Демократическая прогрессивная партия Тайваня и поставторитарная модернизация

This book focuses, as its title indicates, on the relation between Taiwan’s modernization process and Taiwan’s evolving democracy. The politics and ideology of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party provide perhaps the most visible link between these two most essential aspects of Taiwan’s recent history. The author elaborates the concept of the postauthoritarian modernization in order to describe and evaluate a transitory stage between authoritarian patterns of social development in Eastern and South-East Asia and mature democratic regimes in the West. Two most obvious examples of this kind of modernization are Southern Korea and Taiwan.

The first chapter lays out the foundations for the conceptual analysis of postauthoritarian modernization. It explores the specific traits of party system and party politics in postauthoritarian societies including the significance of factions and patron-client relations in power relations, the legacy of traditional political culture such as the emphasis on the ritualistic behavior and moral cultivation, the role of the parties in accelerating political modernization etc.

The second and third chapters deal with the formation of Taiwan’s contemporary party system and DPP’s contribution to it. As the author demonstrates, the DPP played an indispensable role in strengthening and stabilizing Taiwan’s democracy even though the party’s democratic potential was limited by organizational deficiencies, political incompetence and corruption. A special attention is paid to what can be called systemic convergence of Taiwan’s leading political parties – Kuomintang and DPP. This convergence is accompanied by the marginalization of more radical parties. In a more general perspective it testifies to the consolidation of political system.

The final chapter presents a systematic analysis of the most controversial issue of contemporary Taiwan: the relation between democracy and national identity. The author exposes an extremely delicate balance between nationalist and democratic tendencies in Taiwanese politics: both are indispensable and complimentary in the current political setting yet naturally constrain and even contradict each other. This ambiguity is further reinforced by the extremely active and influential role of media which all too often transforms politics into performance. As a result, the official political goals and slogans of main parties, let alone radical groups, have a nature, as it was, of performative and symbolic gestures used for articulating political space during electoral campaign and discarded after elections. The modern multi-party system in Taiwan, therefore, brings into play the main political incentives without providing a definite solution to them. At the same time it successfully excludes from political stage all radical stands. In this sense, democratic politics guarantee political stability in Taiwan. But the price – or, perhaps, the necessary condition – of this stability is the profound uncertainty of Taiwan’s national identity. Taiwan’s democracy is the companion, if not the child, of, as V. V. Maliavin put it, “identity trauma”.

As Taiwan’s example shows, democracy is indeed a mixed blessing. Its efficiency is measured, at least to a certain degree, by the absence of clear and achievable political goals for the nation. But precisely for this reason democracy’s fragility is its real source of strength.

Список источников и литературы

Источники

Материалы государственных структур Тайваня

Чжунхуа миньго цзунтунфу [Канцелярия президента Китайской Республики] // [Электронный ресурс] – URL: http//www.president.gov.tw/Default.aspx.tabid (дата обращения: 11.10.2012).

The Republic of China Yearbook. 1994. Taipei: Kwang Hwa, 1995. 590 p.

Чжунхуа миньго нэйчжэнбу. Чжэнданфа цаоань шомин [Министерство внутренних дел Китайской Республики. Разъяснение законопроекта о политических партиях] // [Электронный ресурс] – URL: http://www.moi.gov.tw/files/act_file/Act_file_97.pdf (дата обращения: 15.03.2015).

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Чжунъян сюаньцзюй вэйюаньхуэй. Чжунхуа миньго 2004 нянь цзунтун сюаньцзюй [Центральная избирательная комиссия. Президентские выборы 2004 г. в Китайской Республике] // [Электронный ресурс] – URL: http://db.cec.gov.tw/histQuery.jsp?voteCode=20040301P1A1&qryType=ctks (дата обращения: 24.02.2015).

Чжунъян сюаньцзюй вэйюаньхой. Чжунхуа миньго 2008 нянь цзунтун сюаньцзюй [Центральная избирательная комиссия. Президентские выборы в Китайской Республике. 2008] // [Электронный ресурс] – URL: http://db.cec.gov.tw/histMain.jsp?voteSel=20080301A1 (дата обращения: 17.02.2015).