The Political Analysis on the Decision Making of Distributive Policies and Budgets
Author: Ching-Jyuhn Luor
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
The present study explores the pattern of distributive policy making during the time period of the 2 nd to the 4 th Legislative Yuan in Taiwan. Specifically, we ask whether universalism is the regular pattern of distributive policy making in the Legislative Yuan? Does the universalism still hold when the policy benefit being distributed is controversial? If it is not the case, then what roles do party and standing committee play? We analyze distributive bills and twenty-three controversial distributive budget items during the time period of the 2 nd to the 4 th Legislative Yuan aiming at answer these questions. Besides, the characteristics of winning coalition for each distributive bill and budget are explored as well. Overall, we find that universalism is not the monolithic pattern of distributive policy making. The intra-party-universalism tends to prevail once the partisan interests or ideology getting involved, in the sense that every legislator stands in the partisan line, and almost everyone within their party has the same policy preference. Moreover, the policy preferences of committee members are along with party line so long as the partisan issue comes to play. Finally, when the partisan issue breaks legislators apart, different types of wining coalition are formed. There is no constant combination of parties in the winning coalition. Yet different combination of party coalition is formulated depending on the attributes of policy benefits. In most cases with rare exceptions, Democratic Progressive Party tends to cooperate with New Party fighting Kuomintang for the infrastructure or public works related benefits. Kuomin tang is willing to stay with New Party on the veteran’s affair or ideology related policy benefit.