In this paper, the ¡§divided government¡¨ is defined as a situation in which the president and the parliament are controlled by different parties respectively. The formation of a ¡§divided government¡¨ depends on whether the president is able to control an absolutely majority of seats in the parliament through election or not. Some literature think that a divided government is easy to lead to policy gridlock or inefficiency and even causes stalemate in the legislative and executive branches. However, many scholars feel that a divided government may lead to policy gridlock or inefficiency, but it is in agreement with the principle of checks and balances in the constitutional system and is able to meet the expectation of majority voters. The eras of the Third and Fourth Republic in France had the same political situation as today¡¦s Taiwan, i.e., deadlock legislation, impeded policy implementation, unsteady political situation, and frequent changes of premiers. During the period of the Fifth Republic, the political situation became steady gradually after France went through three times of ¡§La Cohabitation¡¨ commencing from 1986. It formed a ¡§constitutional convention¡¨ and set a good model for constitutional governments in the world.
The constitutional system of Taiwan has been similar to the ¡§semi-presidential system¡¨ of France during the era of the Fifth Republic since the constitution of the Republic of China was amended in 1997.However, in the opinion of Chen Shui-bian, he thought a president is elected by the people directly, and the prime premier may be nominated by the president directly without the consent of the President of Legislative Yuan, so the constitutional system of Taiwan should be ¡§presidential system¡¨ instead of the ¡§semi-presidential system.¡¨ Therefore, after Chen Shui-bian won the presidential election in 2000, he ignored the fact that Kuomingtan held a majority seats in the parliament, which constituted a ¡§divided government¡¨, and refused to hand over the right of forming a cabinet to Kuomingtan, the majority party in the parliamen, or endow the power to a majority alliance.Consequently, the regime changed from a ¡§government for all people¡¨ led by Chen Shui-bian and Tang Fei to a ¡§minority government¡¨ controlled by Chen Shui-bian and Su Chen-chang in the past 6 years. Till now, there have been five presidents of Executive Yuan changed.Owning to the long-term conflict and stalemate between the executive and legislative branches, the politics of Taiwan is in a state of chaos, leading to today¡¦s constitutional crisis.
In view of the situations mentioned above, this article investigates into the system factors contributing to the formation of ¡§divided government¡¨ in Taiwan and the political operation and political influences of individual actors from the viewpoint of historical institutionalism. Also, the in-depth researches and studies were conducted to find out the reasons why the political situation of Taiwan became unsteady and the country fell into the constitutional crisis in the past 6 years after President Chen Shui-bian held the reins of government and discuss how to solve those problems. The author also compared and analyzed the ¡§minority government¡¨ of Taiwan, the alternating mechanism of the ¡§La Cohabitation¡¨ in France, and the formation of ¡§coalition cabinet¡¨ in order to draw lessons from their experiences and establish a good interaction among the president, the cabinet and the parliament.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0827106-172554 |
| Date | 27 August 2006 |
| Creators | Sun, Rong-ji |
| Contributors | Chyi-Lu Jang, Eing-Ming Wu, Ching-Chane Hwang |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0827106-172554 |
| Rights | unrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive |
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