By ALBERT CHOU
Even if my specialty is in American politics and public policy, I frequently focus my attention on politics in Taiwan. But the more I learn in political “science,” the more I reserve my personal opinion on the Taiwanese politics. Almost three years ago, when the little tiny airplane landed in this Midwest small down, I started to flip my approach in considering Taiwan and its destiny. It changes from an insider's approach to an outsider's approach. This what I called inside-out approach really expands my originally insular world.
My training deters me from engaging in emotional type of discussion about politics. If strong emotion, ideology, or even partisanship is the built-in function of a political scientist's thinking process, then the power of his or her statement is probably discounted. This explains why some political analysts, meanwhile political science professors in Taiwan, are frequently not respected. They either jump in politics, becoming political candidates running for office, or they give up their duty as a critic of a-theoretical kind of argument. Their statement, which seems insightful but is actually superficial, inevitably reduces them to ordinary type of political commentators. Those commentators are frankly not much different from ordinary citizens. In order to make their audiences better understand their language, the political science professors oversimplify their account at the expense of the legitimacy of political science; political science “should have” been regarded as profession for long. But it wasn't.
People who study political science like me are often weighed against journalists. Aren’t they the same idiots? Both of them consistently say something descriptive rather than analytical, not to mention theoretical.
This is discouraging since I have been spending most of my twenties pursuing the knowledge people might think mediocre. I had a BA in journalism and to the best of my knowledge I can say that the theoretical ground of journalism is damn weak. Journalism is just a fledgling discipline where Journalism scholars (not communication scholars, be careful) borrow a great deal amount of theories from other fields. But Political science is not the case at all. For example, the political philosophy area, one branch of the modern political science, originates from at least Plato’s and Confucian’s thoughts. It was thousands of years ago!!
Bragging what political scientists don’t want to do didn’t show what they are able to do. Let me offer an analytical observation of the current difficulty where A-Bian tries to survive. Where I ponder the Taiwanese politics is distant to where the politics occurs. Thus I cannot sentimentally attach to what is going on now in Taiwan because I am not there. But one good thing about my absence in Taiwan is I can look into the whole picture emotionlessly and thus analytically.
If I were a political analyst assigned a task of publishing one newspaper article to explicate why KMT always let DPP off hook. For decades, KMT has been kicked ass in its confrontation with DPP. For example, James Song appealed to the pan-blue constituencies in the name of recalling the presidency of Chen Shui bian. Even if the 2008 hopeful Ma Ying-Jeou well understood that Song tactically utilizes this “nominally” appeal so as to keep alive his underdog candidacy for the Taipei mayor election, Ma can do nothing but following Song’s propaganda. The bottom line: Song’s hawk image seemingly comes back to the mind of the “deep blue” electorates even though his approval rating slid to new low in the aftermath of his appeal. Ma gave up the idea of recalling Chen and even worse, Ma’s charisma has been more or less damaged due to the swing voters and pan blue voters’ distaste for his indetermination in dealing with the whole event.
Why is KMT such a strategically inactive party? Why is DPP relatively good at getting rid of trouble it makes? I, as a political scientist, present a model where the characteristic of DPP and KMT get explained. DPP, as a party that grew up at the grassroots level, or colloquially the street level, has been used to fights that engage propaganda, national identity, emotional politics, political protest and things unrelated to administration. Put differently, DPP sucks in the administrative dimension, economy especially.
KMT, on the other hand, with its characteristic of the elite party, has produced many committed and capable bureaucracies for Taiwan but politicians come out of KMT has a miserably scant experience in fomenting the emotion of constituencies. In a word, KMT is better at administrating a government than running elections. That is why KMT was kicked out of office in the 2000 presidential election earlier than it should have been. Remember an analysis like this is nonpartisan and more importantly analytical. Also remember an analysis like this has not been empirically tested. After empirical examination my model might be later supported or it might not. My model is thus a hypothesis and it, if according to the behaviroalism paradigm, has to be grounded on the empirical theory.
Unfortunately, I rarely see political scientists or political analysts in Taiwan do this type of job. Instead, terrible analysis is always offered by so called “experienced reporters” or “political pundits.” Their a-theoritical, bandwagon type of conversation is claimed to base on their narrow work experience. As a matter of fact, because all these shitty political commentators, the quality of our fourth right, the media, has been completely debased. To be fair, however, the celebrity like Sisy Chen (陳文茜) has been trying to organize her program in a more analytical way even if to me her party skirt has sometimes damaged what she argues. But at least her argument is analytical. It is a good start for a democratically naïve Taiwan.
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