Cutting the Parliamentary Size in Half? A View from the OECD Experience
Author: Thomas Ching-peng Peng
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
“Cutting the size of the Legislative Yuan in half” was an appealing platform during Taiwan’s 2001 parliamentary election. The slogan strongly reflected the public’s aversion to disorder in the parliament and the parliament’s increased size (to 225) after a 1997 constitutional amendment. This paper, based on a review of OECD experiences, maintains that for a country that has more than five million people there are upper and lower limits to the size of the parliament. The reasons behind the various models of parliamentary size are discussed. It is then argued that the size of the Legislative Yuan should not be blamed for the inefficiency of the body. Rather, the electoral system of the single nontransferable vote (SNTV) is the cause of the undesirable legislative composition and the disputed legislative performance. Before any drastic reduction in the size of the Legislative Yuan is made, the potential negative impact of such a move on the adequate functioning of the parliamentary committee system needs to be considered.