國立臺灣大學政治科學論叢

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

Why are Taiwan’s political parties taking polarized positions on the unification-independence issue even though the voters’ attitudes appear to be a normal distribution? This paper argues that this impression results from a presumption of uni-dimensionality. Although some studies have found the existence of conditional alternatives for the choice of Taiwan’s unification or independence, the sources of these conditions remain unspecified. This paper shows that conditional preferences are shaped by information associated with a discourse. The Kuomintang (KMT), Taiwan’s ruling party since 2008, has an advantage to manipulate cross-strait information and affect vote choice. If this theory holds, the victory of Ma Ying-jeou, the KMT’s candidate in the 2012 presidential election, should had been affected by the pro-independence voters who could conditionally endorse unification. To test this hypothesis, this paper uses the Taiwan Social Change Survey to study how the choice of Taiwan’s unification or independence has been constrained by the rational and emotional factors, about which the dataset contains many related questions. The major finding is that the pro-independence voters who may conditionally endorse unification have indeed increased Ma’s vote share. These voters are less likely to vote for the KMT’s legislative candidates elected under the same electoral system, a gap demonstrating the impact of cross-strait discourses on their vote choices. Lastly, this paper shows that the probability of a conditional pro-independence voter voting for Ma increases with his/her involvement in the cross-strait economic exchanges. But for pro-independence voters who do not endorse reunification, treating Taiwan as their motherland and feeling proud of Taiwan democracy will decrease their chances of voting for Ma.