« Taiwan Journal of Political Science No.24Publish: 2005/06

Party Alternation, Civil-Military Relations and the Democratic Consolidation in Taiwan

Author: Chun-Ming Chen

Abstract / Chinese PDF Download

In recent years Taiwan has witnessed changing relations emerged between thecivil  and  the  military  sectors.  Some  consider  the  completion  of  nationalization  ofarmed forces and civilian control indicators conducive to democratic consolidation.Others reject the proposition by citing the cases in which nationalization of armedforces  contributes  to  military  control  of  government.  In  an  attempt  to  solve  thepuzzle,  this  paper  tries  to  catch  the  whole  picture  of  civil  military  interactionsthrough figuring out story lines of major competing theories. This paper then movestoward working on the integration of main arguments of civil-military relations anddemocratic  consolidation  literatures.  Following  an  effort  to  illuminate  the  preciserole of Taiwan’s military reflected by relatively few published books and articles,the  author  comes  up  with  an  analytical  framework  for  indigenous  civil-militaryrelations research. Hopefully it will facilitate the implementation of both case andcomparative studies.

Keywords:civil-military relations、civilian supremacy、Democratic Consolidation、horizontal control、self-control of military、vertical control