The Kuomintang and the Democratization of Taiwan (review)

Reviews 441 the triumph of the great goddess Dullness. What I cannot believe is that it can produce translations that will tell us something about Chinese poetry in general or Meng's works in particular that we will not more surely and happily discover from reading the originals. Enjoy this lovelybook for itself, but consider hiding it from your students! Daniel Bryant University ofVictoria Daniel Bryant is a professor ofChinese whose research interests includepoetry ofthe T'ang and Ming dynasties. Ii Steven J. Hood. The Kuomintang and the Democratization ofTaiwan. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997. xiv, 182 pp. Hardcover $49.95, isbn 0-813-9007-9. Through the late 1980s, economic and political development on Taiwan seemed to be quite unbalanced. An "economic miracle" dating from the 1950s had created rapid industrialization and economic growth that had put the country on the verge ofbecoming a developed society. In marked contrast, however, the polity was controlled by an authoritarian, one-party regime, which (rather ironically) combined an anticommunist ideology with a Leninist organization ofthe partystate . Then, a seeming "political miracle" occurred. It began with the 1986 formation of a formal opposition party in defiance ofthe martial law that still existed from the time of the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s and arguably culminated in 1991 with die forced retirement ofthe "senior legislators," who had been elected from mainland China constituencies in the late 1940s and who still constituted large majorities in the parliament (Legislative Yuan) and electoral college for the powerful president (National Assembly) nearly forty-five years later. After that, the people ofTaiwan could and did elect their political leaders in fairly free and fair elections. Taiwan's participation in what Samuel Huntington has called the "Third Wave of Democratization" is remarkable on two counts. First, it went far faster© 1998 by University ^ more smootjjvman most (jfnot¡ji) observerswould have expected. In the summer of1986, the authoritarian regime appeared quite stable, with the society prosperous and the opposition muted. Yet, over the next few years, dramatic political changes occurred that made full democratization almost inevitable. Second, 442 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998 these dramatic changes did little to challenge the powerful position ofthe ruling Nationalist or Kuomintang (KMT) Party. The KMT handily won most elections before the late 1980s (opposition candidates ran as Independents), and democratization brought only a small decrease in their margins ofvictory (at least until the 1995-1996 elections for the Legislative Yuan and National Assembly, in which the KMT's majorities were cut to such razor-thin levels that these bodies became, in effect, "hung parliaments"). Given these two conditions, the role of the Kuomintang in Taiwan's democratic transition raises some intriguing and important questions. Why did the Party seemingly change its views on democracy so substantially in such a short time? Did past policies set the stage for this major policy change? How was it able to maintain power in the new, quite different political environment (unlike most one-party regimes after democratization)? More broadly, does Taiwan's "political miracle" contain lessons for other fragile polities? What does it imply about the debate whether "social preconditions" or "elite politics and bargaining" are more important for promoting democratization? Surprisingly, much of the current literature on Taiwan's transition to democracy treats the role of the Kuomintang almost tangentially, instead focusing on such topics as the rise of the opposition, the social constituencies ofvarious parties , and post-democratic factional maneuverings. Thus, Steven Hood's explicit attempt to conceptualize and evaluate the Kuomintang and democratization on Taiwan should be of interest both to area specialists and to scholars interested in comparative democratization. Hood divides his study into three substantive parts, each ofwhich treats a historical phase ofTaiwan's development under Kuomintang rule: (1) the Chiang Kai-shek period of the 1950s and 1960s, (2) the increasing liberalization of the 1970s and 1980s under Chiang's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, and (3) the final push to full electoral democracy under Lee Teng-hui, who succeeded Chiang Ching-kuo as president and Party chairman in 1988. When the Kuomintang evacuated to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war in 1949, the "Mainlander" Nationalists...