Electoral Systems Today: The Politics of Reform in Japan and Taiwan

For decades, Japan and Taiwan had combined developmentalism with electoral competitions held under the single nontransferable vote (SNTV), a peculiar system responsible for their perennial one-party dominance. When the cost of maintaining this system became too high to bear, some politicians of the ruling party began to promote a mixed formula that assigns a high percentage of seats to be elected by first-past-the-post (FPTP), hoping to cultivate a new system that prolongs their political powers while the old regime is collapsing. This has happened in Japan in the past decade, and will most likely appear in Taiwan in the future.