracy requires the prior existence of state-
hood.
11
Applying these insights, we argue that (to the first point) Taiwan
became a consolidated democracy in 1996, when the first presidential election
by popular vote took place. Prior to that, the DPP, with its lineage from the
pro-democratic movement, had virtually given up the tactics of mass mobi-
lization by concentrating on electioneering after the full legislative election in
1992. Hence, at least after the mid-1990s, the DPP and other pro-democratic
forces could no longer be described as ‘‘movement parties.’’
Concerning the second point, Taiwan has maintained a well-functioning
statehood throughout the postwar era, although the international aspect of
sovereignty has remained contested. There existed political forces that
focused primarily, if not exclusively, on elevating Taiwan’s de facto inde-
pendence to de jure (e.g., pro-independence parties such as the Taiwan
Solidarity Union) or explicitly endorsed the goal of ‘‘peaceful unification
of China.’’
12
The reasons to discount these pro-independence and pro-
unification parties are linked to the fact that almost none of them iden-
tified themselves as ‘‘social movements.’’ With the above delimitation in
mind, we use ‘‘movement parties’’ to refer to organized electioneering
that promoted reforms in labor, gender, human rights, the environment,
and other issues that had conventionally proceeded through non-electoral
channels.
13
11. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation,5,17–19
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
12. In 2008–14 there emerged more than 80 newly registered parties that embraced the pro-
unification agenda, although very few of them maintained a noticeable public presence. Liberty
Times, July 22,2014, <http://goo.gl/J6GiqI>, accessed June 28,2016.
13. Incidentally, all the movement parties discussed here pursue a liberal and progressive agenda.
In the 2016 legislative election, a party opposed to same-sex marriage (Faith and Hope League) joined
the fray, which arguably marked the historical entrance of conservative Christians into electoral
politics. This article chooses not to include this case because (1) it does not understand itself as
a ‘‘movement’’ and (2) there is no sign of continuing activities after its initial failure.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 347
To understand why social-movement activists decide to form their own
parties, we resort to the concept of ‘‘political opportunity,’’ or the ever-
changing features of a political system that ‘‘encourages people to engage in
contentious politics.’’
14
The concept was originally used to explain the emer-
gence of social movements (and later, their outcomes); more recently, there
have been attempts to broaden the term’s analytical scope to the European
movement parties, such as left-libertarian parties
15
and populist parties.
16
There has been a persistent debate over the analytical utility of ‘‘political
opportunities.’’ The classical formation of ‘‘political opportunity structure’’ is
criticized for structural bias and for an implied determinism that leaves too
little room for subjective agency.
17
Taking heed of this criticism, this article
uses ‘‘political opportunity’’ (without ‘‘structure’’) to consider more possible
interactions between institutions and movement activism. We will focus on
three political opportunities—the electoral system, the level of movement
mobilization, and the permeability of mainstream parties—to understand
how Taiwan’s movement activists ventured into the less familiar terrain of
electoral politics.
Electoral Systems
According to the now-canonical Duverger’s law, single-member district
(SMD) rule is conducive to two-party systems, and proportional representa-
tion (PR) encourages multi-party systems. An SMD system brings about
a winner-takes-all situation, so the contending politicians are motivated to
cooperate for a winning coalition. In contrast, PR exerts a centrifugal effect,
as small parties can focus exclusively on niche voters and win offices without
securing a majority. Since movement parties are necessarily small in the
beginning, PR obviously offers a more favorable environment for them than
the SMD method.
14. Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics,3rd ed., 32
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
15. Kent Redding and Jocelyn S. Viterna, ‘‘Political Demands, Political Opportunities: Ex-
plaining the Differential Success of Left-Libertarian Parties,’’ Social Forces 78.2(December 1999):
491–510.
16. Mario Diani, ‘‘Linking Mobilization Frame and Political Opportunities: Insights from
Regional Populism in Italy,’’ American Sociological Review 61.6(December 1996): 1053–69.
17. See e.g. Jeffrey Goodwin and James J. Jasper (eds.), Contention in Context: Political Oppor-
tunities and Emergence of Protest (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012).
348 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
In Taiwan, all the elections for administrative and executive positions,
including president, city and county mayors, township mayors, and village
and ward heads, use the SMD rule, which explains why movement parties
seldom mount bids in these elections since the probability of winning is
minimal. For the election of lawmaking representatives such as district leg-
islators (before 2008), national assembly representatives (before 1996), city
and county councilors, and township representatives, Taiwan adopts an
unusual system of ‘‘single nontransferable voting in multimember districts’’
(SNTV). This system selects more than one winner, and consequently can-
didates rarely need to obtain a majority to win a seat. This system in Taiwan
is closer to PR, particularly in the larger districts, as the greater degree of
proportionality means minority groups’ votes are less likely to be ‘‘wasted.’’
18
As the following sections will show, most of Taiwan’s movement activists’
electioneering targets these SNTV seats.
Taiwan introduced PR in the first open election of the Legislative Yuan in
1992,with36 out of 161 seats distributed according to the percentage of
district votes. The share of PR seats changed in subsequent elections, alter-
nating roughly between 20%and 30%. Only those parties that received more
than 5%of nationwide votes were eligible for the proportional seats. Else-
where in the world the PR system generally favors movement parties. The
German Greens, for instance, are called an ‘‘artifact of the five percent
clause.’’
19
Yet, Taiwan’s PR system still remained a formidable challenge for
movement parties until 2008. Since the percentage was based on the sum of
district votes, a movement party would have to field candidates in nearly
every district to be a bona fide contender.
The 2008 reform simultaneously brought about opportunities and chal-
lenges. Aside from six seats for indigenous peoples, 73 district seats were
changed from SNTV to SMD, making it much more difficult for movement
parties to survive amid the ruthless duel between DPP and KMT candidates.
However, although the 5%threshold remained, 34 proportionate seats were
now decided by a second ballot (a ‘‘party vote’’), and all parties that nomi-
nated at least 10 district candidates could contend. Consequently Taiwan’s
18. John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, ‘‘The SNTV System and its Political Implications,’’ in Taiwan’s
Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition: Riding the Third Wave, ed. Hung-Mao Tien, 198–199
(Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).
19. Helmut Wiesenthal, Realism in Green Politics: Social Movements and Ecological Reform in
Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 92.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 349
movement parties began to set their eyes on the PR seats of the Legislative
Yuan, even though their prospects in district elections were greatly
diminished.
Dafydd Fell characterizes Taiwan’s party system as relatively ‘‘open to new
entrants,’’ as evidenced by a string of successful small parties, including the
New Party (1993), the People First Party (2000), and the Taiwan Solidarity
Union (2001).
20
However, movement parties do not enjoy success because
they rarely have charismatic leaders. All the hitherto viable small parties were
initiated by professional politicians and started as secessionist parties out of
the DPP or the KMT. Fell calls them ‘‘splinter parties’’ from Taiwan’s green
and the blue camps and uses the term ‘‘challenger parties’’ to identify the
movement parties analyzed in this paper.
21
Taiwan’s electoral system and its evolution offered different configurations
over time of access points for movement activists, and they tended to launch
their campaigns in SNTV elections and, after 2008, in PR elections. The
electoral system had an impact on movement parties, less because they were
encouraged to join the election, but more in the types of elections they
thought they had a decent chance of winning. In other words, it explained
the ‘‘how’’ of movement parties, but not the ‘‘why.’’
The Level of Movement Mobilization
Movement parties emerge when movement activists decide strategically to
continue their activism ‘‘by other means.’’ Social movements usually realize
their political goals by exerting their ‘‘influence’’ rather than obtaining
‘‘power’’ directly. Thus, the decision to convert their influence into votes
often comes from an optimistic assessment of electoral success. In Taiwan, an
electoral campaign is a costly venture, as candidates are expected to pay the
expenses as well as a registration fee, which is refundable only if the candidate
receives a certain percentage of the votes. Potential supporters are generally
disinclined to cast their votes for candidates with dim prospects of winning.
Therefore, the tidal surge of movement mobilization presents a political
20. Dafydd Fell, Government and Politics in Taiwan,107 (London: Routledge, 2012).
21. Dafydd Fell, ‘‘The Battle for Third Place: Prospects for Taiwan’s Small Parties in Local
Elections,’’ China Policy Institute Blog of Nottingham University, November 24,2014, <http://goo.
gl/kU67Z4>, accessed April 30,2015.
350 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
opportunity when it can muster recognizable leaders, widened participation,
and media attention—the critical resources for organizing movement parties.
Previous studies have identified the following trajectory of Taiwan’s social
movements:
1. Popular upsurge (1987–92), when the removal of martial law in 1987
released pent-up grievances and engendered a spiral of radical protests.
2. Institutionalization (1993–99), as the democratized government began
to address some movement demands and legalize participatory chan-
nels. Social movements took a moderate turn and became legitimate
political actors.
3. Incorporation (2000–07), as the advent of the DPP government wid-
ened institutional access for social movement activists. As some move-
ment organizations obtained the status of regime partners, other
organizations became disillusioned and frustrated by the DPP’s gradual
gravitation toward conservatism.
4.Resurgence(2008–13). The KMT’s return to power brought about
regressive policy changes as many reforms were rolled back or threat-
ened. Social movements re-emerged partly to defend their previous
achievements and partly because of the loss of institutional channels
of participation.
22
5. Finally, the Sunflower Movement of 2014 and its powerful aftermath
elevated the power of social movements to the unprecedented level that
paved way for the NPP’s success. The following analysis will trace the
development of Taiwan’s movement parties with this periodization.
The Permeability of Mainstream Parties
Establishing and maintaining an independent party is costly, so social-
movement activists do not typically embrace it as a first choice. If they can
find political allies among the existing mainstream parties, they tend to
collaborate with them. The decision to launch a movement party runs the
risk of souring an existing relationship with political sponsors in the main-
stream parties, as it signifies a political intent to replace the latter. Therefore,
the degree of openness of mainstream parties to movement demands repre-
sents a political opportunity. Other things being equal, only when the
22. Ming-sho Ho, ‘‘Understanding the Trajectory of Social Movements in Taiwan (1980–2010),’’
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 39.3(Fall 2010): 3–22.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 351
permeability of mainstream parties is greatly reduced, insulating them from
friendly overtures by social movements, are efforts to form movement parties
more likely to take place.
23
There have been few cases in which the conservative KMT adopted a col-
laborative stance toward social movements; the DPP has more normally been
their political ally. Therefore, the successive endeavors to build a movement
party boiled down to the question of how to persuade DPP supporters to
change their voting behavior.
The DPP originated in the late 1970s from the opposition movement
(Dangwai, ‘‘outside the party’’), and DPP leaders initially faced a challenge
similartothatofEastEuropeandissidents in the same period: how to
establish a political party out of a movement.
24
At the moment of its birth,
the DPP was torn between two tendencies. The absence of a left-wing
tradition, the prior existence of local elections, and the middle-class leader-
ship of the DPP predisposed the nascent opposition party to take what
Panebianco calls the ‘‘electoral-professional’’ route.
25
Nevertheless, the simul-
taneous rise of social movements as well as the government’s repression
encouraged the DPP to take to the streets. Thus, in its initial years, the DPP
maintained a close relationship with social movements while at the same time
seeking to construct itself as a ‘‘catch-all party’’ to compete against the arch-
rival KMT. In making this effort, over the years the DPP became more
mainstream and established, and its permeability to social movements
declined, thus inviting the attempt to organize movement parties.
There were three critical junctures that shaped the DPP’s degree of per-
meability. First, while the young DPP was deeply mired in a tactical debate
between parliamentarianism and street protests, its successes in the national
elections of 1989 and 1992 laid the foundations for an election-oriented
opposition party, whose commitment to social movement causes faded as
it became a would-be ruling party. Afterwards, although the DPP retained
the residual inclination to mobilize its supporters for protest occasionally, it
23. Drew Halfmann, Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in
the United States, Britain, and Canada (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2011).
24. John K. Glenn, ‘‘Parties out of Movements: Party Emergence in Postcommunist Eastern
Europe,’’ in States, Parties and Social Movements, ed. Jack A. Goldstone, 147–169 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003).
25. Angelo Panebianco, Political Parties: Organization and Power,268 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988).
352 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
could no longer be described as a movement party, particularly when Tai-
wan’s democracy was consolidated in the mid-1990s. Second, the DPP’s
unexpected capture of national power in 2000 was largely a windfall due
to an internecine split in the KMT. Consequently, the DPP had to hastily
learn how to govern ‘‘responsibly,’’ which left its former movement allies
feeling abandoned and betrayed.
26
Lastly, the DPP sustained a decisive defeat
in 2008, not only losing the presidency by a wide margin but also seeing the
number of its legislators slashed to less than one-quarter of the total seats. In
the effort to rebuild support, the DPP sought to make amends for the
damaged relationship with civil society organizations and conceded to some
of their demands, thus becoming more permeable to social movements.
Viewed individually, each of these three types of political opportunity has
a specific effect for movement parties. The changing electoral system pro-
vides different access points for movement activists. While heightened move-
ment mobilization exerts a stimulating effect, the decreasing permeability of
the DPP pushes them into the electoral arena. However, the reality was a far
more complicated combination of these elements. First, the causal effect of
each political opportunity is at times curvilinear, rather than linear. Inten-
sified movement activism generally encourages movement parties up to
a certain point, and beyond it, overconfidence over the electoral prospect
can generate unexpected sources of schism. As movement-oriented candi-
dates become less willing to coordinate their campaign efforts, the likelihood
of success is reduced because of excessive intramural competition, as evi-
denced in the poor electoral performance of Taiwan’s two labor-based parties
in the late 1980s.
The particular combination of three political opportunities in a specific
period brings about ‘‘conjunctural causation’’ because of the unanticipated
interaction among them. The idea that causal mechanisms operate according
to circumstances challenges the traditional assumption that each independent
variable exerts a uniform effect across different situations. For instance, the
historically low point of DPP’s permeability during its incumbency (2000–
07) should have motivated the formation of movement parties, but this
favorable condition was effectively neutralized by a lower level of movement
activism. The advocates of conjunctural causation are interested in historical
26. Shuge Wei, ‘‘Recovery from ‘Betrayal’: Local Anti-nuclear Movements and Party Politics in
Taiwan,’’ Asia-Pacific Journal 14.3(April 2016): 1–21.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 353
comparison of different national cases
27
—an approach that resonates with
our attempt to explain the trajectories of Taiwan’s movement parties in
different stages, aiming at a holistic understanding of cases and periods rather
than disaggregating them into variables.
In short, we avoid the deterministic use of political opportunity theory.
Instead, this article aims to understand the changing situational combina-
tions of three political opportunities and how they structured the dynamic of
movement parties over more than two decades.
THE EVOLUTION OF TAIWAN’S MOVEMENT PARTIES
1. Popular Upsurge (1987–92): Workers’ Party and Labor Party
One year after the DPP’s founding, it experienced a fissure. Wang Yixiong,
a recently elected opposition legislator with sympathy for the plight of workers,
began to criticize the DPP for claiming to be a ‘‘party for all the people’’ (quan-
min zhengdang), which he considered an inappropriate imitation of the KMT’s
claim.
28
Wang’s growing distance from the DPP won the endorsement of
some left-wing and pro-unification intellectuals, and their collaboration gave
rise in November 1987 to the Workers’ Party, Taiwan’s first working-class party.
It was founded during brewing labor unrest as an unprecedented wave of
spontaneous strikes erupted in the spring of 1988. But labor insurgence failed to
boost the nascent movement party; instead, it deepened the ideological rift
between Wang and the intellectuals. Wang advocated an ameliorative approach
to improve the workers’ conditions, while the latter insisted on socialism and
unification. The escalating conflict culminated in pro-unification members’
walking out to create the Labor Party (Laodongdang) in early 1989.
Riding the surge of labor protests, two labor-based parties had emerged
within a short period of time. Clearly labor militancy lent confidence to both
sides, making them less willing to compromise. They were severely tested in
the 1989 legislative election, in which the Workers’ Party nominated eight
candidates and the Labor Party, three. Together they received 98,629 votes
(1.08%), and none of the candidates was elected.
29
The 1989 election was the
27. Charles C. Ragin, The Comparative Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).
28. Xinxinwen [New Journalists] 10 (August 1987), 27.
29. Central Election Commission, Dongyuan kanluan shiqi ziyou diqu zenger lifaweiyuan xuanju
shilu [Record of the Supplementary Legislative Election of the Free Territory during the Period of
National Mobilization to Suppress the Rebellion] (Taipei: Central Election Commission, 1990).
354 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
last that maintained the functional groups, which were later replaced by PR
seats. The bid for the five legislator seats was particularly intense since both
parties needed to secure a footing here to legitimize their claim to represent
the working class. But three seats went to the KMT and two to the DPP,
and the combined votes for the two Workers’ Party nominees and the one
Labor Party nominee were less than for the last-place elected candidate.
30
Amid the crushing defeat, though, two Workers’ Party members were
elected as local councilors.
In hindsight, the 1989 election was the only meaningful chance for the two
nascent movement parties, and what came after was a steady decline. The
1992 legislative election was the last one the Workers’ Party joined, and it
became inactive afterwards. The Labor Party maintained electoral activities
until 1996, with diminishing votes.
Post–martial law developments worked against these two movement par-
ties. The wave of grass-roots worker militancy swiftly receded and was re-
placed by a more moderate movement that largely relied on cooperation with
the DPP. Taiwan’s subsequent labor-movement turn focused more on the
legislative arena, in which friendly opposition lawmakers provided critical
leverage to secure legal reforms. The DPP’s high permeability frustrated the
development of the two movement parties by encouraging labor activists to
work with the mainstream opposition party.
2. Institutionalization (1993–99): Taiwan Green Party
The Taiwan Green Party (TGP) was founded by anti-nuclear activists in
January 1996 as a combined consequence of escalating movement mobilization
and widening disagreement with the DPP. Taiwan’s nuclear politics evolved
around the ill-fated Fourth Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP), whose annual budget
review in the legislature inevitably aroused confrontation between anti-nuclear
and pro-nuclear lawmakers. In 1994, the KMT lawmakers forcibly passed
a seven-year budget, effectively removing the controversial project from legis-
lators’ supervision. Anti-nuclear activists had to devise a new extraparliamen-
tary strategy to continue their opposition to the FNPP. In the summer of that
year, they launched a signature-collecting campaign to recall the pro-nuclear
30. Ming-sho Ho, Working Class Formation in Taiwan: Fractured Solidarity in State-Owned
Enterprises 1945–2012,152 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 355
lawmakers, which turned out to embolden the activists, claiming to ‘‘have seen
mass participation of such scale for the first time.’’ The fundraising campaign
was much more successful than expected, and they became confident they
could ‘‘have their own people and money.’’
31
As the anti-nuclear activists took to the streets, the DPP became less
enthusiastic in championing the anti-nuclear cause. Their lawmakers did not
prioritize opposition to the FNPP, but occasionally used it as a quid pro quo
for promoting other political agendas.
32
The DPP leadership appeared more
concerned about its public image than about pursuing the commitment,
which prompted anti-nuclear activists to organize the TGP.
For the National Assembly election, the TGP nominated 13 activists
involved in environmental, community, and cultural issues, reflecting the
diversity of contemporary ecological politics. The TGP obtained 3.6%in the
districts it chose to contest,
33
and one candidate was successfully elected, but
he opted to leave the TGP soon after. In 1998, eight candidates ran in the
autonomous city/county council election and the legislative election but
failed to reverse the party’s fortunes. Afterwards, the TGP made occasional
attempts, only to see its support dwindling.
The TGP’s electoral fortunes reflected the trajectory of Taiwan’s environ-
mentalism and its relation to the DPP. The climax of the anti-nuclear move-
ment arrived in the mid-1990s, and by the time the DPP government
backtracked on its promise to scrap the FNPP in 2001, it appeared a spent
force. The lowering of the DPP’s permeability should have been a political
opportunity, but the TGP was weakened by the decline of anti-nuclear
mobilization. It was only after the KMT’s return to power in 2008 that the
TGP regained its momentum.
3. Incorporation (2000–07): The Low Tide
The DPP’s coming to power in 2000 marked the end of the transition from
authoritarianism, and unexpectedly it also brought about the nadir for
31. Interview with Hong Yuzheng, member of the TPG central standing committee, September
2,1999.
32. Interview with Lu Jiancang, Taipei Branch, Taiwan Environmental Protection Union, June
24,1999.
33. Unless indicated otherwise, election data are from the website of the Central Election
Commission, <http://db.cec.gov.tw>, accessed February 28,2015.
356 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
movement parties. The new entrant in this period was the Workers’ Legis-
lative Action Committee (Gongren lifa xingdong weiyuanhui, WLAC),
a labor-movement organization established in 1992. The WLAC traversed
a winding ideological and political path, drifting away from its original roots
in the labor movement and spreading into other movement issues.
34
Three
WLAC activists launched their electoral efforts in 2002, but in spite of their
persistence, it remained the least competitive movement party in terms of
vote support.
4. Resurgence (2008–13): The Revival of Movement Parties
The 2005 constitutional amendment altered the electoral rule for the national
legislature, changing the rules of the game for movement parties. Although
the change of 73 seats of district legislators from SNTV to SMD made it more
difficult for movement parties to contest in this area, the introduction of the
second party vote meant a realistic chance to enter the fray for the 34 PR seats
as long as they could nominate at least 10 district candidates, which prompted
the TGP and the WLAC to form an alliance for the 2008 legislative election’s
PR seats. The TGP again fielded 10 district candidates for the 2012 legislative
election, and this time its party votes were 229,566 (1.7%), thus making it the
fifth-largest receiver.
As mentioned above, the change in the electoral system affected how
movement-oriented candidates accessed the election, but not so much their
willingness to join it in the first place. Due to the lack of realistic prospects,
Taiwan’s movement parties never contested in the PR elections of 1992–2005;
they concentrated their efforts in SNTV-district elections. Starting in 2008,
the TGP in particular seemed to focus on PR elections only when it could
join forces with other movement parties to meet the quorum requirement.
The conversion of district legislative elections from SNTV to SMD repre-
sented a majoritarian shift that reduced the chance of winning for the candi-
dates of non-mainstream parties. Except for the extremely rare situations of
tightly drawn three-way competition or more, the only way a movement
party could win in a district legislative election was if the DPP decided not
34. The WLAC activists went by the new name Raging Citizens Act Now (Renmin huoda
xingdong lianmeng) in 2007, and after 2011 by People’s Democratic Front (Renmin minzhu
zhenxian), which was officially registered as a political party. To avoid confusion, this paper uses the
term WLAC.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 357
to field its own candidate there. And this was unlikely because there were
always DPP aspirants in every district. As will be shown below, it was only
after the Sunflower Movement that the DPP decided to make partial con-
cession to the movement parties, which facilitated the victories of three NPP
district candidates in 2016.
Ultimately the resuscitation of movement activists’ electioneering was pro-
pelled by the resurgence of social protests after the KMT returned to power in
2008. The TGP rode on the new wave of environmental protests that had
secured some milestone victories, such as the anti-casino movement in 2009
and the cancellation of the Guoguang petrochemical project in 2011. The
Fukushima incident in Japan in 2011 also revived Taiwan’s anti-nuclear move-
ment and broadened its public acceptance.
35
The Labor Party, whose electoral
campaign activities had petered out in the mid-1990s, was also stimulated by
the recent labor protests. The global financial tsunami produced a sudden spike
in the unemployment rate in Taiwan, particularly in Hsinchu, where high-tech
firms were concentrated. A Labor Party activist was elected as local councilor in
2009, and made a successful re-election bid in 2014.
Finally, there was a perceivable pro-movement turn on the part of the DPP
after 2008. In a number of policy issues, the DPP actually changed its position
to meet the rising curve of social protests. In Tsai’s presidential bid in 2012,
partly because of the tactical need to distract public attention from the cross-
Strait issue, which was usually perceived as a DPP weak point, she adopted the
campaign slogan ‘‘fairness and justice’’ (gongping zhengyi) and promoted a pol-
icy platform that responded to the reform demands of the social movements. In
spite of the friendlier gesture toward social movements, the DPP’s permeability
increased by only a small margin. In its 2012 PR list for legislative election, only
two participants in the disability movement and feminism were nominated,
which prompted criticism from movement activists.
5. The Sunflower Effect (2014–16): The High Tide of Movement Parties
On the evening of March 18,2014, two hundred students stormed the
Legislative Yuan in opposition to the KMT’s railroading of a controversial
free trade pact with China. What was initially planned as a sit-in protest that
35. Simona Grano, ‘‘Change and Continuities: Taiwan’s Post-2008 Environmental Politics,’’
Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 43.3(Fall 2014): 129–159.
358 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
could have been quickly evicted by the police evolved into a 24-day ‘‘occupy
movement’’ that precipitated an acute constitutional and political crisis. The
Sunflower Movement represented the largest and longest protest event in
recent Taiwanese history.
36
The peaceful and orderly conclusion of the Sunflower Movement gave
further impetus to the movement parties. Many movement-party activists
played important roles in the occupy movement: the TGP and other envi-
ronmental groups were among the auxiliary NGOs that took care of logistical
issues, and the WLAC activists operated a street forum.
37
In particular, since
students and young working adults were the main participants, the younger
generation became more congenial to the movement parties. The local elec-
tion in November served as a critical test of how these movement parties
could harness the momentum released by the Sunflower Movement.
In 2014, the TGP reported significant organizational expansion: four
regional offices were established, and party membership grew from 300 to
500, with the newcomers mostly from the younger generation. Two TGP
members were elected as councilors in Taoyuan City and Hsinchu County,
their first electoral success since 1996. In fact, the TGP could have performed
better but for the split prior to the election, which gave rise to the new Trees
Party (Shu dang), which nominated 10 candidates for the councilor election.
All these candidates failed, although one of the party’s members was elected
the mayor of Chichi Township, in central Taiwan (population 11,356), while
one party departee succeeded in being elected as a councilor in Ilan County.
In addition to reinvigorating the existing movement parties, the Sunflower
Movement encouraged the effort to build new ones. Wings of Radical Pol-
itics (Jijin ceyi) was a group of young pro-independence activists who at-
tempted to steer the Sunflower Movement onto a more radical course, to no
avail. Afterwards, they recruited more members and fielded five candidates,
who were all under 30 years old. Although Wings of Radical Politics was not
formally registered as a political party, its candidates campaigned with a coor-
dination office and a common platform.
38
These young candidates were not
36. Ming-sho Ho, ‘‘Occupy Congress in Taiwan: Political Opportunity, Threat and the Sun-
flower Movement,’’ Journal of East Asian Studies 15.1(Spring 2005): 69–97.
37. The only exception was the pro-China Labor Party,which openly supported the freetrade pact.
38. Although Wings of Radical Politics is more vocally pro-independence, this article still views it
as a movement party because it also raises other demands concerning social inequality. The same
principle goes for the avowedly pro-unification Labor Party.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 359
successful, but their average vote share of 4.7%actually outperformed some
existing movement parties.
Table 1clearly demonstrates that the Sunflower Movement inspired Tai-
wan’s movement-party activities. The year 2014 witnessed the greatest num-
ber of movement-party nominees (37) and elected candidates (3) in a single
election, even if we count local councilor elections only. In terms of total
votes (144,414) and nationwide vote share (3.5%), this election surpassed the
previous record of the 1996 election for national assembly representatives
(118,282 votes and 1.1%).
Prior to the eruption of the Sunflower Movement in 2014, a group of
intellectuals and movement activists began to organize a ‘‘third force’’ to
challenge the monopoly of pan-blue and pan-green parties. On March 3,
2014, the Taiwan Citizen Union (Gongmin zuhe, TCU) was established, and
its founding statement called for ‘‘idealistic participation by citizens’’ in the
2016 legislative election. Two weeks later, the unexpected outbreak of the
congress occupy movement disrupted and complicated this plan.
The powerful reverberations of the Sunflower Movement disrupted the
TCU project. Since the new movementpartysetitseyesonthe2016
legislative election, it was not directly involved in the local election of
2014, except in launching a crowdfunding campaign to finance a free busing
service for students to return to their hometowns to cast their ballots. The
better-than-expected result generated a fissure among the TCU activists. In
the spring of 2015, the TCU split into two new movement parties, the NPP
table 1. Movement Parties in the 2014 Local Councilor Elections
Party Candidates
Candidates
elected
Total
votes
Total
vote share
Taiwan Green Party 9254,059 4.8%
Trees Party 8038,110 2.8%
Workers’ Legislative Action Committee 14 0 15,196 1.0%
Wings of Radical Politics 5031,222 4.7%
Labor Party 115,827 8.3%
Total 37 3 144,414 3.5%
SOURCE: Central Election Commission, <http://db.cec.gov.tw/>, accessed February 28,2015.
NOTES:1. This table only includes the candidates for autonomous city/city/county council elections. 2.
Average vote share is district-based, not nationwide.
360 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
and the Social Democratic Party (Shehui minzhu dang, SDP). The former
had the advantage of endorsement by Sunflower Movement leaders who
had become national celebrities, and the latter secured the TGP’s promise
of a joint campaign for the national list of PR seats. At the same time,
despite their failure two years earlier, the Trees Party and the WLAC also
made comebacks in 2016.
In a sense, the NPP/SDP split originated in the ambiguous legacy of the
Sunflower Movement, which drew strength from a number of heterogeneous
sources, including rising Taiwanese identity, concern over proper procedure,
skepticism over free trade, and growing income inequality. Once the legis-
lature occupation ended, there remained few reasons for these tendencies to
collaborate under the same roof. On the whole, the NPP appeared more
independence-leaning, while the SDP prioritized social reforms and wealth
redistribution.
39
Besides, the tactical question of whether to negotiate with
the DPP became a bone of contention. Since the election of 73 district
legislator seats proceeded in the first-past-the-post manner, the opposition
camp risked disastrous internecine warfare in the absence of prior
coordination.
While both new parties chose to target the KMT-dominant electoral
districts, the NPP made explicit its willingness to coordinate with the DPP
on fielding only one candidate in each district, whereas the SDP insisted on
its independence by rejecting any party-to-party negotiation. In other words,
the NPP positioned itself as a DPP ally by openly endorsing Tsai Ing-wen’s
bid for the presidency and welcoming the support of DPP politicians. In
contrast, the SDP drew its strength from Taiwan’s movement NGOs and
academic intellectuals by adopting a more or less neutral stance concerning
the presidential election. In the end, the SDP opted to team up with the TGP
to form a joined TGP-SDP ticket to join the fray for PR seats, while both
parties worked their district election separately.
The electoral result seems to vindicate the NPP’s strategic choice of a pro-
DPP stance in that its three district nominees succeeded in ousting the KMT
veteran incumbents. All their victories were made possible because the DPP
not only refrained from fielding its own candidates but also encouraged its
39. Nevertheless, before the election, the NPP chair, Huang Kuo-chang, characterized the party
as ‘‘left-leaning’’ by emphasizing its commitment to reform taxation, income, and pensions. As
Huang saw it, the NPP did not differ much from the SDP or the TGP in terms of ideas; the main
disagreement was whether to prioritize the KMT’s defeat as the first goal.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 361
supporters to vote for the NPP candidates. The NPP also struck a delicate
balance between the need to mobilize DPP votes for its district candidates
and the imperative to compete with the DPP for the PR seats in the second
vote. With its two PR seats (6.1%in party vote), the NPP emerged as the
third-largest party in Taiwan.
On the other hand, the TGP-SDP ticket (2.5%) failed to surpass the 5%
threshold, which came as an unexpected disappointment to its core members.
On the eve of the election, they were cautiously positive that the TGP-SDP
would surpass the 5%threshold and establish their presence in the national
legislature. The failure to reach even 3.5%, which would have entitled them to
government subsidy, made the defeat even more bitter. Given that the TGP
secured 1.7%in the 2012 election on its own, a growth of merely 0.8%
through the influx of Sunflower activists and the partnership with the SDP
was really a poor performance.
Table 2summarizes the electoral results in 2016, which again marked a new
zenith of movement-party activities. As many as 36 movement-oriented can-
didates competed in the election for 73 district legislator seats. While the
TGP’s 1.7%in party vote represented the share of pro-movement voters in
the previous election, the combined share (9.2%) of NPP, TGP-SDP, and
table 2. Movement Parties in the 2016 Legislative Election
Parties
District
candidates
District
candidates
elected
Average
district
votes
Total
district
vote share
Party
vote
share
Proportional
representation
candidates elected
New Power Party 12 3 29,270 16.9%6.1%2
Social Democratic Party 6024,231 14.1%2.5%0
Taiwan Green Party 5011,655 6.1%
Trees Party 11 0 2,748 2.9%0.6%0
Workers’ Legislative
Action Committee
203,702 2.2%––
Total 36 3 14,321 8.4%9.2%2
SOURCE: Adapted from data from Central Election Commission, <http://db.cec.gov.tw/>, accessed March
10,2016.
NOTES:1. The SDP and TGP managed their district campaign separately, but formed a joint ticket for the
PR seats. 2. Wings of Radical Politics decided to join the proportional-representation list of the Taiwan
Solidarity Union by not fielding its own district candidates. 3. WLAC did not nominate the 10 district
candidates needed to qualify as a contender for the PR seats.
362 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
the Trees Party was clearly huge progress, fittingly capturing the post-
Sunflower zeitgeist in Taiwan. Granted that the electoral result was far more
complicated than simple arithmetic, it remained a plausible guess that
movement-party candidates would have ended up with more than five seats
had the original TCU project remained intact.
Still, why the NPP outperformed the SDP requires an explanation.
Aside from its pragmatic positioning as an ally of the DPP, which was
widely expected to win the presidency, the NPP also possessed tactical
advantages in human and financial resources. First, all three successful
NPP district candidates had long since become charismatic and arguably
good-looking celebrities, particularly popular among young voters, before
deciding to join the election, while most of the SDP and TGP candidates
struggled to attract media attention. Moreover, my interview sources indi-
cated that the NPP appeared financially stronger. All three successful NPP
candidates ran on budgets of more than NT$ 10 million (US$ 300,000),
whereas the top spenders in the SDP and the TGP used only NT$
5million (US$ 156,250)andNT$2million (US$ 62,500), respectively.
In other words, while movement commitment remains the defining fea-
ture of movement parties, it also takes pragmatism and material resources
tobecomeaviableplayer.
Finally, seeing the surge of movement parties in 2014 (and the strong
competition from the NPP and the SDP, the DPP deliberately increased
its permeability in the 2016 PR list, which amounted to an impressive
snapshot of Taiwan’s contemporary social movements: leaders in food
safety, environmentalism, human rights, feminism, rural preservation,
disability, labor, and social enterprises were nominated. Altogether, the
DPP placed eight activists, including two TGP members, in front-
ranking positions that were estimated as safe. Here higher permeability
was employed as a campaign tactic to prevent pro-reform voters’ defec-
tion to movement parties. In the final week before the election, the DPP
launched a vigorous campaign to urge its supporters to concentrate their
party vote to fend off the surging NPP. Consequently, the DPP was able
to secure 18 out of 34 PR seats, whereas the NPP ended up with fewer
PR seats than expected.
40
40. One NPP co-president estimated that the DPP’s last-minute offensive had cost his party two
seats. Interview with Lin Shi-yu, NPP co-president, April 12,2016.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 363
DISCUSSION
Table 3recapitulates the trajectories of Taiwan’s movement parties up to
2016. There is a V-shaped pattern in Taiwan’s movement-party activities,
with the DPP’s tenure in power as the long doldrums for movement activists’
electioneering. The level of movement mobilization and the DPP’s perme-
ability evolved largely in the same direction from 1987 to 2016, reflecting
Taiwan’s transition from authoritarianism and the consolidation of a vibrant
multi-party democracy. Theoretically, the two political directions exert oppo-
site influences on movement parties, since the gradual closing of the DPP’s
avenues to movement activists should have stimulated movement-party ef-
forts. The weakened social movements were not able to make use of favorable
political change because the lack of publicly known leaders, the limited
number of movement participants, and the media’s inattention severely con-
strained their electoral capacity.
The DPP’s changing relationship with social movements is also a notewor-
thy feature. The DPP’s behavior was actually quite similar to the European
social democratic parties, which in opposition tend to facilitate social move-
ments, while they often ‘‘have to make compromises with regard to their
electoral promises’’ if they are in the government.
41
The fact that there exists
a European pattern of left-and-right politics in contemporary Taiwan is often
obscured because most of the attention is on the independence-versus-
unification conflict.
There are several remarkable features in the evolution of Taiwan’s move-
ment parties over more than two decades. First, there is a clear transition from
‘‘old social movements’’ to ‘‘new social movements’’ as the class-based move-
ment parties gave way to those whose defining concerns ranged across envi-
ronmental protection, gender equality, and alternative cultures, as
exemplified by the TGP’s 1996 list of candidates. More recently, the ‘‘citizens’
movement’’ surged and was empowered by the Sunflower Movement, which
seemed to make the movement categories obsolete because many activists
were simultaneously engaged in a number of issues.
Second, Taiwan’s movement parties offered a more accessible avenue for
young people to enter the political arena. In 1993–2007, movement-party
41. Hanspeter Kriesi, ‘‘The Political Opportunity Structure of New Social Movements: Its
Impact on Their Mobilization,’’ in The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspective on States and
Social Movements, ed. J. Craig Jenkin and Bert Klandermans, 182 (London: UCL Press, 1995).
364 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
table 3. A Political Opportunity Analysis of Taiwan’s Movement Parties (1987–2016)
1987–92 1993–99 2000–07 2008–13 2014 2016
Accessed electoral system SNTV SNTV SNTV þ(SMD) SNTV þPR þ(SMD) SNTV þ(SMD) SMD þPR
Level of movement mobilization High Medium Low High High High
The DPP’s permeability High Medium Low Medium Medium High
Active movement parties Workers’ Party
Labor Party
TGP
(Labor Party)
WLAC
(TGP)
TGP
WLAC
(Labor Party)
TGP
Trees Party
WLAC
Wings of Radical
Politics
(Labor Party)
NPP
SDP
TGP
Trees Party
WLAC
Candidates elected / nominated
(district only)
2/27 1/27 0/81/36 3/39 3/36
Average age of movement party
candidates / all candidates
(district only)
41/NA 38/45 43/47 41/50 40/52 38/50
Female percentage of movement
party candidates / all candidates
(district only)
14.8/NA 48.1/16.325/20.344.4/25.838.5/27.844.4/25.2
SOURCE: Pre-1994 election data are based on the published records of the election commissions of the central government, Taiwan Province government, and Kaohsiung City
government. The rest are from Central Election Commission, <http://db.cec.gov.tw/>, accessed March 10,2016.
NOTES:1. This table includes the elections for representatives (legislators, national assembly representatives, autonomous city/city/county councilors) and local executives
(autonomous/city/county mayors), but leaves out the elections below the level of city/county. 2. Parentheses indicate the less commonly used electoral system or the less active
movement parties. 3. Abbreviations: SNTV, single nontransferable voting in multimember districts. SMD, single-member districts. PR, proportional representation. TGP,
Taiwan Green Party. WLAC, Workers’ Legislative Action Committee. NPP, New Power Party. SDP, Social Democratic Party. NA, not available.
candidates were younger than their mainstream competitors by 5–9years. In
the two elections after the Sunflower Movement, the gap further widened to
12 years, indicating an unprecedented wave of interest by the younger gen-
eration in politics (Table 3). In terms of gender, except for the Workers’ Party
and Labor Party, movement parties obviously offered a broader channel for
women to pursue their political careers. The two class-based parties con-
formed to the traditional pattern of labor movement dominated by male
union leadership. With the paradigmatic turn to ‘‘new social movements’’
in the mid-1990s, subsequent movement parties appeared more gender-
friendly. Particularly in the 2016 election, a number of TGP and SDP can-
didates were openly homosexual, and that they eloquently defended their
sexual orientation in front of the electorate further advanced gender equality
in Taiwan’s politics.
CONCLUSION
Movement parties are basically an ambitious attempt to convert movement
activism into political power. Once in the electoral game, movement activists
have to play the role of slick candidates whose number-one objective is to be
elected. The very existence of movement parties testifies to the abiding attrac-
tion of the democratic principle, which promises to empower every citizen
equally. Movement parties are hopelessly idealistic because they sincerely
believe that the equalitarian head-counting rule will eventually help margin-
alized groups rather than merely benefiting the privileged minority. Focusing
on the electoral activities of movement parties helps us look at the interaction
of social protests and elections—a critical yet neglected issue in political
sociology. When students of social movements look for the consequences of
social protest, they should not unduly restrict their attention to policy impacts
or changes in culture and everyday life. Established and durable movement
parties, like the European Greens, also count as a movement legacy.
The Taiwan context sensitizes us to the ever-changing relationship
between the main opposition party and social movements. After all, the DPP
evolved from an opposition movement that sought to challenge the KMT
both in elections and in social protests. Its progress into a mainstream party
and then a ruling party reduced the permeability to movement activists, who
attempted to have their own political representatives from time to time. This
historical survey reveals that movement parties usually emerged along with
366 ASIAN SURVEY 57:2
rising waves of social protest. The advent of the labor movement in the late
1980s, the extraparliamentary turn of the anti-nuclear movement in the mid-
1990s, and the emergence of the ‘‘citizens’ movement’’ after 2008 as well as its
culmination after the 2014 Sunflower Movement constituted three rising
tides of movement-party activities in Taiwan. Now with the NPP’s conquest
of the legislative seats, there emerged a possibility that it might evolve into
a more or less permanent feature in the national polity.
Rising social protests provided the momentum for movement parties;
however, it is less noticed that they also paved the way for schisms. The fatal
split of the Workers’ Party in 1988, the dissolution of the TGP–WLAC
alliance after 2008, and the TCU’s fission into two new parties in 2015
provide evidence that internal ideological differences were less likely to be
accommodated when party activists sensed a greater chance of success. The
seduction of sectarianism should be not a surprise since movement parties
were more likely to be led by idealistic intellectuals and driven by movement
causes that allowed little room for compromise.
Finally, movement parties remained a challenging project. They tended to
be underfinanced and understaffed, which severely affected the viability of their
electioneering. Movement parties encountered difficulties in maintaining dis-
cipline over their candidates and elected politicians since they had little leverage
to sanction violators. Social movements usually developed in a rise-and-fall
pattern, offering only a very brief window of opportunity for movement par-
ties. Failures in the incipient period were usually very costly, if not deadly. The
Workers’ Party never recovered from its decisive defeat in 1992.Ittookmore
than two decades for the Labor Party to have an elected representative after its
failure in 1989. After its setback in 1996, the TGP limped on until the Fukush-
ima incident rekindled the anti-nuclear movement in 2011. After the 2016
election, it remains to be observed whether (1) the victorious NPP can secure
a more solid footing in Taiwan’s political landscape, (2)theSDPcansurvive
the initial failure, which has always been devastating for first-timers, and (3)the
veteran TGP manages to maintain the momentum it regained in 2008.
In spite of their high failure rate and the daunting difficulties, movement
parties deserve a close look because they exemplify the effort to extend the
boundaries of contemporary electoral democracy—a crucial experiment on
whether the principle of universal suffrage and fair competition can really
empower the underprivileged. The consequences of these attempts should be
of interest, both in Taiwan and elsewhere.
HO AND HUANG / MOVEMENT PARTIES IN TAIWAN 367
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