Will climate change lead to militarily severe civil conflicts? In recent years climate change and civil conflict scholars have extended their discussions to whether or not climate change increases civil war onset and a general consensus has been reached. However, it is still not clear if climate change (such as temperature and rainfall fluctuations) also leads to bloodier results if civil...
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Volume #18, Number #2
Volume #18, Number #2
Elections and voting behavior have been enduring subjects in studying democracies. Electoral stability and volatility not only shape the faith of individual political parties, but also the evolution of the party system as a whole. Hence topics related to party support and voting choices, both methodological and substantive, have attracted attention from scholars around the world.
This...
Volume #18, Number #2
For ordinary citizens, political knowledge serves as a prerequisite for meaningful political participation. Thus, types of political knowledge that are easy to know and easily learned over time among voters are of particular importance to those who long for an informed citizenry. Three research questions are asked. The first is whether or not a specific type of political knowledge is easily...
Volume #18, Number #2
In this article we apply Rodrik’s (2011) theoretical framework of “The Political Trilemma of the World Economy” to investigate whether Garrett’s (1998) finding about the OECD countries’ experience of globalization can still hold in Taiwan. We find that Taiwan’s globalization process is different from that in the OECD countries. After the collapse of the Bretton Woods System, in “The Trilemma”...
Volume #18, Number #1
Taiwan’s electoral system was in June 2005 reformed from a mixedsystem of a multi-member district single non-transferable vote (SNTV)plus a closed-listed proportional representation system to a mixed systemof a single member district plural system plus a closed-listed PR system.Do legislators’ representative styles and behavior change because ofthe electoral reform? In this article, I focus on...
Volume #18, Number #1
The quality of survey research is the researcher’s main concern andhe always tries to reduce the refusal rate and item nonresponse rate. Theinterviewer, respondent and survey environment are the most importantfactors affecting the result of a face-to-face interview. This article analyzesthe characteristics of these factors and their interaction in deciding theresult of a face-to-face interview...
Volume #18, Number #1
By way of re-examining J. S. Mill’s thoughts on liberal imperialismthat consist of a theory of non-intervention and a theory of state-building,this article is meant to offer a re-interpretation of his political theory, so as,on the one hand, to challenge Michael Walzer’s communitarian readingand, on the other, to meet some recent criticisms made from those whointerpret Mill either as a an...
Volume #18, Number #1
Faced with the current misery of world poverty, a group of scholarshave recently argued that global distributive justice should aim atimproving the condition of the poor up to a threshold of sufficiency, insteadof eliminating the unequal distribution of goods and resources between thepoor and the rich or giving priority to alleviating the predicament of theworse-off. In this paper, by...
Volume #18, Number #1
There is a new trend in the Taiwanese environmental movements:using litigation to achieve their goals. There are several factors whichhave facilitated the new trend. They include the crisis of the legality of anEnvironmental Impact Assessment, the decline in the mobilization of socialmovements, judicial independence, and the appearance of environmentallawyers. Although environmental lawyers...
Volume #17, Number #2
Party members are important assets to a political party, for without their help in running the daily affairs and campaigns, a party cannot be seen to exist. Therefore, there is no doubt that the party members are important. By analyzing data from in-depth interviews with central and local party branches, as well as questionnaires directed at party workers, this article aims to examine who the...