This post got so long I broke it into two pieces. Part 1 is below. Part 2 will post later this week.
For the past 18 months, the biggest puzzle in Taiwan politics has been the curious behavior of the Taiwan People's Party (TPP). In the 2024 elections, the TPP did very well for a third party, winning 22 percent of the party list vote and eight seats -- enough to break through the DPP-KMT duopoly to deny either of the two major parties a majority for the first time since the Chen Shui-bian era. That made it the kingmaker in the Legislative Yuan and gave it significant bargaining power over the other two parties in this term -- if they were able to exploit it.
The puzzle is that the TPP does not appear to have maximized its leverage in the current legislature. The party's leaders turned down opportunities to grab the speaker or deputy speaker positions or to negotiate for cabinet positions in a Lai government, and over the last year they have instead prioritized opposition to the DPP administration rather than conditional cooperation with the ruling party. More surprising still, they have publicly aligned themselves with the KMT on many of that party's most controversial policy initiatives -- even when those policies are broadly unpopular.
This transformation of the TPP in the public eye from a centrist swing party to a "pan-blue subsidiary" has generated a widespread sense of angst and betrayal among pan-green commentators, who have accused the TPP of "subordinat[ing] itself blindly" and "march[ing] in lockstep with the KMT," and even tacitly cooperating with the CCP to oppose the DPP and the Lai administration. The TPP's public image has shifted so dramatically that many observers of Taiwan politics now simply assert that the legislature is "KMT-controlled."
The problem with this assertion is that it's wrong. The TPP legislative caucus is not actually marching in lockstep with the KMT on every issue, as I'll argue in what follows. On the contrary, it holds preferences that are quite distinct from the KMT, it has acted as a significant check on that party's legislative caucus, and its public cooperation with the KMT against the ruling DPP will be temporary and limited, rather than comprehensive and indefinite. But for their own reasons, neither the KMT nor the TPP want to advertise this fact. For the moment, they both would rather have everyone believe they are a unified pan-blue team cooperating to stop DPP overreach.
No other explanation is consistent with the political outcomes of the last 18 months.
The puzzle is that the TPP does not appear to have maximized its leverage in the current legislature. The party's leaders turned down opportunities to grab the speaker or deputy speaker positions or to negotiate for cabinet positions in a Lai government, and over the last year they have instead prioritized opposition to the DPP administration rather than conditional cooperation with the ruling party. More surprising still, they have publicly aligned themselves with the KMT on many of that party's most controversial policy initiatives -- even when those policies are broadly unpopular.
This transformation of the TPP in the public eye from a centrist swing party to a "pan-blue subsidiary" has generated a widespread sense of angst and betrayal among pan-green commentators, who have accused the TPP of "subordinat[ing] itself blindly" and "march[ing] in lockstep with the KMT," and even tacitly cooperating with the CCP to oppose the DPP and the Lai administration. The TPP's public image has shifted so dramatically that many observers of Taiwan politics now simply assert that the legislature is "KMT-controlled."
The problem with this assertion is that it's wrong. The TPP legislative caucus is not actually marching in lockstep with the KMT on every issue, as I'll argue in what follows. On the contrary, it holds preferences that are quite distinct from the KMT, it has acted as a significant check on that party's legislative caucus, and its public cooperation with the KMT against the ruling DPP will be temporary and limited, rather than comprehensive and indefinite. But for their own reasons, neither the KMT nor the TPP want to advertise this fact. For the moment, they both would rather have everyone believe they are a unified pan-blue team cooperating to stop DPP overreach.
No other explanation is consistent with the political outcomes of the last 18 months.
The Unusual Origins of the Taiwan People's Party
6 August 2019: Ko Wen-je at the Taiwan People's Party founding conference.
As the critical swing bloc in the legislature right now, a lot is riding on the TPP's choices in this term. So it's an important analytical task to try to understand the motivations of the party's membership, and in particular that of its three key leaders, Ko Wen-je 柯文哲, Huang Kuo-chang 黃國昌, and Huang Shan-shan 黃珊珊. This has not been easy, for several reasons.
First, the TPP has never had a clear policy orientation. Its most distinct feature is its centrist position on the China issue. That makes it very different from almost all of the other political parties that have emerged on Taiwan's political scene over the last 30 years. In fact, since the 1992 LY election, every third party that has ever won more than five seats in the legislature has initially taken positions more extreme than the DPP or KMT on the China question -- until the TPP broke through in 2020. So its electoral profile is unique in Taiwan's democratic history.
Second, the TPP did not start as a programmatic party, but instead as a personalist one. It was initially founded as a vehicle for Ko Wen-je's presidential ambitions in the run-up to 2020. Ko toyed for months with the idea of a presidential run but wisely decided not to run a third-party campaign against Tsai Ing-wen and the KMT's Han Kuo-yu, and instead made a play to win the balance of power for the TPP in the legislature. That didn't ultimately work in 2020 -- the DPP held onto its LY majority -- but the TPP nevertheless won over 11 percent of the party list vote and five seats, which enabled them to establish their own party caucus, receive significant public financing, and maintain a presidential ballot line. That set Ko up nicely for a presidential run in 2024, when President Tsai would no longer be eligible to run and neither party had a strong candidate lined up for the open-seat contest. So at least at its incarnation, the TPP's top priority clearly was to support Ko's presidential aspirations; any other motives appeared to be secondary.
Third, the TPP is unusual among Taiwan political parties in being a mix of politicians from both the green and blue camps, most of whom have joined out of opportunism rather than ideology. It's easy to forget now, but Ko Wen-je started out in the green camp and ran and won as an independent backed by the DPP in his first race for Taipei mayor. So did Huang Kuo-chang, who burst onto the political scene as a passionate and strident critic of the KMT government during the Sunflower Movement in 2014, and went on to co-found the New Power Party (NPP). The NPP subsequently worked so closely with the DPP in the 2016 elections that Tsai Ing-wen actually campaigned for its candidates. Huang's later defection to the TPP and especially his public shift from strident KMT critic to its partner and ally has made him one of the more polarizing figures in Taiwan politics right now. Huang Shan-shan, by contrast, got her start in the pan-blue camp as a deep blue New Party Taipei city council member in the 1990s, then switched to James Soong's People First Party in 2001 and won re-election several times. After Ko won re-election in 2018, he appointed her as his deputy, and in 2022 she ran to succeed him, only joining the TPP in 2023 after her defeat in that race.
And finally, the party Ko Wen-je founded now finds itself without Ko Wen-je. He was detained in September 2024 on suspicion of corruption, and he's been charged and held mostly incommunicado ever since. It's still possible he could eventually beat the charges and come roaring back, but for the moment he is sidelined and his presidential aspirations appear to be on life support. In a concession to this new reality, Ko resigned as party chair in December 2024, and in his absence the TPP elected Huang Kuo-chang to replace him. So now that the TPP's original raison d'être no longer exists, what is motivating the party's current leaders?
First, the TPP has never had a clear policy orientation. Its most distinct feature is its centrist position on the China issue. That makes it very different from almost all of the other political parties that have emerged on Taiwan's political scene over the last 30 years. In fact, since the 1992 LY election, every third party that has ever won more than five seats in the legislature has initially taken positions more extreme than the DPP or KMT on the China question -- until the TPP broke through in 2020. So its electoral profile is unique in Taiwan's democratic history.
Second, the TPP did not start as a programmatic party, but instead as a personalist one. It was initially founded as a vehicle for Ko Wen-je's presidential ambitions in the run-up to 2020. Ko toyed for months with the idea of a presidential run but wisely decided not to run a third-party campaign against Tsai Ing-wen and the KMT's Han Kuo-yu, and instead made a play to win the balance of power for the TPP in the legislature. That didn't ultimately work in 2020 -- the DPP held onto its LY majority -- but the TPP nevertheless won over 11 percent of the party list vote and five seats, which enabled them to establish their own party caucus, receive significant public financing, and maintain a presidential ballot line. That set Ko up nicely for a presidential run in 2024, when President Tsai would no longer be eligible to run and neither party had a strong candidate lined up for the open-seat contest. So at least at its incarnation, the TPP's top priority clearly was to support Ko's presidential aspirations; any other motives appeared to be secondary.
Third, the TPP is unusual among Taiwan political parties in being a mix of politicians from both the green and blue camps, most of whom have joined out of opportunism rather than ideology. It's easy to forget now, but Ko Wen-je started out in the green camp and ran and won as an independent backed by the DPP in his first race for Taipei mayor. So did Huang Kuo-chang, who burst onto the political scene as a passionate and strident critic of the KMT government during the Sunflower Movement in 2014, and went on to co-found the New Power Party (NPP). The NPP subsequently worked so closely with the DPP in the 2016 elections that Tsai Ing-wen actually campaigned for its candidates. Huang's later defection to the TPP and especially his public shift from strident KMT critic to its partner and ally has made him one of the more polarizing figures in Taiwan politics right now. Huang Shan-shan, by contrast, got her start in the pan-blue camp as a deep blue New Party Taipei city council member in the 1990s, then switched to James Soong's People First Party in 2001 and won re-election several times. After Ko won re-election in 2018, he appointed her as his deputy, and in 2022 she ran to succeed him, only joining the TPP in 2023 after her defeat in that race.
And finally, the party Ko Wen-je founded now finds itself without Ko Wen-je. He was detained in September 2024 on suspicion of corruption, and he's been charged and held mostly incommunicado ever since. It's still possible he could eventually beat the charges and come roaring back, but for the moment he is sidelined and his presidential aspirations appear to be on life support. In a concession to this new reality, Ko resigned as party chair in December 2024, and in his absence the TPP elected Huang Kuo-chang to replace him. So now that the TPP's original raison d'être no longer exists, what is motivating the party's current leaders?
Political Parties and Hard Tradeoffs: Policy, Office, or Votes?
To try to answer that question, I'm going to start with what may seem like a digression into the comparative politics literature. Everyone who has managed to survive a political science doctoral program can name a few writings that have fundamentally changed how they think about politics. For me, that select group includes Kaare Strøm's "A Behavioral Theory of Competitive Political Parties" (1990). It's my go-to conceptual framework for understanding party behavior in democracies, and I'm going to lean on it here to try to resolve the apparent political contradiction that is the Taiwan People's Party.
Strøm's key insight is that political parties that are contending for power in democracies always have to balance between three competing objectives: passing and implementing policies, winning offices for their members, and increasing or maintaining their share of the popular vote. Or, as the title of his subsequent book with Wolfgang C. Müller put it: Policy, Office, or Votes?
The dilemma (really, trilemma) for parties is that taking actions to maximize benefits on one dimension will probably make them worse off on the other two. Joining a coalition government as a junior partner will deliver cabinet posts and policy concessions, but at the likely cost of the party's popularity in the subsequent election. For example, the Liberal Democratic Party in the UK was riding high after the 2010 elections and joined a coalition government with the Conservatives -- but once in government their support slumped badly and they were reduced to minor party status in 2015. Staying out of government, on the other hand, means foregoing access to the spoils of office and influence over policy, but it comes with better prospects for increasing the party's vote share in the next election. For instance, after the German federal election in 2021, the CDU/CSU declined to negotiate another grand coalition with the SDP and instead went into opposition; its popularity rebounded and it won back power earlier this year. Parties sometimes also forego joining a formal coalition but still prop up a minority government from outside in exchange for policy concessions, as the New Democratic Party in Canada did for much of Justin Trudeau's final term as prime minister.
The general point is that competitive political parties are constantly trying to solve a complex optimization problem across these three dimensions -- and this makes hard tradeoffs inevitable. They can't maximize all three at the same time, and no two parties will ultimately weight these objectives in the same way.
So, what explains the variation we see across parties on these dimensions? Strøm points us towards parties' internal membership, organization, and culture, as well as their position within the larger party system, To understand why parties make the choices they do, we have to understand quite a bit about the parties themselves. Among the key variables are: where their resources come from (access to the state, labor unions, private capital, public financing, etc.), their time horizons (short versus long, patient versus impatient), the geography of a party's support (urban vs rural, concentrated vs diffuse, national vs regional), and the type of identity appeals the party makes (class, ethnicity, religion, geography, and so forth.)
Strøm's key insight is that political parties that are contending for power in democracies always have to balance between three competing objectives: passing and implementing policies, winning offices for their members, and increasing or maintaining their share of the popular vote. Or, as the title of his subsequent book with Wolfgang C. Müller put it: Policy, Office, or Votes?
The dilemma (really, trilemma) for parties is that taking actions to maximize benefits on one dimension will probably make them worse off on the other two. Joining a coalition government as a junior partner will deliver cabinet posts and policy concessions, but at the likely cost of the party's popularity in the subsequent election. For example, the Liberal Democratic Party in the UK was riding high after the 2010 elections and joined a coalition government with the Conservatives -- but once in government their support slumped badly and they were reduced to minor party status in 2015. Staying out of government, on the other hand, means foregoing access to the spoils of office and influence over policy, but it comes with better prospects for increasing the party's vote share in the next election. For instance, after the German federal election in 2021, the CDU/CSU declined to negotiate another grand coalition with the SDP and instead went into opposition; its popularity rebounded and it won back power earlier this year. Parties sometimes also forego joining a formal coalition but still prop up a minority government from outside in exchange for policy concessions, as the New Democratic Party in Canada did for much of Justin Trudeau's final term as prime minister.
The general point is that competitive political parties are constantly trying to solve a complex optimization problem across these three dimensions -- and this makes hard tradeoffs inevitable. They can't maximize all three at the same time, and no two parties will ultimately weight these objectives in the same way.
So, what explains the variation we see across parties on these dimensions? Strøm points us towards parties' internal membership, organization, and culture, as well as their position within the larger party system, To understand why parties make the choices they do, we have to understand quite a bit about the parties themselves. Among the key variables are: where their resources come from (access to the state, labor unions, private capital, public financing, etc.), their time horizons (short versus long, patient versus impatient), the geography of a party's support (urban vs rural, concentrated vs diffuse, national vs regional), and the type of identity appeals the party makes (class, ethnicity, religion, geography, and so forth.)
What Does the TPP Want?: Policy, Office, or Votes?
30 January 2024: The TPP announces it will vote for its own candidate for speaker rather than support either the DPP or KMT nominees. / CNA
I've found Strøm's framework quite helpful for thinking through what the TPP is ultimately trying to accomplish and for helping to infer its private preferences from its public behavior and rhetoric. Given its origins and membership, my assumption when the new legislature was seated in February 2024 was that the TPP's preference ranking looked like this:
Votes > Offices >>> Policies.
I thought they cared a lot about winning future votes (mostly for Ko). They cared a little about securing current offices (mostly for the two Huangs). And they cared not much at all about achieving changes in policies unless those directly served their other two priorities.
Here's my thinking about each dimension.
What Policies Does the TPP Actually Care About?
In the 2024 election campaign, the party defined itself mostly by what it wasn't: neither blue (China friendly) or green (China-skeptical) but aquamarine -- somewhere in the middle on the China question, and the less said about that issue the better. Ko Wen-je wanted the TPP to be seen as a party of professional, well-educated technocrats who would be competent, honest, forthright, and just "do the right thing" (never mind that in a diverse society there might be wide disagreement about what that was). For Ko, that meant no emotional appeals to national identity, no corrupt self-serving deals to line their own pockets, and no "irrational" hysterics about the China threat. And Ko himself loved to repeat that as a doctor, he was "rational, scientific, and pragmatic" and so was his party. Who needs ideology or identity or deep empathy with ordinary people when you have science!
The bottom line here is that in the 2024 campaign, there weren't any clear policy goals for which the TPP was obviously willing to sacrifice offices (re: power) or votes (re: popularity) to get, and the politicians lwho joined it did not appear to be especially ideological either. For instance, consider the list of demands the TPP issued in January 2024, right before the current Legislative Yuan term began, which it held up as the price the two major parties would have to pay for their support. These were to support laws to:
What's remarkable is that these are all procedural demands -- and pretty modest ones, too. They are, in effect, all ways to get more oversight powers. What would the TPP do with those powers? They didn't say. They just wanted the authority. None of these demands had any ideological content or touched on policy debates. There was also nothing about any of the hot-button issues in Taiwan politics such as nuclear power, public housing construction, the minimum wage, conscription, civil defense, the cross-Strait oversight bill, infrastructure, a sovereign wealth fund, same sex marriage, indigenous rights, or any of the hundreds of other issues that came up during the election campaign.
This was the critical moment when the TPP had the leverage to deny either party the speakership, and it could threaten to block anything else the DPP or KMT might want to get through the legislature for the next four years. And their big ask was: let us better keep tabs on the government. So I think it's fair to say the TPP legislative caucus has not acted as if it were motivated by either ideology or by specific policy goals.
Does the TPP Actually Want to Control Any Offices?
If the TPP doesn't care about policy, then surely they must want to get their hands on the spoils of office -- to hold power for power's sake, right? In Taiwan's political system, the biggest office prizes are cabinet posts and legislative leadership positions. Cabinet positions are powerful, but they are also not independent -- the ministers are appointed and removed by the premier, who in turn can be unilaterally removed and replaced by the president. So, ultimately, under normal conditions ministers don't have much autonomy.
But because the DPP does not have a majority in the LY this term, there is -- or was -- space for a grand TPP-DPP bargain: the DPP could offer cabinet positions and a promise of real independence for TPP ministers, in exchange for the TPP's support in the legislature. What kind of cabinet position might tempt a TPP member? Well, there were persistent rumors that Huang Kuo-chang was interested in becoming Minister of Justice. He's been a fierce critic of the judiciary for a long time, and this would be a golden opportunity to implement the personnel and procedural reforms that he seems to be most passionate about. If Huang actually sincerely believes his own rhetoric about "corrupt" prosecutors engaging in partisan witch hunts at the direction of President Lai himself, then a cabinet position looks like a pretty big prize -- if he were Minister of Justice, and if we take at face value his claims that President Lai has "weaponized" the judiciary, Huang in that position might even have been able to protect Ko Wen-je from being investigated and prosecuted at all.
In other words, backed by the TPP caucus in the LY, Huang might have been able to work out a deal with President Lai to be named Minister of Justice and given broad autonomy to run the MoJ as he saw fit. And this deal could have been credible to both sides, because if Lai tried to sack Huang, the TPP could threaten to withhold their support from the DPP or join the KMT's scorched-earth approach in the LY -- which is what they appear to have done anyway for the past year. Under such a deal, both the TPP and DPP might be better off than they are now.
This idea of a grand DPP-TPP bargain, including positions in the Lai administration, may sound far-fetched right now, but there is actually a precedent in Taiwan for putting together a multi-party coalition government: Chen Shui-bian's first cabinet featured several appointees from other parties, including the KMT's Tang Fei 唐飛as his first premier, and the New Party's Hau Lung-bin 郝龍斌 as his Minister of Environmental Protection. So it's not crazy to contemplate, and it would have been political malpractice for the two sides not to talk at least discreetly about the possibility.
The other kind of office prize is an LY leadership position. In Taiwan, committee conveners are not especially powerful and change with every session of the LY, so there are really only two that have significant power and perks (and really, more perks than power): the Speaker and Deputy Speaker. In the window between the election and the start of the new legislature, Huang Shan-shan's name was floated for both positions, and she seemed to have a clear path at least to the deputy post. And yet the TPP ended up with neither, despite their votes being absolutely essential to the KMT's grip on power. Maybe the TPP's threat to cooperate instead with the DPP was not credible, and the KMT called their bluff? I don't know. But it was perplexing to me that both positions ultimately went to the KMT.
When I've asked people in the know about this, their answer has been that the deputy speaker's position is not worth a lot, and it would have created some organizational problems for a small party with only eight legislators. For instance, being elected deputy speaker would have required Huang Shan-shan to renounce her TPP membership and be a "non-partisan" figure, and with only eight seats (and eight permanent LY committees) the TPP couldn't afford to spend one on a leadership position like this.
I'm not sure I believe that. First, despite the requirement that the LY speaker be "non-partisan," the post has been held by legislators with clear party affiliation for decades. Wang Jin-pyng held it through multiple terms when he was first on the KMT's party list, and then Su Jia-chyuan did the same thing for the DPP. So there's no a priori reason why a party-list legislator from the TPP couldn't hold it and still participate in party decisions.
Second, the deputy speaker position may not be powerful in the legislative process, but it does come with spoils: public appearances, bigger offices and extra staff, access to one's own special discretionary budget, and influence over the appointment of legislative staff. There is an interesting parallel at the local level in city councils, where the speaker and deputy speaker positions have been major prizes -- so much so that vote-buying scandals have been common in these contests. (If someone is willing to pay a lot of bribes to secure this office, then that tells us it's worth something).
Whatever the explanation, this outcome looks to me like a failure by either the DPP, the TPP, or both to exploit their bargaining power and prevent the current situation, in which both the speaker and deputy speaker are KMT members. I think someone left some offices on the table here. The mystery only deepens.
If the TPP Wants More Votes, Why Support Unpopular Policies?!
Finally, if not policy or offices, then that leaves votes. Perhaps what the TPP really prioritizes is their electoral support in future elections. This hypothesis is plausible. On election night, Ko Wen-je sure sounded like he intended to run for president again in 2028. And Huang Kuo-chang and Huang Shan-shan have previously signaled interest in running for mayor in the future: probably Huang Kuo-chang in New Taipei and Huang Shan-shan in Taipei.
If that is what is motivating the three of them, then staying out of any sort of governing coalition would make a lot of sense. In parliamentary regimes, there's a clear incumbency disadvantage among junior coalition partners, as I noted at the top of this post. Better, then, to avoid any semblance of responsibility for government, and follow a simple strategy in opposition: support positions that are popular, avoid positions that are unpopular, and differentiate the party as much as possible from both the DPP and KMT. With the luxury of longer time horizons, the party's leaders can afford to be patient, recruit new members, build the campaign war-chest, and get ready for the next rounds of elections in 2026 and 2028.
But here is the biggest mystery: this is not what the TPP has done! It has not remained aloof from either of the other parties the legislature or, now, even on the recall campaign trail. It has instead consistently teamed up with the KMT, voted with that party on many pieces of controversial legislation, and only rarely allowed any public daylight between their positions -- even when those positions are broadly unpopular. Data from the pollster MyFormosa, for instance, show a 10 point jump in negative feelings towards the party after January 2024, to 65% of all respondents; its negatives have ranged between 55-65% ever since. So on this dimension, too, the TPP seems to be engaging in suboptimal behavior.
Or so I thought, until I realized there is a strategy for which this behavior makes sense. What could that possibly be? You'll have to click through to Part 2 to find out.
Votes > Offices >>> Policies.
I thought they cared a lot about winning future votes (mostly for Ko). They cared a little about securing current offices (mostly for the two Huangs). And they cared not much at all about achieving changes in policies unless those directly served their other two priorities.
Here's my thinking about each dimension.
What Policies Does the TPP Actually Care About?
In the 2024 election campaign, the party defined itself mostly by what it wasn't: neither blue (China friendly) or green (China-skeptical) but aquamarine -- somewhere in the middle on the China question, and the less said about that issue the better. Ko Wen-je wanted the TPP to be seen as a party of professional, well-educated technocrats who would be competent, honest, forthright, and just "do the right thing" (never mind that in a diverse society there might be wide disagreement about what that was). For Ko, that meant no emotional appeals to national identity, no corrupt self-serving deals to line their own pockets, and no "irrational" hysterics about the China threat. And Ko himself loved to repeat that as a doctor, he was "rational, scientific, and pragmatic" and so was his party. Who needs ideology or identity or deep empathy with ordinary people when you have science!
The bottom line here is that in the 2024 campaign, there weren't any clear policy goals for which the TPP was obviously willing to sacrifice offices (re: power) or votes (re: popularity) to get, and the politicians lwho joined it did not appear to be especially ideological either. For instance, consider the list of demands the TPP issued in January 2024, right before the current Legislative Yuan term began, which it held up as the price the two major parties would have to pay for their support. These were to support laws to:
- Impose penalties on officials who give false testimony at LY hearings;
- Prohibit agencies from blocking legislators' access to sensitive documents;
- Give legislators "greater authority" over the nominations for executive branch positions;
- Strengthen conflict-of-interest requirements for legislators;
- Require the LY Speaker to detail the use of that position's special stipend.
What's remarkable is that these are all procedural demands -- and pretty modest ones, too. They are, in effect, all ways to get more oversight powers. What would the TPP do with those powers? They didn't say. They just wanted the authority. None of these demands had any ideological content or touched on policy debates. There was also nothing about any of the hot-button issues in Taiwan politics such as nuclear power, public housing construction, the minimum wage, conscription, civil defense, the cross-Strait oversight bill, infrastructure, a sovereign wealth fund, same sex marriage, indigenous rights, or any of the hundreds of other issues that came up during the election campaign.
This was the critical moment when the TPP had the leverage to deny either party the speakership, and it could threaten to block anything else the DPP or KMT might want to get through the legislature for the next four years. And their big ask was: let us better keep tabs on the government. So I think it's fair to say the TPP legislative caucus has not acted as if it were motivated by either ideology or by specific policy goals.
Does the TPP Actually Want to Control Any Offices?
If the TPP doesn't care about policy, then surely they must want to get their hands on the spoils of office -- to hold power for power's sake, right? In Taiwan's political system, the biggest office prizes are cabinet posts and legislative leadership positions. Cabinet positions are powerful, but they are also not independent -- the ministers are appointed and removed by the premier, who in turn can be unilaterally removed and replaced by the president. So, ultimately, under normal conditions ministers don't have much autonomy.
But because the DPP does not have a majority in the LY this term, there is -- or was -- space for a grand TPP-DPP bargain: the DPP could offer cabinet positions and a promise of real independence for TPP ministers, in exchange for the TPP's support in the legislature. What kind of cabinet position might tempt a TPP member? Well, there were persistent rumors that Huang Kuo-chang was interested in becoming Minister of Justice. He's been a fierce critic of the judiciary for a long time, and this would be a golden opportunity to implement the personnel and procedural reforms that he seems to be most passionate about. If Huang actually sincerely believes his own rhetoric about "corrupt" prosecutors engaging in partisan witch hunts at the direction of President Lai himself, then a cabinet position looks like a pretty big prize -- if he were Minister of Justice, and if we take at face value his claims that President Lai has "weaponized" the judiciary, Huang in that position might even have been able to protect Ko Wen-je from being investigated and prosecuted at all.
In other words, backed by the TPP caucus in the LY, Huang might have been able to work out a deal with President Lai to be named Minister of Justice and given broad autonomy to run the MoJ as he saw fit. And this deal could have been credible to both sides, because if Lai tried to sack Huang, the TPP could threaten to withhold their support from the DPP or join the KMT's scorched-earth approach in the LY -- which is what they appear to have done anyway for the past year. Under such a deal, both the TPP and DPP might be better off than they are now.
This idea of a grand DPP-TPP bargain, including positions in the Lai administration, may sound far-fetched right now, but there is actually a precedent in Taiwan for putting together a multi-party coalition government: Chen Shui-bian's first cabinet featured several appointees from other parties, including the KMT's Tang Fei 唐飛as his first premier, and the New Party's Hau Lung-bin 郝龍斌 as his Minister of Environmental Protection. So it's not crazy to contemplate, and it would have been political malpractice for the two sides not to talk at least discreetly about the possibility.
The other kind of office prize is an LY leadership position. In Taiwan, committee conveners are not especially powerful and change with every session of the LY, so there are really only two that have significant power and perks (and really, more perks than power): the Speaker and Deputy Speaker. In the window between the election and the start of the new legislature, Huang Shan-shan's name was floated for both positions, and she seemed to have a clear path at least to the deputy post. And yet the TPP ended up with neither, despite their votes being absolutely essential to the KMT's grip on power. Maybe the TPP's threat to cooperate instead with the DPP was not credible, and the KMT called their bluff? I don't know. But it was perplexing to me that both positions ultimately went to the KMT.
When I've asked people in the know about this, their answer has been that the deputy speaker's position is not worth a lot, and it would have created some organizational problems for a small party with only eight legislators. For instance, being elected deputy speaker would have required Huang Shan-shan to renounce her TPP membership and be a "non-partisan" figure, and with only eight seats (and eight permanent LY committees) the TPP couldn't afford to spend one on a leadership position like this.
I'm not sure I believe that. First, despite the requirement that the LY speaker be "non-partisan," the post has been held by legislators with clear party affiliation for decades. Wang Jin-pyng held it through multiple terms when he was first on the KMT's party list, and then Su Jia-chyuan did the same thing for the DPP. So there's no a priori reason why a party-list legislator from the TPP couldn't hold it and still participate in party decisions.
Second, the deputy speaker position may not be powerful in the legislative process, but it does come with spoils: public appearances, bigger offices and extra staff, access to one's own special discretionary budget, and influence over the appointment of legislative staff. There is an interesting parallel at the local level in city councils, where the speaker and deputy speaker positions have been major prizes -- so much so that vote-buying scandals have been common in these contests. (If someone is willing to pay a lot of bribes to secure this office, then that tells us it's worth something).
Whatever the explanation, this outcome looks to me like a failure by either the DPP, the TPP, or both to exploit their bargaining power and prevent the current situation, in which both the speaker and deputy speaker are KMT members. I think someone left some offices on the table here. The mystery only deepens.
If the TPP Wants More Votes, Why Support Unpopular Policies?!
Finally, if not policy or offices, then that leaves votes. Perhaps what the TPP really prioritizes is their electoral support in future elections. This hypothesis is plausible. On election night, Ko Wen-je sure sounded like he intended to run for president again in 2028. And Huang Kuo-chang and Huang Shan-shan have previously signaled interest in running for mayor in the future: probably Huang Kuo-chang in New Taipei and Huang Shan-shan in Taipei.
If that is what is motivating the three of them, then staying out of any sort of governing coalition would make a lot of sense. In parliamentary regimes, there's a clear incumbency disadvantage among junior coalition partners, as I noted at the top of this post. Better, then, to avoid any semblance of responsibility for government, and follow a simple strategy in opposition: support positions that are popular, avoid positions that are unpopular, and differentiate the party as much as possible from both the DPP and KMT. With the luxury of longer time horizons, the party's leaders can afford to be patient, recruit new members, build the campaign war-chest, and get ready for the next rounds of elections in 2026 and 2028.
But here is the biggest mystery: this is not what the TPP has done! It has not remained aloof from either of the other parties the legislature or, now, even on the recall campaign trail. It has instead consistently teamed up with the KMT, voted with that party on many pieces of controversial legislation, and only rarely allowed any public daylight between their positions -- even when those positions are broadly unpopular. Data from the pollster MyFormosa, for instance, show a 10 point jump in negative feelings towards the party after January 2024, to 65% of all respondents; its negatives have ranged between 55-65% ever since. So on this dimension, too, the TPP seems to be engaging in suboptimal behavior.
Or so I thought, until I realized there is a strategy for which this behavior makes sense. What could that possibly be? You'll have to click through to Part 2 to find out.
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