Blog - Kharis Templeman (祁凱立)

Published on: October 24, 2017

Taiwan Democracy Project Seminar: Alan Romberg

On October 30 at 4pm, the Taiwan Democracy Project at Stanford University will host our next event of the fall quarter, a talk by Alan Romberg, Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center. The talk is co-sponsored with the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. Among other research contributions, Mr. Romberg writes a regular report for the Hoover Institution's China Leadership Monitor that covers developments in Cross-Strait relations and the US-PRC-Taiwan trilateral relationship.

The title of his talk is "Cross-Strait Relations after the 19th Party Congress." The event is free and open to the public; details on the talk and speaker are below.

Abstract
Speculation about the course of cross-Strait relations after the upcoming 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress ranges from greater PRC flexibility to substantially increased pressure on Taiwan. The Mainland’s persistent suspicion about President Tsai Ing-wen’s motives has only deepened with her appointment of avowed independence supporter Lai Ching-te as premier, especially because of the prospect that Lai could eventually become president. As a result, once the internal tugging and hauling leading up to the Party Congress has been settled, some people predict that Beijing will resort to military intimidation or even actual use of force to bring Tsai to heel. What are the PRC’s goals? What are Taipei’s? What role can and should the United States play in seeking not only to avoid conflict but to reestablish a reliable level of stability in cross-Strait relations and to prevent Taiwan from once more becoming a highly divisive issue in U.S.-PRC relations? Alan Romberg will address these issues in his talk on October 30th.

Bio
Alan Romberg is a Distinguished Fellow and the Director of the East Asia program at Stimson. Before joining Stimson in September 2000, he enjoyed a distinguished career working on Asian issues including 27 years in the State Department, with over 20 years as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer. Romberg was the Principal Deputy Director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Deputy Spokesman of the department. He served in various capacities dealing with East Asia, including director of the Office of Japanese Affairs, member of the Policy Planning staff for East Asia, and staff member at the National Security Council for China. He served overseas in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Additionally, Romberg spent almost 10 years as the CV Starr Senior Fellow for Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and was special assistant to the secretary of the navy.
Romberg holds an M.A. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Published on: October 13, 2017

Taiwan Democracy Project Seminar: James Lee

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.

Abstract
Scholars have credited a model of state-led capitalism called the developmental state with producing the first wave of the East Asian economic miracle. Using historical evidence based on original archival research, this talk offers a geopolitical explanation for the origins of the developmental state. In contrast to previous studies that have emphasized colonial legacies or domestic political factors, I argue that the developmental state was the legacy of the rivalry between the United States and Communist China during the Cold War. Responding to the acute tensions in Northeast Asia in the early postwar years, the United States supported emergency economic controls in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to enforce political stability. In response to the belief that the Communist threat would persist over the long term, the U.S. strengthened its clients by laying the foundations of a capitalist, export-oriented economy under bureaucratic guidance. The result of these interventions was a distinctive model of state-directed capitalism that scholars would later characterize as a developmental state.

I verify this claim by examining the rivalry between the United States and the Chinese Communists and demonstrating that American threat perceptions caused the U.S. to promote unorthodox economic policies among its clients in Northeast Asia. In particular, I examine U.S. relations with the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan, where American efforts to create a bulwark against Communism led to the creation of an elite economic bureaucracy for administering U.S. economic aid. In contrast, the United States decided not to create a developmental state in the Philippines because the Philippine state was not threatened by the Chinese Communists. Instead, the Philippines faced a domestic insurgency that was weaker and comparatively short-lived. As a result, the U.S. pursued a limited goal of maintaining economic stability instead of promoting rapid industrialization. These findings shed new light on the legacy of statism in American foreign economic policy and highlight the importance of geopolitics in international development.

Bio
James Lee is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. He specializes in International Relations with a focus on U.S. foreign policy in East Asia and relations across the Taiwan Strait. James also serves as the Senior Editor for Taiwan Security Research, an academic website that aggregates news and commentary on the economic and political dimensions of Taiwan's security.

Published on: August 8, 2017

Taiwan-Related Events at APSA 2017

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.

Thursday, August 31

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

Friday, September 1

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

Published on: August 7, 2017

APSA 2017 Mini-Conference: Electoral Malpractice in East and Southeast Asia

The 2017 American Political Science Association annual conference will be held in San Francisco, CA, from August 31-September 3, 2017. One of the new formats that APSA introduced last year is a "mini-conference"--that is, a day-long set of panels that share a related theme and set of questions, considered in a more flexible format than the standard, rigid APSA section panels.

This year I have had the privilege, with Netina Tan of McMaster University, to organize a mini-conference on electoral malpractice in East and Southeast Asia. The event will run all day Saturday, September 2, and is open to all registered APSA conference attendees. The full schedule of panels is below.

Venue: Westin San Francisco, California Room West
Date: Saturday, September 2, 8:00am-5:30pm

8:00am-9:30am Panel 1: Comparative Perspectives and Methodological Issues

Welcome (Netina Tan, McMaster University and Kharis Templeman, Stanford University)
Keynote: “Electoral Integrity and Democratic Practices in Asia” (Larry Diamond, Stanford University)
“Methodological Challenges in the study of Electoral Malpractice” (Carolien Van Ham, University of New South Wales)

Chair: Allen Hicken (University of Michigan)
Discussant: Allen Hicken (University of Michigan)

9:30am-11:00am Panel 2: Types of Electoral Malpractice

“Drivers of Pre-Electoral Manipulations in the 2013 Cambodian Election” (Max Groemping, University of Sydney)
“Pre-Electoral Malpractice in Single-Party Dominant Malaysia” (Kai Ostwald, University of British Columbia)
“Electoral Malpractice in Myanmar: A Comparison of the 2010 and 2015 Elections” (Marco Bünte, Monash University, Malaysia)
“The Use and Abuse of Electoral Rules to Manipulate Election Outcomes in Thailand” (Joel Selway, Brigham Young University)

Chair: Larry Diamond (Stanford University)
Discussant: Jorgen Elklit (Aarhus University)

11:00-11:15pm Break

11:15pm-12:45pm Panel 3: Effects of Electoral Malpractice

“Gerrymandering and Malapportionment in Singapore” (Netina Tan, McMaster University)
“Voting for the Incumbent in Single Party Regimes: Fear or Conviction?” (Guillem Riambau, Yale-NUS and Kai Ostwald, University of British Columbia)
“Voting in the Dark: How Vietnamese Voters Negotiate Low Information Elections” (Paul Schuler, University of Arizona)
“Silent Manipulation: Effects of Polling Place Distance on Voting Behavior in Hong Kong’s Electoral Autocracy” (Stan Hok-Wui Wong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Chair: Kenneth McElwain (University of Tokyo)
Discussant: Meredith Weiss (University at Albany, Suny)

12:45pm-2:00pm Lunch Break

2:00pm-3:30pm Panel 4: Sources of Electoral Integrity

“Sources of Electoral Integrity: Reforming the Central Election Commission in Taiwan” (Kharis Templeman, Stanford University)
“Violations of Electoral Integrity in the Myanmar 2015 Election” (Elin Bjarnegard, Uppsala University)
“Free and/or Fair? How Japanese Courts Rule on Election Campaign Regulations” (Kenneth Mori McElwain, Tokyo University)
“Restricting free speech in the name of fairness: Campaign regulation in South Korea” (You Jong-Sung, Australian National University)

Chair: Jorgen Elklit (Aarhus University)
Discussant: Allen Hicken (University of Michigan)

3:30-3:45pm Break

3:45-5:00pm Panel 5: Challenges of Electoral Reforms

“Challenges of Electoral Reforms and Engineering in Mongolia” (Michael Seeberg, University of Southern Denmark)
“The Menu of Manipulation: Reform and Malpractice in Contemporary Indonesian Elections” (Sarah Shair Rosenfield, Arizona State University)
“The Decline of the Effectiveness of Vote-Buying as Electoral Mobilization Strategy in Taiwan” (Wang Chin-Shou, National Cheng Kung University)
“Using Election Forensics to Detect Fraud and Strategic Behavior in the Philippines” (Allen Hicken, University of Michigan)

Chair: Guillem Riambau (Yale-NUS)
Discussant: Carolien Van Ham (University of New South Wales)

5:00pm-5:30pm Panel 6: Roundtable Discussion

Comparative Regional Implications, Publications and Steps Forward (Netina Tan, McMaster University and Kharis Templeman, Stanford University)

Published on: December 1, 2016

Varieties of Democracy Post-Doctoral Fellowships

The Varieties of Democracy project has posted a call for applications for up to two new post-doctoral fellows to join their team at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. This is a terrific opportunity to be part of the next wave of quantitative research on comparative democracy and democratization. Gothenburg is also a fantastic city to spend time in. I've reposted the full call for applications below.

V-Dem is seeking to replenish our research agenda and are therefore looking for scholars who have completed their degree no more than four years before the application deadline; present exciting new ideas; and that have a strong record of accomplishments in or more of the following areas:

Comparative democratization (e.g., sequencing of democratization, democracy and development, democracy and governance/corruption, elections and democratization, or other areas);
Regional expertise;
Research methods (e.g., aggregation, Bayesian IRT-modeling, experiments, expert coding in data collection, causal inference in time series analysis, sequencing algorithms and methods, or related methods);
Previous experience from larger-scale research- and other projects are meritorious, as well as competencies in data management.

The Postdoctoral Research Fellow is expected to conduct research primarily in collaboration with the Principal Investigator of V-Dem, Staffan I. Lindberg, with a focus on one or several of the main questions of the research program. Excellence in English (orally and written) is expected, competence in Arabic, French, Spanish and/or Portuguese is a merit. The call is open to candidates who (at the time of assuming the position) have a PhD in political science or related field.

More information is available here.
Applications are submitted online here.

Published on: November 22, 2016

APSA Conference Group on Taiwan Studies -- Call for Papers

The American Political Science Association's Conference Group on Taiwan Studies has issued a call for paper proposals for the 2017 annual conference, August 31-September 3, 2017, in San Francisco.

CGOTS is one of APSA's "related groups" organizations. Founded in 1990, it serves to promote Taiwan studies in the broader political science community, as well as to foster connections between Taiwan-based and U.S.-based scholars with substantial research interests in Taiwan.

For applicants with a Taiwan-related proposal, submitting to CGOTS can substantially improve one's chances of acceptance to the conference. The formal call for papers is reposted below; the deadline to submit applications is January 9, 2017.

The 2017 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting will be held from August 31-September 3 in San Francisco, CA. The conference theme is “The Quest for Legitimacy.”

CGOTS invites paper and panel proposals on Taiwan’s domestic politics and cross-Strait and international relations that are consistent with the theme of “The Quest for Legitimacy.”

The concept of legitimacy is fundamental to many classic debates in political science. At the same time, legitimacy is core to numerous contemporary political issues. Across the world and our discipline, questions about political legitimacy ensue. Salient debates—whether about representation, equality, voice, accountability, institutionalization, protest, revolutions, international norms, disputes, war—can all contain questions of legitimacy at their core. Moments of social and political change often center on contestation about what is considered legitimate, including some of the more prominent movements in Taiwan in the last several years such as demonstrations against nuclear power, government land expropriation, the death of a military conscript due to harsh corporal punishment, and of course the Sunflower Movement. Legitimacy is also closely tied to numerous core concepts, including the creation and maintenance of order, the proper exercise of power, and the nature and role of political authority. The legitimacy of state actions in Taiwan has become more contested in recent years, most notably in the conduct of cross-Strait relations with the People’s Republic of China. So has the legitimacy of the law-making process, particularly questions about how far majorities can go to implement policies over minority objections.

For the 2017 Annual Meeting, we encourage participants to consider questions about legitimacy in contemporary Taiwanese politics. These could include exploring legitimacy in the context of Taiwan’s contested international standing, or its complicated and shifting relationship with the People’s Republic of China. And on the domestic front, a wide range of questions speak to the issue of legitimacy. How, for instance, is the issue of “transitional justice”—itself a highly contested concept—understood by different sides of the political spectrum? What does public opinion tell us about the relative legitimacy of different democratic institutions—the judicial system versus elected officials, for instance? How is the spread of new technologies reshaping how citizens understand “legitimate” political behavior and discourse, or affecting the accountability of representatives to their constituents? How do citizens and elites understand the rule of law, and how might this vary across different issue areas and subsets of the population? There are also important questions about procedural legitimacy: to what extent do those on the losing side of political outcomes, from elections to government policies to judicial rulings, accept the legitimacy of decisions which hurt their own interests? Finally, there are important unresolved questions about the legitimacy of the definition of citizenship in Taiwan: should immigrants from the PRC be treated differently from immigrants from Southeast Asia, for instance?

We encourage papers that tackle these and related questions.

Please send proposals to APSA: (http://community.apsanet.org/annualmeeting/call/papers)

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Kharis Templeman (kharis@stanford.edu), CGOTS Coordinator. The deadline for proposals is January 9, 2017. Decisions on the proposals will be communicated to you in March 2017. Travel support for CGOTS panelists is subject to the availability of external funding.

Published on: September 16, 2016

2016 Legislative Election Redux: Were "Third Force" Candidates Different from the DPP?

NPP candidates ran close to Tsai Ing-wen in the district races. Other non-DPP candidates, not so much.

One of the more interesting developments in Taiwan's 2016 general election was the rise of so-called "Third Force" parties--completely new entrants into the political system, rather than break-aways from the KMT or the DPP. While some of the media commentary got a bit carried away about the significance of these new parties, the founding of one, the New Power Party (NPP), did pose a serious threat to the DPP's chances of winning a majority in the legislature. As an offshoot of the Sunflower Movement, the NPP positioned its message in a way calculated to appeal to pan-green voters, and it recruited high-profile candidates to run in district races, not just the party list. These district candidates had the potential to split the pan-green vote in what everyone expected would be a very anti-KMT year, and in a worst-case scenario for their side, help the KMT hold on to their legislative majority.

In the end, a pan-green split didn't happen. A key reason is that the DPP headed off the threat early: the party formed a kind of pre-electoral coalition by yielding 11 districts to the NPP and other non-DPP candidates in exchange for their support not to run against DPP candidates elsewhere. And the districts that the DPP yielded were, with one exception, far past the critical 57th seat needed to deliver a legislative majority. It turned out to be a good deal for the DPP, which won 68 seats overall. It also, more surprisingly, turned out well for the NPP, which won all three district seats and five overall and became the third largest party in the LY.

The NPP Surprise
My own expectation going into the election was that the NPP candidates would perform worse, on average, than a generic DPP challenger. (In fact, if you read that linked post closely, I was even more specific: 2-4 points worse, on average.) The rationale was pretty simple: Freddy Lim, Hung Tzu-yung, and Huang Kuo-chang were already household names, but their close association with the Sunflower Movement, and the acerbic rhetoric of Huang, especially, suggested they would be fairly polarizing as candidates. And in the traditionally blue-leaning districts of Taipei 5 (Lim) and New Taipei 12 (Huang), I thought they would turn off more voters than they attracted with that approach.

So what actually happened? In the graph above, I've plotted the vote share of each DPP and DPP-endorsed district candidate against Tsai Ing-wen's share of the presidential vote in the same district. DPP incumbents are represented by solid dots; challengers (i.e. non-incumbents) by hollow ones; NPP candidates by hollow squares, and other non-DPP candidates by hollow triangles. (A hearty thank you to Frozen Garlic for doing the yeoman's work of sorting the presidential race vote totals by LY district and making these data publicly available.)

Thoughts on this below the break.

APSA 2016 Annual Conference in Philadelphia: Taiwan Panels

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.

Conference Group on Taiwan Studies (CGOTS) Official Panels

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.

Tsai Ing-wen's Pingpuzu Aborigine Challenge

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

"When President Tsai Ing-wen made a historic apology to indigenous peoples on August 1, she addressed her remarks not only to the country’s 16 officially recognized aborigine (yuanzhumin 原住民) tribes but also to the “Pingpu ethnic group,” or Pingpuzu (平埔族) — descendants of Taiwan’s culturally assimilated indigenous peoples who are not officially recognized by the government as aborigines. In the flood of commentary that has followed Tsai’s apology, the presence of Pingpuzu representatives in the ceremony has attracted little attention.

Yet the inclusion of the Pingpuzu was a radical act—arguably the boldest aspect of the whole event. Every preceding government of Taiwan had refused to acknowledge Pingpuzuactivists’ claims to indigeneity. By explicitly mentioning them in her apology, President Tsai gave legitimacy to the idea that Taiwan’s “true” indigenous population — officially only about 530,000, or 2.3% of the total — is significantly larger than recognized."

Read the whole thing here.

Published on: July 31, 2016

Indigenous Legislators on Indigenous People's Day

Election banner for Yosi Takun (孔文吉), running in the Mountain Aborigine District for the January 2016 Legislative Yuan Election. Photo taken in Wulai, New Taipei.

August 1 is Indigenous Peoples' Day in Taiwan--a day that usually passes without much media attention. This year is different: President Tsai Ing-wen is planning to issue a formal apology on behalf of the Republic of China government to Taiwan's indigenous peoples and to outline her government's indigenous policies. That has now become a partisan issue. Five of the six aborigine (原住民 yuanzhumin) district representatives in the current Legislative Yuan are going to skip the event; the only one to attend is the only district DPP member, Chen Ying (陳瑩). The other two legislators, Kolas Yotaka (谷辣斯·尤達卡) of the DPP and Kawlo Iyun Pacidal (高潞·以用·巴魕剌) of the NPP, are both party list legislators, and so have to take their own party line into greater account.

Although they're often overlooked in writing about Taiwan's electoral politics, Taiwan has reserved seats in the Legislative Yuan for aborigine representatives since 1972. Today, representatives from these districts hold more than 5% of the total seats in the legislature (6/113)--if they were all part of the same party, they would be the third largest in the LY, ahead of both the NPP and PFP. For anyone interested in learning more, I have a CDDRL working paper on the history of these seats and the evolution of aborigine representation in the Legislative Yuan. The abstract is below.

The Aborigine Constituencies in the Taiwanese Legislature

The Republic of China on Taiwan has long reserved legislative seats for its indigenous minority, the yuanzhumin. While most of Taiwan’s political institutions were transformed as the island democratized, the dual aborigine constituencies continue to be based on an archaic, Japanese-era distinction between “mountain” and “plains” aborigines that corresponds poorly to current conditions. The aborigine quota system has also served to buttress Kuomintang (KMT) control of the legislature: the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and “pan-indigenous” parties have been almost entirely shut out of these seats. Nevertheless, aborigine legislators have made a modest but meaningful difference for indigenous communities. The reserved seats were initially established during the martial law era as a purely symbolic form of representation, but during the democratic era they have acquired substantive force as well. Taiwan’s indigenous peoples have not always been well-served by their elected legislators, but they would be worse off without them.