ABSTRACT
Taiwan underwent democratic transition after the 38-year-long martial law enforced by the authoritarian party, Kuomintang (KMT), from 1949 to 1987. While the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democracy of Taiwan is usually understood as a synthetic process, this chapter instead focuses on the role of the political party in democratizing as well as consolidating democracy on the island. As suggested by Bermeo and Yashar, a strong political party is “consistently the key actor(s) that successfully mobilized for democracy.”. The Kuomintang(KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party(DPP) have dominated the party system in Taiwan since it was democratized.
In this chapter, it argues that the development of political parties in Taiwan is heavily dependent on the largest cleavage in society—competing national identities. Nonetheless, the preferenceforf national identities in Taiwan has changed gradually in recent years. This chapter reveals and evaluates the effects of the changing national identity of the Taiwanese people on the KMT and DPP in Taiwan.
