​Cross-posted from the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies website

The Conference Group on Taiwan Studies is a Related Group of the American Political Science Association. For this year's annual conference in Boston, CGOTS is sponsoring three special panels on Taiwanese politics. In addition, we encourage all APSA attendees to drop by the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies reception, Thursday, August 30, from 7:30-9:00pm in Marriott Salon K. Free (!!!) drinks and hors d'oeuvres will be served.   

All CGOTS members are also invited to attend our annual business meeting, to be held right before the reception from 6:30-7:30, next door in Marriott Salon J. We'll go over budget and membership numbers and nominate the new CGOTS leadership team. 

Please also check out the three official CGOTS panels, as well as other Taiwan-related presentations at the conference; details and a schedule can be found at the CGOTS website. 

The Taiwan Democracy and Security Project at Stanford University is hosting a presentation today by Gary Hamilton, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. Prof. Hamilton will speak about his new book from Stanford University Press, Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy. 

The talk is free and open to the public. Additional details can be found at the official event page. 

Abstract
Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy is a record of a thirty-year research project that Gary G. Hamilton and Kao Cheng-shu began in 1987.  A distinguished sociologist and university administrator in Taiwan, Kao and his research team (which included Prof. Hamilton during his frequent visits to Taiwan) interviewed over 800 owners and managers of Taiwanese firms in Taiwan, China, and Vietnam.  Some were re-interviewed over ten times during this period.  The length of this project allows them a vantage point to challenge the conventional interpretations of Asian industrialization and to present a new interpretation of the global economy that features an enduring alliance between, on the one hand, American and European retailers and merchandisers and, on the other hand, Asian contract manufacturers, with Taiwanese industrialists becoming the most prominent contract manufacturers in the past forty years.

Bio
Gary G. Hamilton is a Professor Emeritus of International Studies and Sociology at the University of Washington.  He specializes in historical/comparative sociology, economic sociology, with a special emphasis on Asian societies. He is an author of numerous articles and books, including most recently Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths, Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan (with Robert Feenstra) (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies (London: Routledge, 2006), The Market Makers: How Retailers Are Changing the Global Economy (co-editor and contributor, Oxford University Press, 2011; paperback 2012), and Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy (with Kao Cheng-shu, Stanford University Press, 2018).

On October 17, the Taiwan Democracy Project at Stanford University will host our first event of the fall quarter, a talk by James Lee of Princeton University. The talk is co-sponsored with the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. Mr. Lee's talk will draw from his dissertation research, which examines the role of the United States in the emergence of the "developmental state" in Taiwan--the interlocking set of state and regime institutions that oversaw the island's transformative economic growth from the 1960s through the 1980s. 

The title of his talk is "U.S.-China Rivalry and the Origins of Taiwan's Developmental State." The event is free and open to the public; details on the talk and speaker are below.

 The Conference Group on Taiwan Studies is a special Related Group of the American Political Science Association. For this year's annual APSA conference in San Francisco, CGOTS is hosting two panels, a business meeting, and a reception. All are open to registered conference participants. Details can be found here and below.

 4:00-5:30pm, Westin St. Francis, Georgian Room
CGOTS Panel I. Legitimacy Issues in Taiwanese Politics
 
1. "Personality Traits and Individual Attitude toward the Independence/Unification Issue in Taiwan,"
Dennis Weng, Sam Houston State University (Author)
Ching-hsing Wang, University of Houston (Author) 
 
2. “The Rise of Cause Lawyers and the Rule of Law in Taiwan”
Chin-shou Wang,  National Cheng Kung University (Author) 
Yu-Hsien Sung, University of South Carolina (Author) 
 
3. “Framing Effects of Pro-Gay and Pro-Family Activism in Taiwan”
Shih-chan Dai, University of Massachusetts-Amherst (Author) 
Chung-li Wu, Academia Sinica (Author) 
 
4. “Generation and Identity in Taiwan: Change and Continuity”
T.Y. Wang, Illinois State University (Author) 
Su-Feng Cheng, National Chengchi University (Author) 
 
Chair:
Yao-yuan Yeh, University of St. Thomas
Discussants:
Chien-kai Chen, Rhodes College
Aram Hur, New York University
 
 

4:00-5:30pm, Parc 55, Hearst Room
CGOTS Panel II. Parties and Elections in Taiwan
 
1. “Accounting for Legislative Candidate's Donation and Spending”
Chia-hung Tsai, National Chengchi University (Author) 
Nathan F. Batto, Academia Sinica (Author) 
Su-Feng Cheng, National Chengchi University (Author) 
Ching-hsin Yu, National Chengchi University (Author) 
 
2. “Electoral Institutions, State Subsidy Rules, and the Party System in Taiwan”
Yen-Pin Su, National Chengchi University (Author) 
 
3. “The Emergence of New Parties: A Case Study of the New Power Party in Taiwan”
Chi Huang, National Chengchi University (Author) 
Kah-yew Lim, National Chengchi University (Non-Presenting Co-Author) 
Lu-huei Chen, National Chengchi University (Author) 
Eric Chen-hua Yu, National Chengchi University (Taipei) (Author) 
 
4. “The Issue Structure of Voter Choice in Taiwan’s 2016 Presidential Election”
Caleb M. Clark, Auburn University (Author) 
Karl Ho, University of Texas, Dallas (Non-Presenting Co-Author)
Alexander C. Tan, University of Canterbury (Author)
 
Chair: 
Hans Stockton, University of St. Thomas
Discussants:
Lu-Cheng Dennis Weng, SUNY, Cortland
Austin Horng-En Wang, Duke University
 
 
6:30-7:30pm, Hilton Union Square, Golden Gate 1
Conference Group on Taiwan Studies Business Meeting
Open to all CGOTS members
 
​
7:30-9:00pm, Hilton Union Square, Golden Gate 3
Conference Group on Taiwan Studies Reception
Open to CGOTS members and guests; food and drink provided

​The 2016 American Political Science Association Annual Conference will be this week, from Thursday, September 1 through Sunday, September 4, in Philadelphia, PA. There's over a dozen panels planned with Taiwan-related content. For those interested, I've listed below all the presentations I could find in the conference program. 

​First and foremost, the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies has two special panels this year, one on domestic politics and one on foreign relations. We strongly encourage anyone with even a passing interest in Taiwan studies to attend at least one panel (and bring your friends!)--our ability to retain a special conference group on Taiwan is contingent on good turnout at these organized events, and we take attendance to help make our case to APSA. The panels are:
​
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2:00-3:30pm 
Marriott Rm 414
CGOTS PANEL 1: Preferences, Identity, and Taiwan's 2016 Election
This panel discusses and examines how democratic consolidation and the changing domestic political preferences, identity, and social cleavages have shaped Taiwan's 2016 election.

Chair: Da-chi Liao, National Sun Yat-sen University

• "Coattail and Reverse Coattail Effects: The Case of Taiwan's 2016 Election," Chi Huang and Kaw-yew Lim, National Cheng Chi University
• "Legislative Co-sponsorship Networks in Taiwan," Jinhyeok Jang, University of Louisville
• "Political Cleavage in Taiwan: Is There a Shift?," T.Y. Wang, Illinois State University, and Su-feng Cheng, National Cheng Chi University
• "The Legal Complex in Taiwan's Democratization," Chin-shou Wang, National Cheng Kung University
• "The Psychological Cognition and Vote Choices in Taiwan," Chung-li Wu and Hsiao-chien Tsui, Academia Sinica.

Discussants: Dennis Weng, SUNY Cortland; Kharis Templeman, Stanford University

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 10:00-11:30am 
Marriott Rm 414
CGOTS PANEL 2: Cross-Strait Relations and Economic Integration
This panel discusses and examines cross-strait ties in the wake of Taiwan's 2016 elections and the implications for Taiwan's economic integration policy.

Chair: Shelley Rigger, Davidson College

• "China's Foreign Policy Transformation: Implications for Cross-Strait Relations," Nien-chung Chang Liao, Academia Sinica
• "Cross-Strait Relations in the Aftermath of Taiwan's 2016 Elections," John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, University of South Carolina
• "Prospect of the TPP under the Scope of Taiwan's Party Realignment," Rou-lan Chen, National Sun Yat-sen University
• "Reconciliation without Convergence?: Theorizing Taiwan-China Relations," Vincent Wei-cheng Wang, Ithaca College
• "When Frictions Do Not Cause Rift: Explaining Ambiguity in Alliance Management," Ping-kuei Chen, University of Maryland

Discussants: Dennis Hickey, Missouri State University; Hans Stockton, University of St. Thomas

CGOTS will also hold its reception Saturday evening from 6:30-8pm in Marriott Rm 411, and its business meeting right after, from 8-9pm, in Marriott Rm 410. 

My piece at Ketagalan Media is on the Pingpuzu Aborigines included in Tsai Ing-wen's apology ceremony on August 1: 

Read the whole thing here. 

​I've been going through some of the 2016 Taiwan elections data for another project, and I came across something that I haven't seen noted elsewhere. In the presidential vote, Tsai Ing-wen actually improved her vote shares more in the north than elsewhere in Taiwan.

Nationally, she won 45.63% of the total vote in 2012, and 56.12% in 2016, for a net aggregate swing of 10.49%. But this increase wasn't uniform across Taiwan. Her worst performance relative to 2012 was in Penghu, where her vote share increased from 45.65% to 50.81%, for a net swing of only 5.16%. Her best was in Taipei, where she increased her vote share from 39.54% to 51.96%, for a net swing of 12.41%, which gave her an absolute majority of the vote. Again, that was in Taipei, which was supposed to be the bluest stronghold of them all, and the most resistant to the appeal of the DPP ticket! (Or at least that's what this idiot thought.) 

Moreover, Taipei wasn't an outlier. From Keelung all the way through Miaoli, Tsai's vote share increased more in every single northern jurisdiction than it did nationally, as the table below shows. By contrast, the swing toward Tsai was lowest in the south and east/island jurisdictions. And central Taiwan, where I thought the swing would be largest, was actually slightly behind the national average. (Perhaps that's one of the reasons several endangered KMT incumbent legislators in Taichung and Nantou held on to win re-election. More on that in another post.)

This result is surprising in part because it's the opposite of what happened in 2012, when the national swing toward Tsai was 4.24%. In that election, Tsai's gain was lowest in Taipei at 2.58%, and highest in Pingtung at 4.88%. In other words, in 2016 Tsai improved the most in precisely the places where she improved the least in 2012. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Taipei itself: a DPP majority there was hard to imagine as recently as two years ago.

​The North Is No Longer Blue
​Tsai's wins in the north are also surprising because the conventional wisdom has long held that Taiwan has a strong regional divide, with a deep blue north, deep green south, and swing districts in the middle. This is obviously a simplification, but it's so widely accepted among the political commentariat in Taiwan that there's even a wikipedia entry in Chinese for the phrase, "blue north, green south" (beilan, nanlü 北藍南綠).

The accepted explanation for these regional political differences is that they reflect socioeconomic and sub-ethnic ones: there are more waishengren in the north and east, aborigines in the east and central highlands, and a concentration of Hakka voters in Miaoli and Hsinchu Counties who have tended to support pan-blue candidates, while the Hoklo benshengren heartland of Tainan has been the DPP's strongest area.

​But some research has found region to be a significant independent predictor of vote choice even accounting for partisanship, national identity, age, occupation, attitudes toward cross-Strait relations, and so forth. Why would this be? Part is probably a "local hero" effect--national candidates do better than average in their hometowns because of their long-standing personal connections there that trump partisan affinities. Part is certainly a factional story: when local factions switch sides they can bring a big chunk of votes with them all the way up to the presidential level. But while these effects certainly have existed in local and legislative elections for a long time, it's not obvious that they consistently matter in presidential ones.
​ 
Does Political Geography Still Matter in Taiwan?
The way that Tsai won in 2016 leads me to think we should reconsider how, or even whether, geography has an independent effect in presidential elections. It's not self-evident that presidential vote choice in 2016 had anything to do with where voters lived, once we take into account all the usual demographic variables. There was no pan-blue firewall north of the Choshui River, and the DPP's win was clearly not built on turning out more core supporters in pan-green strongholds in the south. Instead, the swing data suggest a shift in the same groups of voters toward Tsai and away from the KMT all over the island. (Voting for the legislature is a different matter--I'll tackle that in a separate post.)

Granted, the swing toward Tsai was not as uniform as in 2012, when it ranged between only 2.58 and 4.88%. But still, in every single locality Tsai won at least 5% more in 2016 than she did four years ago. That suggests, for at least the last two elections, voters who switched their votes to Tsai did so because of factors not correlated with where they lived.

The best illustration of the irrelevance of geography to vote choice is what happened in New Taipei, where Eric Chu was, and still is, the mayor. He was re-elected there in 2014, holding on during a green wave that flipped most of the other local executives to the DPP. If a candidate's local connections matter at all, then Chu probably should have been able to deliver a hometown bump. Yet a little over a year later he won only 1/3 of the vote in New Taipei, winning 250,000 votes less than he did in the mayor's race, a lower share than the 37.5% he got in Taipei City proper and only 2 points above his island-wide total. And as the figures above show, Tsai Ing-wen improved more in New Taipei than she did nationally--not the result we'd expect if Chu was enjoying some kind of home-court advantage.     

​Now THIS is What a Party Stronghold Looks Like
Finally, consider the comparative angle. There's a country not far away that demonstrates exceptionally strong regional effects on voting behavior: South Korea. In the last presidential election there (in 2012), the opposition candidate Moon Jae-in won at least 85% of the vote in the three provinces that make up the southwest region of Jeolla, while the incumbent party candidate Park Geun-hye won over 80% in two provinces in the southeast region of Gyeongsang. That is a stark regional divide that has been present since the beginning of the democratic era in Korea. By this standard, Taiwan doesn't look very divided by geography at all. 

Does Where You Live Affect Who You Support for President?
In fact, it's worth considering whether the "blue north, green south" trope has outlived its usefulness as a guide to voting behavior in Taiwan. The Taiwanese media often writes election narratives that emphasize geography as the key to understanding voting patterns in presidential elections, with frequent discussion of "battleground regions" and "swing districts." And political scientists, too, routinely use the language of electoral geography to talk about presidential campaigns. (I'm guilty of this too. For other instances, see here, here, and for a kick, this wikileaks cable from AIT.)

But if you think about this a bit, it's an odd way to characterize voting for a single national office. Taiwan doesn't have an electoral college, so an extra vote for Tsai in Penghu is worth the same as one in Taipei, or Taichung, or Hualien, or anywhere else in Taiwan. When we talk about "swing regions" we are implicitly underemphasizing factors that don't vary much by location and playing up ones that do, like factional ties. And I'm starting to think those other, non-geographic factors are where the real story is at, particularly differences between age cohorts. Something to keep in mind as we pour over the post-election survey data. 

On March 1, the Taiwan Democracy Project will host the next event in this year's speaker series, a talk by Richard C. Bush of the Brookings Institution. The talk is co-sponsored with the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. Mr. Bush will be speaking about possible changes in cross-Strait relations in light of the results of the January 2016 elections in Taiwan, and their implications for U.S. policy. 

The talk is entitled: The January Taiwan Elections and the Implications for Cross-Strait Relations. Details are below.

Abstract
Taiwan’s domestic politics, particularly presidential elections, has been the main driver of the island’s relations with China for two decades. The 2016 elections, in which the Democratic Progressive Party, led by Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, won both the presidency and majority control of the Legislative elections, promises to be no exception. Although PRC intentions under President Xi Jinping are far from certain, some change from the state of play under the current Ma Ying-jeou administration seems fairly certain, with implications for U.S. policy.

Bio
Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies. He came to Brookings in July 2002 after nineteen years working in the US government, including five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan. He is the author of a number of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America’s relations with Taiwan, published in March 2004 by M. E. Sharpe. In the spring of 2005, Brookings published his study on cross-Strait relations, entitled Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait. In 2013, Brookings published his Uncharted Strait: The Future of China-Taiwan Relations.

The Taiwan Democracy Project is sponsoring a new internship for one student with the Taoyuan City government in summer 2016. Stanford students in good academic standing, including MA students who will be enrolled in fall 2016, are eligible to apply. This internship is supported by the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Global Student Fellows program. Details are below. To apply, please visit the GSF website:
https://globalstudents.stanford.edu/programs/internships/taiwan-democracy-project

PROJECT:
The FSI Global Policy intern will work for approximately 9-10 weeks during Summer 2016 with one of the Taiwan Democracy Project’s partner organizations, the Taoyuan City Government and its Department of Education. The student will be involved in policy development and implementation through the city government's offices. Interns have the option to work in one of Taoyuan's many governmental departments, including education, environment, labor, urban planning, or transportation. Postings will depend on the student's own background and interest, as well as the current needs and opportunities within the Taoyuan City government.

ELIGIBILITY AND SKILLS REQUIRED:
The internship is open to continuing undergraduate and graduate students with a preference for students with an interest in Taiwan. Applicants from any department in good academic standing with a GPA of 3.3 or higher are eligible to apply.
Additional skills:

• Ability to work independently and in a team environment
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Knowledge of Taiwanese politics and Taiwan-China relations

LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT:
Mandarin Chinese (oral, reading and writing) is strongly preferred. 

LOCATION:
This internship is located primarily in Taoyuan, Taiwan, a suburb of Taipei. More information about traveling to Taiwan is available here: http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/country/taiwan.html.

VISA REQUIREMENTS:
Students must be eligible to travel to Taiwan and must have a passport valid until at least February 2017. A visa is not required for U.S. citizens for stays less than 90 days. 

STIPEND:
FSI is committed to providing its opportunities to students regardless of financial constraints. FSI’s Global Policy Interns are provided with a stipend to cover travel and living expenses during the summer. These stipends average $6,400 per student. Students must submit a budget with their estimated costs along with their application. If you have additional financial constraints that you think may prevent you from participating in this program, please contact Elena Cryst directly.

APPLICATION:
Applicants will be asked to submit:

• Application Form
• Name of faculty reference
• CV/Resume
• Unofficial Transcript
• Budget

​Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP are headed for a historic victory in Saturday’s elections, and the battle has already begun to define the narrative about what that means. One fairly common refrain is that this likely outcome will presage a fundamental realignment of the party system around issues beyond the blue-green divide over cross-Strait relations.
 
I’m skeptical that we are about to see this kind of realigning election, despite the attention given to the campaigns of the so-called “Third Force” parties. I’m also skeptical that this result will be the death knell for the KMT as a political party capable of winning elections. The KMT's coming defeat clearly reflects deep unhappiness with Ma Ying-jeou and the KMT’s rule over the last eight years, intensified by a spectacularly ill-timed economic downturn over the last few months (at least if you are a KMT member!) But an unpopular leader, toxic party brand, and disillusioned supporters are not fatal to major party survival, as the DPP showed after its 2008 electoral thrashing. So while a KMT recovery is not assured, and will at a minimum require some major leadership shakeups, we shouldn't expect the party simply to fade away, and for all those pan-blue supporters (still at least 30 percent of the electorate) to suddenly become fans of the DPP or one of the new parties.

Of course, I could be totally wrong--I'm just some guy on the internet, after all. But either way, we'll know a lot more soon: elections have a nice way of splashing everybody with a cold dose of reality. The results of the election this Saturday will give us the most concrete evidence we'll have to evaluate these competing narratives. So, in the interest of intellectual honesty, let me lay out my own expectations about what will happen, and what it means. Beyond who wins and loses, here's what I'll be watching most closely to see where Taiwanese politics is headed.