ABSTRACT
Japan and South Korea introduced overseas voting in the last 10-20 years or so, due to the increasing number of citizens living in foreign countries. However, it is not easy to find distinct efforts by political parties to organize themselves abroad. In contrast, Taiwan has no comparable voting system, but the major parties set up several overseas branches. Since electoral mobilizations by Japanese and Korean parties are usually based on personal networks of elected officials, without special overseas districts which candidates run for, it is no wonder that we cannot observe their organizations beyond the borders especially in Japanese case. However, it does not mean that Korean presidential candidates have no incentive to launch campaigning toward overseas voters. Similarly, Taiwanese two major parties develop personal machines, however, they are mainly built around the social cleavage between Taiwanese and Chinese identities. It can be expected that this structural conflict and accompanying political networks have been transplanted to Taiwanese societies abroad even in the absence of voting opportunity. We will formulate the above-mentioned idea into several hypotheses and test them with institutional differences in mind.
