Controversy about the Research on Taiwan’s Faction Politics: Learning from the Analytical Approaches of American Machine Politics
Author: Chung-li Wu
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
For the past decade, the research on local factions has been one of the major paradigms in Taiwan’s social sciences. It led to the development of a burgeoning literature investigating different questions of faction politics in Taiwan. On the whole, these issues can be summarized as three major aspects: the definition of faction, the origin of faction, and the function and objective of factionalism, respectively. This work briefly reviews the studies on Taiwan’s faction politics, examining various theories about factionalism, and addressing their advantages and limitations. Furthermore, because of the similar characteristics between local factions and “political machines” in American urban politics, I briefly introduce William J. Grimshaw’s typology of machine politics, i.e., economic, sociological, and political approaches. According to Grimshaw, the economic perspective mainly focuses on the “maximizing” and “exchange”of economic interests; the sociological perspective pays attention to the “coalition-building” and “representation” of sub-unit groups; the political perspective aims at “elite self-interest” and “empowerment.” By the framework to examine the literature on factionalism, it can be found most researchers tend to follow the economic and sociological approaches. In light of these views, I hold that the political perspective could be heuristic to Taiwan’s factionalism; in other words, social scientists should focus on the organization interests and elite interests and especially the gap between the both, which merits much attention.