Taiwan’s new experience with divided government

I gave a talk earlier this week about recent events in the legislature that forced me to clarify my thinking about the reasons behind the conflicts there. In this post, I’m going to share some of those thoughts with you.

I see the current struggles in the legislature as a broad power struggle between the executive branch and the legislative branch to determine which party is going to dominate politics over the next four years. As in most democracies, when there is unified government, the executive branch usually runs the show. The executive branch sets the agenda and writes most of the bills for that agenda. The legislature will often slightly modify those bills and put its members’ names on the legislation, but, for the most part, legislature defers to the executive branch. That doesn’t make the legislature a rubber stamp. When the same party controls both branches and both branches generally want the same things, is simply more efficient to let the cabinet and bureaucrats do the hard work of producing polished legislation. However, we suddenly do not have unified government, and the legislature wants to ensure that policies reflect its preferences. This is a new situation for Taiwan, so nobody quite knows what the balance of power should be.

The KMT is utilizing every lever of power it can access in the legislature to try to win as much power as possible. This isn’t just about establishing an investigation power that it can use to continually harass the executive branch, it is also about redirecting finances to (mostly KMT-controlled) local governments and impoverishing the national government so that it can’t pursue major initiatives, rolling back some of the major changes of the last eight years that weakened the KMT, and throwing around the idea of amending the recall law to ensure they don’t lose their legislative power before the next general election.

You’re probably screaming at me right now, “Hey Brainiac, this is not a new situation for Taiwan! We had divided government from 2000 to 2008. The DPP controlled the presidency and the executive branch just like now, and the KMT (and then later the KMT-led coalition) controlled the legislature just like now. We’ve been through this before!”

Well, yes and no. We did have divided government before, but I don’t think the practices and balances of power that evolved during that era are a good guide for what we will see in the next four years. To be more precise, there are four critical differences between then and now.

The first difference is the most obvious and probably the least important. In 2000, the legislature was led by speaker Wang Jin-pyng. Wang was a career politician who had spent most of his adult life in the legislature. He wanted the legislature to operate smoothly and successfully. Wang was a consummate deal maker who was always happy to reach across the aisle and talk with the other side in order to find common ground. None of those characteristics apply to the current KMT legislative leadership.  Both Speaker Han Kuo-yu add floor leader Fu Kun-chi have previously been in the legislature, but both have also spent significant time building their political careers outside the legislature. Neither seems committed to smooth operation of the institution, and neither has a reputation as a person eager to strike a bargain with the other side. I think it’s fair to say they have different priorities than Wang did.

Second, expectations about the future are different. In 2000, the KMT thought of itself as the natural party of power. Taiwan Independence had repeatedly proven to be “ballot box poison,” and the DPP had never come close to winning 50% of the popular vote in any election. Chen Shui-bian was no exception; he had only gotten 39% in the presidential election. The KMT only lost that election because it was internally split, not because the DPP had beaten it. Moreover, the KMT had never lost a legislative election. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, the KMT could tell itself to just wait four years, and, if it could avoid shooting itself in the foot again, it would naturally return to power. Nothing that happened in the next eight years disabused it of this notion. The DPP (plus the allied TSU) did not win 50% of the votes or seats in either the 2001 or 2004 legislative elections. Chen did win a majority and reelection in 2004, but there were, to put it mildly, extenuating circumstances. Even after getting shot the day before the election and getting a large sympathy vote, Chen only managed 50.11% and a razor thin victory. Even putting aside KMT suspicions that the election was stolen or illegitimate, this was not a replicable DPP strategy for future elections. In short, from 2000 to 2008, the KMT didn’t think it had to do anything spectacular to change the political environment. In a neutral election, it could expect to win.

That’s not the case today. It’s no longer true that the public has never given a majority to the DPP. It won large majorities in 2014, 2016, and 2020. In contemporary Taiwan, it is arguably unification, not independence, that is ballot box poison. The KMT has failed to break 40% in the last three presidential elections, falling below 35% in two of them. Even in this year’s legislative elections – which were considered fairly triumphant – they won fewer votes than the DPP. If they want to do better in the next general election, they need something to change. To be blunt, they need president Lai to be seen as a failure. That probably requires taking active steps in the legislature to attack him and his administration whenever possible.

Third, the KMT of 2024 is not the KMT of 2000. It is much more ideological and much more cohesive. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that legislative caucus is made up of different types of people now. In 2000, elections were still conducted under SNTV rules, and this had a couple of really important effects. For one, the KMT could elect legislators from everywhere, including areas in which they didn’t have a majority. There were KMT representatives from Tainan, Pingtung, and Kaohsiung, for example. The diverse set of legislators brought a diverse set of viewpoints to the KMT caucus. For another, the SNTV rules facilitated the “black and gold” style of politics, and the KMT excelled at this. KMT legislators who had come up to local factions were often more interested in making sure the money was spent “correctly” than in high politics or winning national political struggles. For a certain number of them, being a legislator was a side hustle, and their real priority was running their construction business, family bank, or organized crime syndicate. Attendance wasn’t always great, and when they did show up, it wasn’t a sure thing that they would vote the party line. The 2008 electoral reform, and a long, slow, but effective campaign from the judicial system changed the nature of the KMT caucus. With single seat districts, parties no longer elect a large number of representatives from areas in which they are less popular. The KMT has been wiped out almost entirely in the south. It is also far less corrupt than it used to be. Legislators now win elections based on the party label rather than by patronage or vote buying.

The other big reason the KMT is different now is that it has been through the partisan wars the last 24 years. In the authoritarian era and through the 1990s, the KMT didn’t need or demand too much party discipline. With overwhelming resources in the government, legislature, judiciary, party assets, state-owned enterprises, and so on, they could generally win any policy fight even when a few legislators defied party orders. In the 2000s, without these overwhelming structural advantages, the KMT began to demand more of its members. At the same time, society experienced several polarizing events, such as the 2004 presidential election, the red shirt protests, wild strawberry protests, and the sunflower protests. And then in 2016, the DPP took full power and rolled the KMT again and again, inflicting painful defeat after painful defeat.

All these factors have hardened the KMT. Today, they can expect all their members to show up and fight vigorously for party positions. Party discipline is no longer a challenge; is an expectation.

The fourth difference involves what political scientists would call the set of status quo points. In 2000, the KMT had been in power for half a century, and it had set up the regime as it preferred. The KMT-dominated legislature wanted a few changes, but it was mostly happy with the existing laws and regulations. Its primary challenge was to prevent the DPP-dominated executive branch from making wholesale changes to that regime. For the KMT in 2000, the status quo was just fine. In 2024, it’s just the opposite. For eight years, the DPP has been remaking the regime, and now there are a lot of status quo points that the KMT does not like. Now it is the executive that wants to defend the status quo, while the legislature has a strong incentive to change things.

What this all adds up to is far stronger forces pushing the KMT legislative caucus to be proactive and aggressive in 2024 than in 2000. I’m not arguing that politics will be more contentious now than 24 years ago. Anyone who remembers that era can tell you that it was plenty contentious. What I am arguing is that the struggles will be different this time since it is the legislative majority rather than the executive branch that feels it needs to seize the moment to change the status quo. Then, president Chen was the one always stirring the pot; now, Fu Kun-chi is more likely to be the “troublemaker.”

I’ve concentrated on the KMT in this post because they are the first actors in this drama. They’re the ones trying to make major changes. As the minority, the DPP legislative caucus’s role so far has been to complain, protest, and suffer defeats. The DPP will eventually strike back, but that will probably come from their position in the executive branch, not from their legislative caucus. And that’s probably a few months in the future.

I’m a bit surprised I don’t have much to say about the TPP. So far, they haven’t staked out much of an independent position. They have either voted with the KMT or abstained, thus allowing the KMT plurality to prevail. Either way, they have been useful lackeys in the KMT’s united front. Until the TPP decides to stake out its own position, I’m going to keep my focus on the KMT. Right now, they’re the ones setting the agenda.

One institution that is going to play a major role in how all this unfolds is the constitutional court.* Historically, the court has stayed out of most political fights and has not played a central role in national politics. That is probably going to change over the next four years. With the legislature trying to push the boundaries of its power, the constitutional court will be required to make several judgments about what is and what is not constitutional. Remember, all the justices of the current court were appointed by President Tsai. They are not DPP members and they are not beholden to the DPP party line, but it’s not unreasonable to expect that they might be sympathetic to DPP arguments. I expect to see a lot discussion about the legitimacy of the constitutional court and how partisan it is or should be. We are all going to have to become court watchers.

*In an earlier post, I grumbled about the unwieldy name, the Council of Grand Justices. It turns out that two or three years ago, they formally changed the name.** Now it is, in fact, the Constitutional Court 憲法法庭.

**The fact that I didn’t know this proves both that I’m not exactly an expert on the legal system and that the constitutional court does not currently occupy a central place in the political system.