ABSTRACT
For almost forty years, the civil liberties and political rights of the people of Taiwan were curtailed by the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), the Nationalists. Political liberalization was first observed in the late 1970s. A decade later, martial law was finally lifted, paving the way for Taiwan's democratization. In 1996, the people of Taiwan directly elected their head of state for the first time. Since then, full-fledged liberal democracy has established its roots in Taiwan's political system. In this paper the author would like to analyze the forces behind that new political phenomenon.
