ABSTRACT
Only a few months after arriving in Taiwan in 1989, I witnessed my fi rst election campaign. At the time it seemed like a David versus Goliath struggle, as the former ruling party of all of China (KMT) competed against a party only legally registered a few months earlier (DPP). Even before I knew what career path I would take, the two souvenirs from my fi rst year in Taiwan that I particularly treasured were my KMT and DPP party fl ags. I could never have imagined that I would later devote so much of my career to studying these two political parties. Those two party fl ags were to make up two-thirds of the cover of my fi rst book, Party Politics in Taiwan . Despite the enormous changes to Taiwanese society, after almost a quarter of a century of multi-party politics the same two parties dominate Taiwan’s political scene today. This chapter is devoted to examining patterns of continuity and change in Taiwan’s party politics.
