Policy Change in Taiwan’s Freeway Electronic Toll Collection System: An Integrative Analysis Model
Author: Hen-Chin Chen
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Once a policy has been made, it becomes prey to all sorts of political realitiesand social dynamics that constantly affect and shape how the policy is viewed astime passes. Such real-world dynamics often force policy to change. While theElectronic Toll Collection (ETC) system is basically a sound policy, there has beenan extremely big gap between final results and initial expectations. This papertries to analyze why changes in the form of ETC are not incremental and directional,but rapid, dramatic and non-incremental. In addition, it seeks to probe factorswhich can account for such changes, and examine the relationship between thesefactors.
To address these issues, this paper first of all examines different models ofpolicy change, and thenpresents an integrative model, composed of time, policyideas, the decision-making of key individuals and the manner of institutionaloperation. Secondly, the policy-making process of ETC is divided into five stagesin order to understand key factors in policy changes. Thirdly, these factors aredivided into four categories, in accordance with the variables of the integrativemodel. Based on these factors, this paper adopts a method of semi-structuredinterview. Fourthly, it attempts to analyze the results of interviews by using thesoftware NUD∗IST Vivo. Lastly, combining theories into a short discussion, this paper offers some genreal conclusions.
This paper finds that not all policy changes are incremental. In fact, if weregard policy as a temporal state, then policy change probably reflects themainstream politics of the period and wider public opinion. In addition, we findthat the variables of an integrative model are suitable for explaining changes in ETCpolicy. In short (1) the interactions between policy ideas and images are the mainfactors behind change; (2) the decisions from key individuals as also an importantfactor in change; (3) the interactions between policy ideas and the decisions of keyindividuals affects OBU users. Conversely, non-users are affected by theinteractions between the decisions of key individuals and the manner of institutionaloperation; (4) institutions act as instruments of policy change.