The position of the Taiwanese people over unification-independence issue assumes enormous practical importance and at the same time attracts numerous scholarly debates. The primary concern of these debates is how to clarify the issue entangled with “principles” and “pragmatism” and then uncover the genuine preferences of the Taiwanese people. For the purpose, lots of measurements have been developed and evaluated. The focus of the paper is those who prefer “status-quo” in the traditional unification-independence measurement. As our interviews suggest, the “status-quo” for many Taiwanese is more often a practical choice without enough alternatives than an expression of preference without substantial constraints. Given such understanding, the study thus introduces Wu’s “conditional questions” to help separate people’s preference from practicality. With both “genuine preferences” and “practical choice” at hand, the paper goes on to find out who persistently uphold their principles and who else withdraw and stay with a more practical “status-quo”.
Regular Issue
Volume #13, Number #2
Published in December, 2009
Previous studies on the experiences of Taiwanese people in China often discuss whether they would gradually assimilate into the Chinese society and identify themselves as being Chinese instead of being Taiwanese. Since the issue of political identity and the relationship across the Strait have caused disputes among people in Taiwan in the past decade, it is difficult to explore their self-identification in China. Therefore, it is no surprise that little consensus has been reached among researchers on this
issue.
This paper is based on information collected by participant observation and informal interviews on 51 respondents in Dongguan and Shanghai in 2004-2005, continuous contacts by phone and email in 2005-2007, and revisits in 2008. By analyzing the information from various respondents on the residential pattern indicator, it is clear that Taiwanese people assimilate little into Chinese society. Although most respondents seem to be involved with the local community, there is an invisible but substantial gap between themselves and the Chinese. This “being together, but not mixed” interaction caused by the fear of downward mobility is quite unusual, and will be further discussed in another paper.
By searching the Journal Citation Reports of the Social Sciences Citation Index database, this study investigates the characteristics and compares the differences in citation data for 83 political science journals. The journal citation data that are explored include times cited, the impact factor, the immediacy index, citing half-life, cited half-life, the self-citing rate (synchronous self-citation) and the self-cited rate (diachronous selfcitation). Moreover, the relationships between the various citation data and the two self-citation rates are examined using statistical tests.
This article attempts to explore Ronald Dworkin’s democracy from the perspective of constitutional liberalism. The core of Dworkin’s political philosophy is “equality”. However, is egalitarian liberalism possible in democratic life? Or what is democracy in a constitutional practice sense? In reviewing his works, I argue that Dworkin has not only developed constitutional liberalism but has also justified a theory of democracy based on a moral reading of the constitution, that is, not a majoritarian democracy but rather a constitutional democracy, or a “partnership democracy” in Dworkin’s words. Such a democracy is really a genuine democracy because there are three political ideals: “popular sovereignty,” “citizen equality,” and “democratic discourse” in partnership democracy. There are three parts to my arguments. First, in the theoretical grounds for democracy, I discuss the essentials of Dworkin’s jurisprudence and the relationships among equality, the constitution and democracy, and the two principles of human dignity as common ground in the political debate to reveal the arguments underlying Dworkin’s democratic reasoning. For Dworkin, it is a very important clue that might otherwise be ignored. Secondly, in justifying the theory of democracy, this article answers two philosophical questions in order to analyze what does Dworkin mean of partnership democracy and its characteristics: (1) Is a judicial review undemocratic? (2) Is there any conflict between constitutionalism and democracy? Finally, based on Jürgen Habermas’ deliberative democracy that criticizes Dworkin’s thought, I think that partnership democracy signifies the importance of the constitutional regime but is too utopian. In challenging Dworkin’s arguments, this article evaluates and critically reflects the whole of Dworkin’s theory of democracy.
The purpose of this study is to probe into the effects of party turnover in 2000 on the behavior of legislators in terms of law-making and constituency service. The findings of this study are as follows. First of all, in terms of law-making, the evidence clearly shows that legislators of both the Kuomintang and Democratic Progressive Party change their mode of behavior regarding legal proposals. That is, both sets of legislators make more legal proposals when their party is out of office than when their party is in office. Second, in terms of policy questions, before the party turnover in 2000, there was no difference between the behavior of the Kuomintang legislators who were in power and the legislators of the other parties. However, after the shift in the balance of power in 2000, the legislators’ behavior in regard to the policy questions of both the Kuomintang and Democratic Progressive Party changed. That is, Democratic Progressive Party legislators became less positive toward policy questions than the legislators of the other parties when the Democratic Progressive Party became the ruling party. On the other hand, the Kuomintang legislators became more positive toward policy questions when the Kuomintang became the opposition party than when the Kuomintang was the ruling party. Third, in terms of budget and expenditure questions, before the change in the ruling party in 2000, legislators of the opposition parties were more positive toward budget and expenditure questions than legislators from the Kuomintang. However, after the election in 2000, Kuomintang legislators became more positive toward budget and expenditure questions, while legislators of the Democratic Progressive Party become more negative toward budget and expenditure questions. Finally, in terms of constituency service, after the election in 2000, Democratic Progressive Party legislators devoted more time and energy to consistency service. Regardless of the proportion of working time spent in consistency service, the size of the electorate and the number of red and white envelopes, legislators of the Democratic Progressive Party became more consistent in their service than before.