ABSTRACT
While the Republic of China in theory is a democracy, the emergency provisions enacted in the 1940s gave Taiwan’s government a strong authoritarian cast. But its authoritarianism was not unmitigated. After retrocession, the KMT regime faced an extraordinarily difficult international and domestic environment. It fought to survive in the shadow of the People’s Republic, and it struggled mightily to gain a sound footing on Taiwan. Under these circumstances, merely winning the Taiwanese people’s passive acquiescence to KMT rule was not enough. To prevail in the face of these difficult odds, the regime needed active popular support. To gain that support, it adopted a strategy of political mobilization; that is, controlled participation that integrated Taiwanese into the state without relinquishing the KMT’s policy-making monopoly. A key ingredient in the regime’s political strategy, mobilizational authoritarianism, was the electoral system.
