Title of Thesis¡GThe Effect of Taiwan Local Factions on Local Election¡XA Case Study on Fongsan City in Kaohsiung County Department¡GIn-service Master Program, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies for Social Sciences, National Sun Yat-Sen University Professor¡GDr. Chang, Tao-Yi Graduate Student¡GWu, Chu-Hui Key words¡Glocal factions, election, change of ruling parties, political domain, patronage-clientelism, multiple-party trend Election is a symbol of universal value of democratization. The birth of local factions in Taiwan is closely related to election. Ever since the move to Taiwan, the government of National Party (Kuomintang), with the intention to solidify its political power, took the united and monopolized economic interests in different districts as the conditions to exchange for local powers or the devotion of political loyalty from the leaders of different ideas. For a long time these people with actual local power have been training a lot of ¡§pile legs¡¨ and loyal supporters. With the help of them, a gigantic social relationship network is established. After that, through elections, they enter the local governments of different townships in various counties and cities, or step on the stage of the parliament, thus forming influential political power. The basic function of local factions is exerted on election. In the process of election, local factions play a pushing role in the political participation, and monopolize the local political and social resources. Nevertheless, after local factions have gone through the change of ruling parties and the rearrangement of political domains in the year 2000, whether the patronage-clientelism has any subtle changes subsequently caused is worthy of making in-depth observation. Kaohsiung County is a place of origin for democratization of Taiwan, and Fongshan City is a major township with political and economic influences in Kaohsiung County. With the change of ruling parties and under the impacts of financial reforms, the thesis mainly investigates the past and current situations of local factions in Fongshan City, and expects to further clarify whether factions will develop towards the multiple-party trend.

Regionalism is a concept of extensive proportions and as such is complex to define. This phenomenon becomes much clearer by studying it from different perspectives. This paper focuses on regional political parties and description of their political ideas. The goal of this paper is to examine and compare regional political parties in two Swedish regions: Norrbotten and Skåne. By studying two biggest regional parties in these regions, namely Norrbottensparti and Skånepartiet, I will try to get an insight into the regional politics, as well as illustrate regionalism and its meaning. My primary intention is to examine how these two regional parties experience their regions and what they consider of importance in regional development. By studying these regional parties and their opinion/apprehension about regional politics and their ideological/political affiliation, I will try to illustrate an ideological dimension of regionalism. My intention is to point out differences and similarities between politics of these regional parties, as well as to illustrate approach to the regionalism and its meaning.

European integration was for a long time perceived as an elite-driven project that received public acceptance through what was coined as the permissive consensus. With the expansion of the domain of community actions and capacities, and the turmoil in the ratification processes following changes of the treaties, an increased public contestation over European integration can be observed. European integration now covers policy areas that are more prone to political debate and polarization. The weak public support for the EU has not been matched by electoral support for Eurosceptic parties. Hence, this mismatch increases the political opportunity structures for political entrepreneurs wishing to profit from the public dissent regarding the integration process. This study focuses on the conditions under which European integration is politicized, where politicization refers more specifically to party-politicization. Political parties that oppose the EU and their electoral fortunes are used as a proxy for the politicization of European integration. It is a comparative study over time (1984-2009) and space (14 member states) which assesses the conditional power of a number of enabling and constraining institutional factors that influence the variation in number of Eurosceptic parties, success of those parties, and the success of single-issue Eurosceptic parties over time and space. The analysis demonstrates the importance of the party system features and the use of referendum over European integration for the emergence of party-based Euroscepticism. It also places special emphasis on the combination of factors and their impact on the outcome. The study relates the findings to the democratic credentials of the European Union, with special reference to the role of opposition and representation.

Secessionist movements have been found historically on both sides of the political spectrum, and sometimes have tried to remain apolitical completely, but because of the rise of partisan politics, secessionism has inevitably become politicized. Variations in Western European secessionism can be noticed, and as such, explanations put forward may be deemed insufficient, or incomplete. In my thesis I tested the hypothesis that secessionism varied on the political spectrum because it has been consolidated against ideological Others (in Scotland against Thatcher’s Conservatives between 1974 and 1990). I tested this methodologically through process tracing and theoretically by looking at the consolidation of the Scottish National Party through reactive nationalism. Specifically I analyzed the nationalist discourse used to justify ideological positioning in the 1970s and 1980s in propaganda materials and archival documents, and if and how this ideological choice was reflected or interpreted in newspapers (for opinions on how this consolidation was perceived by the electorate).

In this study I draw on ethnographic research conducted from May 2009 to March 2010 to examine how diasporic and second-generation Iranians in Atlanta produce culture through their dinner parties. It is through these parties, I suggest, that representations of what it means to be Iranian and live in the United States are collectively negotiated as well as handed down to younger generations.

The organizations of national and provincial parties in Canada are understood to be separated from one another. However, it is not known whether this separation extends to the constituency-level organizations of those parties. In order to provide a better understanding of how national and provincial parties are linked at the local level (if at all), this thesis describes and accounts for the local organizations of the national Liberal Party and the provincial Liberal parties in sixteen national constituencies selected from the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, and New Brunswick. Information from interviews with local party activists and participant observation in the ridings is used to develop a continuum of constituency-level party organizations. Descriptions of the activist bases, constituency associations, and local campaigns in each riding allow for each local organization to be placed along this continuum between integrated local organizations, which share important linkages between the national and provincial levels, and differentiated local organizations, where no such linkages exist. The placement of local organizations along this continuum is accounted for by (1) similarities or differences between the national and provincial party systems in the three provinces studied; (2) the actions of incumbent members of the national Parliament and provincial legislatures; and (3) characteristics of the constituencies. The patterns identified lead to a classification of four types of local organizations – One Political World, Interconnected Political Worlds, Distinctive Political Worlds, and Two Political Worlds – that illuminate the different forms of linkages between national and provincial parties that exist at the constituency level. This examination of the local organizations of the Liberal Party calls into question the academic consensus on the separation of national and provincial parties in Canada. Instead, the Liberal Party is characterized as an unevenly integrated party, where the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary parties are separated from provincial counterparts, but where the national and provincial parties on the ground are oftentimes integrated.

To what extent can electoral engineering mitigate deadly intra-state conflict? This paper investigates the impact of electoral engineering on nationalist party behavior in highly-fragmented states. As nationalist parties have been instrumental in escalating inter-group tensions to large-scale hostilities, frameworks for conflict resolution frequently incorporate institutional mechanisms as a means of altering the incentives for conflict exploitation or for inter-group cooperation. Specifically, the paper investigates proportional representation (PR) and preferential systems. To test the impact of these systems, the study observes party engagement in cooperative or conflictual behavior during legislative campaigns in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, and Croatia over several election cycles. Data from the Bosnian cases largely support expectations that PR presents incentives for nationalist parties to “play the ethnic card” and exacerbate communal conflict. In contrast, the Croatian case provides a degree of support for the prediction that preferential voting structures encourage cooperation and thus conflict dampening.

Since 1991, multiparty elections have been held in almost every country in sub-Saharan Africa. These elections, however, have returned the same "dominant" political parties to office time and again. While dominant party rule is often associated with authoritarianism and its variants, many of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa that are operating under dominant party rule are by most other indicators considered to be democratic (freedom and fairness of elections, independent press, protection of civil liberties and rights, etc.). Regardless, many researchers argue that lack of party alternation at the national level precludes dominant party systems from being considered democratic. I contend that previous analyses focused on elections at the national level only and, thus, are unable to accurately comment on the democratic quality of elections in dominant party systems. Further complicating matters, the logic of electoral behavior under these types of systems is not well understood. It is not clear how, if at all, electoral outcomes under dominant party systems affect individual-level democratic satisfaction--something that is intimately related to a country's democratic stability. Finally, we do not know what factors affect individual-level vote choice under dominant party systems and how these compare with more mature, consolidated democracies. This project contributes to our understanding of electoral behavior under dominant party systems by systematically examining several facets of elections in Botswana, sub-Saharan Africa's longest tenured dominant party system. I conduct both within country analysis using data from the constituency level and between country comparisons to examine the relationship between partisan competition and electoral behavior in Botswana and several of its continental counterparts. I use a combination of electoral data and survey data draw a more complete picture of the voting landscape under a dominant party system. My main findings indicate that dominant party systems where truly democratic elections (free and fair) are held exhibit significant levels of electoral competition; exert a negligible effect on democratic satisfaction; and that some citizens, conditional on educational attainment, do engage in ideological voting. Together, this project depicts a more complex and nuanced electoral environment under a dominant party system than previous research has acknowledged.

This thesis aims at investigating the conflict development of Swedish foreign policy debates during 1989-2000. It is rather assumed that the Swedish foreign policy debates have been highly characterized by a large consensus. Despite that, there have been certain occurrences where the political parties have flushed into party struggle and shown disagreements over the party frontiers. This has raised questions about the range of conflict and consensus in such debates where I have studied the political parties' backchats. I have studied situations where the political parties replicate each other in order to investigate the range of consensus and controversy that exists within different foreign policy areas. The purpose has been to determine if Swedish foreign policy has undergone substantial changes during the 1990s and transformed into a more conflict-ridden foreign policy in contrast to earlier post-war era. The empirical analysis reveals that the foreign policy of Sweden has undergone minor changes over time. The period of 1990s consists of a larger amount consensus than conflict and more controversy within internationalistic issues instead of national interests issues during the post-war era. The parties that are most given to politicize within different foreign policy issues are the Social Democrats, the Moderate Party and the Left-wing Party during the 1990s.

The aim of the paper is to investigate to what extent political parties in the Scandinavian parliaments express opinions on labor immigration in line with the policy preferences predicted by the Stolper-Samuleson theorem. A hypothesis derived from the theorem suggests that left wing parties traditionally connected to labor interests should favor restrictions on labor immigration to a greater extent than right wing parties traditionally connected to businesses and market interests. To establish any such trend, parties are placed on a left-right axis according to their given Rile scores. The findings indicate that there is some evidence for a left-right divide regarding parties' assumed factor interests labor and capital, but the basis for these findings are limited and inferences should be made with care.