BUILDING INSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY FOR A DIVIDED SOCIETY: THE RECONSTRUCTION OF LEGISLATIVE PROCESS UNDER MAJORITARIAN PREDICAMENT
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Chia, Wen-Yu
Abstract
With a series of constitutional amendments and the two-turnover test, the democratization of Taiwan in the past twenty years has been generally considered succeceful. However, the democratization is a mixed blessing which brings not only democratic achievement, but also political distrust and irrational confrontation among the politicians and civil society. These maladies ofen lead to decisions made upon neither concesus nor rational basis, which would undermines the quality of governance and result in a setback of democracy. Therefore, to better the decision-making process becomes an essential to modify the perturbation of setback of democracy.
This thesis analizes democratic theories and the social context of Taiwan in Charpter 2. First, I argue that the political distrust and comfrontation mainly originate from the antagonism between the authoritarian regime and the anti-authoritarian movement, which focuses on the issues and relevant policies of national identy, ethnical relationships, transitional justice and the distribution of political power. As a result, Taiwan meets the standard of “divided society”as a system of segamental cleavages which lacks of political competition in majority rule and makes minority permanently under domination－circumstance I call“majoritarian predicament”. To overcome this predicament, I suggest the combination theory of consociational democracy and deliberative democracy, then extracting three guiding principles: utmost participation, through and through deliberation, and power-sharing.
In Charpter 3, I identify the Legislative Yuan (congress) as the most competence branch to realize the three principles under the Constitution and the social context; meanwhile, democracy and due process as constitutional values could be the basis for the constitutionality of institution design according to the three principles. Then in Charpter 4, I examine the current legislative process with these principles and then advise a“consociational-deliberative process”to reconstruct the legislative process targeting on motion-proposing, deliberation and voting then realizing utmost participation, throung and through deliberation and power-sharing.
Finally, I conclude my thesis in three dimensions in Charpter 5. From the normative aspect, I reexamine the constitutionality of the process and clearify its relation with veto, judicial review and referendum; second, the institutional aspect, with foreign experiences and Taiwan context, I evaluate the consociational-deliberative process from the aspect of “institutional identity”to assess if this process can reach consensus and make rational decision, which may create identity to each policy and this decision-making mechanism; last but not least, I raise some theoretical suggestions base on the study of Taiwan. I make my conclusion in Charpter 6.
Subjects
divided society
majority rule
consociational democracy
deliberative democracy
accomodation
integration
Congress
democracy
due process
institutional identity
SDGs
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