While political interference has been the major obstacle in building the judicial capacity in new democracies, how the judicial sector has gained its independence over the course of democratization deserves more scholarly attention. By following the history of independence seeking by public prosecutors in Taiwan, this paper examines the reasons for the lag in judicial reforms and explains how...
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Volume #12, Number #2
Volume #12, Number #2
There is a conflict between judicial independence and democratic accountability. In Taiwan, this problem is particularly serious in Taiwans prosecutorial system. In 2007, the Ministry of Justice transferred and appointed chief prosecutors. Nine members of the Prosecutorial Council who were elected by prosecutors boycotted these personnel cases. In order to understand the root of the problem,...
Volume #12, Number #2
This paper analyzes criminal cases to study money politics in a county assembly. We find that money politics is still prevalent in local assemblies. For the 14th to the 16th county assemblies, it is found that about 15% of county assembly members have been prosecuted and 8% have been convicted either during their tenure or before being elected. If we include the cases that involve district...
Volume #12, Number #2
Three hundred National Assemblymen were elected to make the Constitutional amendment in May 2005. Since the National Assembly itself was abolished as a result of this amendment, these so-called missionary assembly representatives became the first and last of their kind. The implications of this amendment election are as follows. First, compared with the general Congressmen, the duty of the...
Volume #12, Number #2
In a democracy, any given governmental branch needs public support for the fundamentals of institutional legitimacy, and the judiciary is no exception. This study examines the popular views and evaluations of the judicial system in Taiwan. I employ the “2003 Taiwan Election and Democratization Study: Democratization and Political Transition” (TEDS 2003) survey date to assess the public’s...
Volume #12, Number #1
Why is corruption rife in some societies while it is seldom seen in others societies in East Asia? In the context of a neo-institutionalist framework, this study attempts to provide an empirical assessment of the source of corruption by using panel data for 11 East Asian economies over a 10-year period. Corruption is measured by the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) which is developed by...
Volume #12, Number #1
The concept of citizenship has become an increasingly important theme in technological and environmental debates. This paper introduces the theory of technological citizenship, examines the practice of citizenship in the context of the incinerator ash facility siting controversy in Ankeng, and highlights the current problems of environmental governance. The case shows the politics of experts...
Volume #12, Number #1
Taiwan has since the 1980s gone through a dramatic dual transformation, i.e., political democratization and economic liberalization. However, while the economic liberalization, such as market opening and privatization, has transformed Taiwan’s political economy in the 1990s, the political implications have seldom been noticed. I argue that the political logic of Taiwan’s economic...
Volume #12, Number #1
Survey researchers inevitably face the problem of item non-response; that is, some respondents provide valid answers to some questions, but provide invalid answers to others, such as “don’t know,” “no opinion,” or “hard to say.” However, including only those respondents who provide valid answers for each question may bias the estimates, because non-response does not occur randomly. This study...
Volume #12, Number #1
Transitional justice pertains to the challenge of reckoning with legacies of widespread or systematic abuses of human rights committed by agents of predecessor regimes. It has become a troubling political issue after a spectacular series of regime transitions in the late twentieth century, and the phrase ‘transitional justice’ today generally refers to a range of measures that new democracies...