Taiwanese Business Associations are widely expected to be strong organizations, regardless of whether these views are based on news sketches or theoretical models. Yet according to our investigation, such expectations turn out to be completely mistaken—Taiwanese Business Associations are in fact quite weak. What has gone, then? According to our fieldwork, we argue that it is the strong state...
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Volume #11, Number #2
Volume #11, Number #2
This article explores different response styles by using two scales representing attitudes toward immigrants and reunion across the Taiwan Strait. Data were collected from a face-to-face survey – the 2003 Taiwan Social Change Survey. A response style index was first used to compare response style across scales. Exploratory Factor Analysis, Latent Class Factor Model-continuous indicators and...
Volume #11, Number #2
An indicator for the epidemic infection rate places social pressure on the Sustainable Development Indicators in Taiwan, for the issue of infection disease prevention involves a multiplicity of factors related to the environment, society, the economy, and institutions. From the aspect of public health, geographical medicine and environmental medicine, while a number of researchers have studied...
Volume #11, Number #1
This paper discusses political trust differences in three dimensions in Taiwan. Trust differences refer to people’s divergent trust attitudes toward politicians of different camps or their trust attitudes toward the executive and legislature branches under divided governments. Although trust differences are common in democracy, they constitute a more salient issue in Taiwan. The reason for...
Volume #11, Number #1
Previous studies on voting participation used to model individuals’ utilities and duties as the forces driving their participation. It is assumed that people maximize their utilities when they turn out. In the 2004 referendum, there were many controversies as to how to exercise direct democracy as well as fierce partisan battles. It is thus necessary to analyze the determinants of voting in...
Volume #11, Number #1
The 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis was the most serious military and diplomatic conflict among the U.S., China and Taiwan in recent years. The worst possible scenario during the crisis was that China would wage a war with Taiwan that might drag the U.S into the war. The best possible scenario was that the Chinese military exercise was just a bluff. Why did a rising power (China) adopt...
Volume #11, Number #1
There are two competing approaches, namely, the “Asian exceptionalism” and “Universalism,” in regard to the political economy of the Asian tigers. The former argues that authoritarianism based on the “Asian values” has performed better than the democratic regimes in terms of influencing the course of economic development and income distribution. By contrast, following the democratization of...
Volume #11, Number #1
Substantial research has been done in recent years to examine Taiwanese citizens’ sense of political efficacy. Previous literature assumes that the causal direction runs from efficacy to participation. No research has been conducted analyzing how political participation affects Taiwanese citizens’ sense of political efficacy. Neither is there any inquiry examining the impact of electoral...
Volume #10, Number #2
Electoral accountability refers to the mechanism that people are able to use their votes to award or punish incumbent governments based on their policy outcomes and political performance. Conventional studies focusing on electoral accountability in Latin America mainly address the relations between governments’ economic performance and incumbents’ vote share. However, their conclusions are...
Volume #10, Number #2
On April 24th 2003, Taipei Municipal Heping Hospital, where the first Taiwanese SARS (serious acute respiration syndrome) hospital infection occurred, was shut down abruptly to halt the outbreak of SARS infections in Taiwan. Being compelled to work and without necessary protection against SARS, some hospital staff broke the quarantine order by getting through the blockade. Based on the right...