Who are Partisans and Independents? — Determinants of Party Identifications of Taiwan’s Voters in 2001
Author: Chung-li Wu, Wen-pin Hsu
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
With respect to a variety of political attitudes, it is generally accepted that “partyidentification” is an important psychological component associated with a wide rangeof political behaviors. Preceding literature has also empirically shown that thedistribution and intensity of party identifications are profoundly related to thestability, integration, and development of political systems. In this study, we reviewsome research, summarizing four major controversies over party identification: 1) themeaning of the concept “party identification;” 2) the measurement of partyidentification the; 3) the relationship between party identification and politicalbehaviors; and, 4) differences between partisans and independent voters. This studyconcentrates on the fourth as the research topic, and we take advantage of the 2001Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study (TEDS 2001) survey data andexamine the associations between party identification and individual-level variables,consisting of objective socio-demographic and subjective cognitive variables. Themethodology adopted in this study involves two steps. The first approach is the useof cross-tabulation analyses, and the second method employs the multinomial logitmodel in order to evaluate the simultaneous effect of independent variables on thedependent variable. As hypothesized, the findings reveal that the socio-demographic variables of age, education level, ethnicity, and region exert an important influence on one’s identification with the major political parties. Theresults also indicate that the cognitive variables of political interest, party ideal,ethnic identification, China-reunification or Taiwan-independence position,evaluation of presidential performance, and prospective assessment of Taiwan’sfuture have significant differences between partisans and independents. In theconclusion, we review the major findings and limitations of this study and note thatparty identification is a field worthy of continued research by comparative politicalscientists.