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Issue Voting in the Republic of China on Taiwan's 1992 Legislative Yuan ElectionAuthor(s): John Fuh-sheng Hsieh and Emerson M. S. NiouReviewed work(s):Source: International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique, Vol.17, No. 1 (Jan., 1996), pp. 13-27Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1601219.Accessed: 30/10/2012 23:49

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International oliticalScienceReview(1996), Vol. 17, No. 1, 13-27

Issue Voting in the Republic of China onTaiwan's 1992 Legislative Yuan ElectionJOHN FUH-SHENG HSIEH AND EMERSON M.S. NIOU

ABSTRACT. n the past few years, the Republic of China on Taiwan hasundergone a quiet transformation from an authoritarian to a democraticsystem. On 19 December 1992, forty-five years after the first legislativeyuan election, voters went to the poll to elect the entire body of the secondlegislative yuan. The 1992 election marks a turning point in the ROC'selectoral history. This paper examines the role that issues played in thatelection.The Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party competed onfour main issues during the 1992 legislative yuan election. Based on thesurvey results, the paper depicts the salience of these issues to individualrespondents, the distribution of respondents preferences, and their percep-tions of the two parties' policy positions on these issues. The authors thentest whether these issues play an important role in explaining the varia-tion in voters' evaluation of the two parties, and, indirectly, their votechoices. The results show that among the four issues included in themodel, the democracy/stability issue has the greatest impact on voters'evaluations of parties, followed by the economic and national identityissues, with the environmental issue having the smallest impact.In addition, the paper examines the role of issue salience in affectingvoters' comparative evaluation of the parties. The results show that on theeconomic, national identity, and democracy/stability issues, difference insalience between those who think of the issue as most important and thosewho think otherwise contributes to a difference in the impact of issues onparty evaluation between the two groups, but on the environmental issueit does not.

IntroductionOn 19 December 1992, voters in the Republic of China (Roc) on Taiwan went tothe polls to elect the members of the second legislative yuan (parliament), 45 yearsafter the first legislative yuan was elected.0192-512196/01 13-015? 1996InternationalPoliticalScienceAssociation


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IssueVotingon Taiwan's1992 YuanElectionThe first legislative yuan election was conducted in 1947 in the whole of China,including Taiwan. In 1949, the ROCgovernment retreated to Taiwan after beingdefeated by the Chinese Communists, and many of the legislative yuan membersfled to Taiwan with the government. The ROCgovernment maintained that it was

the only legitimate government for the whole of China, and intended to stage acomeback to overturn the Communist regime on the mainland. Arguing that newelections could not be held because most of the legislative yuan members had losttheir constituencies, the ROCgovernment decided to allow those members electedin 1947 to continue to serve in the legislative yuan in order to symbolize its claimthat it represented the whole of China.However, membership of the legislative yuan rapidlydeclined. In order to keepan appropriatesize for the legislative bodyand to satisfy demands for more popularparticipation, the government held supplementaryelections for the legislative yuanevery three years beginning in 1969.' The number of members elected in thesesupplementaryelections increased graduallyfrom a mere 11 in 1969 to 130in 1989.2Technically, the legislative body was still the first legislative yuan. As a result ofthe political reforms in the late 1980s, the government decided to hold a newlegislative yuan election and to have all the members elected from the area underits rule. The 1992 election thus marks a turning point in the ROC'slectoral history.The purpose of this paper is to study the role that issues play in voters' evalua-tion of political parties at the time of the 1992 legislative yuan election. Our studyis based on data from a telephone surveyconducted a few days prior to the electionby Opinion Research Taiwan, a member of Gallup International, on the authors'behalf. The survey covers the whole island, with a sample of 1110 eligible voters.The first section provides a brief overview of our approach to the study ofelectoral politics. The second section introduces four issues that the two main polit-ical parties were competing on. Voters' ideal positions and their perceived positionsof parties on these issues and the distribution of issue salience among voters areillustrated. The third section first tests a simple regression model to investigate theimpact of issues and partyidentification on respondents' partyevaluation and votingchoice in Taiwan. Then the model is extended to incorporateissue salience into ourstudy. The fourth section concludes the paper.Before we begin our analysis, it should be noted that people in Taiwan are notnovices to electoral politics. Since 1969, they have participated in the supplemen-tary elections for the members of the legislative yuan and the National Assembly.3More importantly, since 1950 Taiwanese voters have been regular participants inlocal elections for offices such as county magistrates, city mayors, county and citycouncilmen, provincial assemblymen, and the like. Consequently, voters' prefer-ences for issues and their attitudes toward candidates, local factions, and politicalparties were, to a certain degree, formed prior to the 1992 election.4

Electoral Competition in Taiwan: A Downsian ApproachIn AnthonyDowns' (1957) original formulation and later development of the spatialtheory of electoral competition, an election is presumed to concern one or morewell-defined issues; each candidate (or party), in the competition to maximize voteshare or probability of winning, advocates positions on those issues, where theassembly of a candidate's positions on all issues is the candidate's platform.Alternative positions on each issue are represented as points on a line so that theset of all election issues corresponds to an n-dimensional coordinate space and a

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J.F. HSIEHANDE.M.S. Nioucandidate's platform is a point in that space. Each citizen, presumed to have a mostpreferred policy on each issue, and perhaps weighing the salience of the issuesdifferently, votes for the candidate who advocates a position closest to his or hermost preferred platform (Downs, 1957;Davis et al., 1970;Enelow and Hinich, 1984;Niou and Ordeshook, 1992).In reality, it is usually costly for voters to learn about various issues and thepositions held by candidates or parties on those issues. As a result, they maydelegate part or all of their voting choices to others, including political parties.According to Downs, If a voter believes a certain party will seek to maximize votesby catering to the desires of a specific interest group or section of the electorate,and if his own goals are identical with the goals of that group or section, then hecan rationally delegate all his political decision-making to that party (Downs, 1957:cf. p. 10). Party identification is an important factor in a voter's electoral calcula-tions as he attempts to select a candidate or a party. Following this approach, weformulate the model shown in Figure 1 to account for voters' voting choices.

IssuepositionsIssue salience - Voters' evaluation of >-Voting choicethe parties between parties

Party IDFIGURE . Issues,PartyID, and VotingChoice.

In this model, we assume that a voter's choice is determined by his evaluation ofthe competing parties. His evaluation of the parties is a function of his party identi-fication, issue salience, and the difference he perceives between his ideal point andthe positions adopted by the parties on important issues.

The IssuesFour general issues are included in our study: the economy, national identity, theenvironment, and democracy/stability.5 In order to ensure that no other significantissues are left out in our study, we have compared our selection of the issues withthe two major parties' platforms (WorldJournal, 1 and 28 October 1992), and wefind that they represent all the issues emphasized by the two viable parties-theKuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).The first general issue included in our study is the traditional left-right issue,involving a choice between economic growth on the one hand and equitable distri-bution of wealth or income on the other. In the last 40 years, Taiwan, under KMTrule, has achieved an economic miracle. Most importantly, Taiwan has creatednot only a prosperous but an equitable economy (Kuo et al., 1981). However, inrecent years, although economic growth remains strong, income distribution hasdeteriorated. One example is the high price of housing, rendering a large portionof the population unable to afford apartments, while enabling those who hold landand houses to become richer. As a consequence, the issue of economic growth versusequality has emerged as one of the important issues in the political debate, as can

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IssueVotingon Taiwan's1992 YuanElectionbe seen by the DPP'sstress on social welfare during the campaign. There is even aWelfare State Alliance formed by some DPP candidates to promote the concept ofsocial welfare. The ruling party is more or less on the defensive, accused by manyof unduly tending to the interests of the rich.The second issue in our study is national identity. This is probably the mostcontroversialand divisive issue of the day. On the one hand, some people in society,almost exclusivelynative Taiwanese, believe that Taiwan should be an independentcountry and that it should be separated from China for good. On the other hand,there are also those, including native Taiwanese and mainlanders, who hold theconviction that Taiwan and mainland China should some day be reunited. As canbe expected, such an issue is highly emotional, often leading to serious tensionsbetween the two groups.Among the two political parties, the DPP is clearly in favorof Taiwanese independence, and the KMTommits itself to supportthe goal of reuni-fication.

The third issue is related to environmental problems. Accompanying rapideconomic growth,Taiwan's environmental condition is worsening.As a result, manyTaiwanese have been advocating efforts to save the environment. In recent years,we have seen many protests against nuclear power plants, petrochemical factories,dumping sites, and the like (Hsiao, 1992). The issue of economic developmentversus environmental protection has become quite visible in Taiwan's politicaldebate. Again, the KMT,s the ruling party, has often been held accountable for thedeterioration of environmental conditions.The fourth issue is about the debate over the supremacyof two competing values:freedom and democracy on the one hand, and political and social stability on theother. Taiwan has been undergoing a transition to a democratic polity, and as aconsequence, part of the old political order endures, while much of a new politicalorder remains to be set up. In the past, the opposition, first the Tangwai(literally,outside the party )and later the DPP,has been at the forefront of the democracymovement. Thus, democratic reform has become one of their most cherishedcampaign themes. Not surprisingly,the KMT as also attempted to appeal to votersas a partyfor political and democraticreforms,but it argues that democraticreformsshould be achieved without infringing upon political and social stability. Among thegeneral public, the pursuit of democracyis viewed by some as more important thanpolitical and social stability to the society, but, particularlyafter havingseen demon-strations in the streets and fist fights in the legislatures, many tend to believe thatpolitical and social stability is more important than democratic reforms.To understand voters' preferences and their perceived positions of politicalparties on these issue dimensions in our survey, we asked each respondent toidentify the positions of his own as well as the parties on these issues on an equalinterval scale running from 0 to 10, in which the two endpoints are identified (0represents equal distribution of income, Taiwan independence, environmentalprotection, and democracyand freedom, and 10 signifies economic growth, reunifi-cation, economic development, and political and social stability). For example, onthe Taiwan independence issue, the question was formulated thus:

On the issue of unification and independence, some people advocate thatTaiwan should declare independenceat once regardlessof Communist China'sreaction; some believe that Taiwan should soon negotiate with CommunistChina so as to accelerate the unificationprocess;and there are others standingin between. Supposethe view that Taiwan should declare independenceat once

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J.F. HSIEH ANDE.M.S. NIOUis at one extreme, represented by a score 0, and the view that Taiwan shouldsoon negotiate with Communist China on unification is at the other extreme,represented by a score 10, thena). What is your ideal position on this issue on a 0-10 point scale?b). Where will you position the KMTon this scale?c). Where will you position the DPP on this scale?

On all four issues, 90 percent or more of the respondents were able to identify theirown positions, and around 80 percent could locate the KMT's ositions. But whileabout 80 percent of the respondents could point out the DPP's positions on nationalidentity and stability issues, only about 55 percent of the respondents were able tolocate the DPP's positions on the other two issues. Our data indicate that respon-dents were almost equally familiar with the KMT'sand the DPP's positions onnational identity and stability issues, but were less familiar with the DPP's than withthe KMT's ositions on economic and environmental issues (see Table 1).TABLE . Respondents'warenessfPartyPositionson Issues.

Able to Economy National Environment Democracy/place: identity stabilitySelf 1054 985 1075 1078

(95%) (89%) (97%) (97%)KMT 858 922 920 965(77%) (83%) (83%) (87%)DPP 603 911 632 863(54%) (82%) (57%) (78%)All three 574 827 616 843(52%) (75%) (55%) (76%)

This result is not unexpected. Among the four issues included in our survey, thenational identity and democracy/stability issues had always been the DPP's avoriteissues to attract votes. Only recently has it tried to capitalize on the economic andenvironmental issues to gain electoral support. For example, during the campaign,the DPP called for the establishment of a welfare state. From a strategic point of view,it is in the DPP'sinterest to create new issues to further differentiate the electorate,because by limiting its appeal to national identity and democracy/stabilityissues, theDPPcannot form a winning electoral coalition as long as the KMThas the internalflexibility to coopt the majority. Riker (1982: 209) stated the matter boldly: Thefundamental dynamic of political life is [the] restless search for issues and alterna-tives around which a new winning coalition can coalesce.... [P]rospective leadersmust as a matter of course raise new issues-of all sorts andjust about all the time.Next we examine whether respondents perceive systematic differences betweenthe two parties on these issues. For each respondent, we subtract the DPPscore fromthe KMT score, thus obtaining an indicator showing the relative positions of theparties as perceived by the respondent. As Table 2 shows, respondents do have astrong consensus with regard to the relative positions of the two parties: a largemajority of the respondents gave the KMT igher scores on these issues (70%,92%,60%,and 88%,respectively), implying that the KMTwas seen by them as being morepro-growth, pro-unification, pro-development, and pro-stability than the DPP.

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IssueVotingon Taiwan's1992 YuanElectionTABLE2. PerceivedDifferencesbetween the KMTand the DPPon Issues.

-10 to-1 0 1 to 10Economy 75 98 407(12.8%) (16.9%) (70.2%)National identity 19 52 795(2.2%) (6.0%) (91.8%)Environment 96 149 373

(15.5%) 24.1%) (60.4%)Democracy/stability 14 90 739(1.7%) (10.7%) (87.7%)

Next, we examine respondents' ideal positions and their perceptions of the partypositions on issues. We locate respondents' and each party's median positions onthese issues. As Table 3 shows, the median positions of respondents on these issuesare 5, 7, 5, and 8, respectively; the KMT'spositions are 7, 8, 6, and 8, and the DPP'spositions are 4, 2, 5, and 3. It is worth noting that the KMT'smedian positions onissues 2 and 4 are very close to respondents' median positions. But on issues 1 and3, the DPP'spositions are closer to respondents' median positions.

TABLE3. RelativeMedianPositions f theKMTandtheDPPon Issues.Issue 1 2 3 4KMT 7 8 6 8Respondents 5 7 5 8DPP 4 2 5 3

If we regress voters' ideal positions on these issues on demographic variablessuch as age, education level, income, occupation, ethnicity, and gender, we findthat the younger generation is less pro-economic growth, more pro-unification,more pro-environmental protection, and more pro-democratic reforms.Mainlanders are more pro-unification; female respondents are more pro-environ-mental protection and pro-stability; people with higher education are less pro-economic growth and more pro-environmental protection. These correlations aresignificant at .05.Our questionnaire included a set of questions regarding issue salience, askingrespondents to rank in order the four issues:

In this election, four issues (the economy, national identity, the environment,and democracy/stabilityissues) have attracted much attention. Among thesefour issues,a). Which one do you personally care the most about?b). Which one is second?c). Which one is third?

Table 4 presents the data. Each of the four issues is regardedas the most importantone by some portion of the population (31%, 13%,27%,and 29%for the economic,

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J.F. HSIEHANDE.M.S. NIOUTABLE . Rankingof Issue Salience.

Issue Economy National Environ- Democracy/identity ment stabilityMost important issue:no. of cases 330 140 290 306% 30.96 13.13 27.20 28.712nd most important issue:no. of cases 316 145 322 227% 31.29 14.36 31.88 22.483rd most important issue:no. of cases 242 127 293 298% 25.21 13.23 30.52 31.04Least important issue:no. of cases 110 559 120 171

% 11.46 58.23 12.50 17.81

national identity, the environment, and democracy/stabilityissues respectively). It isworth noting that on the national identity issue, the most hotly debated issue inTaiwan, only 13 percent of respondents rank it as most important, and close to 60percent of respondents rank it as least important. The salience of the other threeissues is more evenly distributed.Since each issue is regarded as the most important by some sizable group ofrespondents, we are interested in which issue is most salient to which group.The demographic variables included in our logit model are age, education level,ethnic origin, income, party identification, and sex. The results from our logitmodel, reported in Table 5, show that respondents with higher education levelsand mainlanders tend to rank the national identity issue over the economicissue as most important; respondents with a higher education level tend to rankthe economic issue over the environmental issue as most important; andmainlanders tend to rank the democratic/stability issue over the economic issueas most important. From these results, we can summarize that education andethnic origin are the most important demographic variables in affecting issuesalience.Issues, Party Identification, and Voter Choice

In this section, we study how voters' attitudes on issues affect their party evalu-ation and voting choices. First, we specify a voting model that includes respon-dents' attitudes on the four issues and their party identification as theindependent variables, and voters' comparative evaluation of the parties as thedependent variable. Then we extend our model by incorporating issue salienceinto our study.Voters' evaluation of the parties was obtained by asking respondents: Are yousatisfied with the general performance of the KMT r the DPP? Respondents wereasked to give each partya thermometer score runningfrom 0 to 100. For each respon-dent we subtracted the DPP score from the KMT core, resulting in a comparativeevaluation score that ranges from -100 to 100. A respondent with a positive evalua-tion score is supposedly more satisfied with the performance of the KMThan with

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IssueVotingon Taiwan's1992 YuanElectionTABLE. LogitModelforDemographicffects n Issue Salience.

log[Prob(nationalidentity issue)/Prob(economic issue)]constant -1.86 0.55 -3.41**age 0.13 0.09 1.43school 0.57 0.27 2.13*mainland 0.83 0.30 2.80**income 0.01 0.10 0.04party id -0.05 0.50 -0.11female 0.23 0.23 0.99log[Prob(environmentalissue)/Prob(economic issue)]constant 0.66 0.43 1.53age -0.03 0.07 -0.50school -0.51 0.19 -2.73**mainland 0.08 0.29 0.26income -0.13 0.09 -1.54party id -0.36 0.40 -0.91female 0.27 0.19 1.47log[Prob(stabilityissue)/Prob(economic issue)]constant -0.40 0.42 -0.95age 0.09 0.07 1.33school -0.12 0.19 -0.62mainland 0.63 0.26 2.46**income -0.10 0.08 -1.25party id 0.47 0.39 1.19female -0.15 0.19 -0.79Likelihood atio:65-c26dfp .05;numberof observations:031;percentcorrectlypredicted:7.05.*Significantt .05 level;**significant t .01 level.

that of the DPP,while a respondent with a negative score is assumed to have a betteropinion of the DPPthan of the KMT. f the evaluation score is 0, then he is indiffer-ent between the two. From our data, we see that the mode is at 0 (26% of total respon-dents), and an overwhelming majority of the respondents (64%) are more satisfiedwith the KMT,while only a small minority (9.8%) see the DPPmore favorably.Next we show that these issues affect vote choices by demonstrating that respon-dents' comparative evaluation of the parties and their vote choices are closelyrelated. As Table 6 shows, among those respondents who reported which partiesthey intended to vote for (535 respondents in total, about half the total number ofrespondents), if they were more satisfied with the KMTthan with the DPP, 95.5percent of them said they would vote for the KMT andidates; if they were in favorof the DPP,90.8 percent would vote for the DPPcandidates; and if they regarded theperformance of the two parties as equally satisfactory or equally unsatisfactory, amajority of them (59.2%) intended to vote for the KMTcandidates, but a substan-tial minority (40.8%) were for the DPPcandidates. The association between the twovariables is very high (gamma = .95).To capture voters' attitudes on issues, we transform the original scores compar-ing the respondent's own position and his perceived positions of the parties into a

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J.F. HSIEH AND E.M.S. NIOUTABLE6. CandidateEvaluationand VotingChoice.

Voting choice% + (no. of cases)Evaluation Voting for Voting for RowDPP KMT totalMore satisfied with DPP 90.8 9.2 12.1

(59) (6) (65)Neutral 40.8 9.2 14.2(31) (45) (76)More satisfied with KMT 4.1 95.9 73.6(16) (378) (394)Column total 19.8 80.2 100.0

(106) (429) (535)

new score. First, we calculate two absolute values, one for the difference betweenthe respondent's position and that of the KMT,and the other for the differencebetween the respondent's position and that of the DPP. The former is subtractedfrom the latter to obtain a new score as shown in the following equation:Iji = |Zji- Dji - Zji- Kji (1)

where Iji denotes the respondent i's score on the jth issue, showing the relativedistance between his own position and the perceived positions of the two parties;Zji is i's own position; and Dji and Kji are his perceived positions of the DPPand theKMT respectively. Respondents who identify only one of the two parties' positionsare assigned the mean values calculated from other respondents' scores on thatissue, but respondents who fail to identify their own positions or both parties'positions are excluded from the sample.Given equation (1), if Ij is positive, i is assumed to favor the KMTon thejth issue;if Ij is negative, i prefers the DPP to the KMT; and if it is 0, i is indifferent betweenthe two parties on that issue. The distribution of such scores for each of the fourissues is as follows: on issues 1 and 3, the KMT and the DPP have almost an equalnumber of supporters, 45 percent vs. 40 percent and 41 percent vs. 40 percent,respectively. However, the KMThas clear advantages on issues 2 and 4; it was viewedmore favorably by a clear majority of the respondents, 71 percent and 78 percent,respectively.For the party identification variables, we classify all respondents into threecategories: KMTsupporters, DPP supporters, and independents. The reason that onlythe KMT and the DPP are included in our study is that as of December 1992 thesetwo parties were the only viable parties in Taiwan. For example, in the 1989legislative yuan election for 101 supplementary seats, the KMT captured 60.6percent of the total valid vote and 71.3 percent of the seats, and the DPPobtained27.9 percent of the vote and 20.8 percent of the seats, showing that the room forsmall parties and independents was very small. In our regression model, we settwo dummy variables for analysis, one depicting the KMTand non-KMTsupporters,

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IssueVotingon Taiwan's1992 YuanElectionand the other the DPP and non-DPPsupporters, to see whether KMTor DPP support-ers would give the KMTor the DPPhigher evaluation scores than non-KMT or non-DPPsupporters.Our regression model can be formally specified thus:

Yi = PO + P1I/i + P32i + 3i4 + P414i + P5(KMTi) + P6(DPPi) + Ui (2)where Y, is voter i's comparative evaluation of the two major political parties, theKMTand the DPP; Ili (the economy issue), I2i (national identity issue), I3i (theenvironment issue), and I4i (democracy/stability issue) stand for i's judgement ofthe differences between his ideal points and his perceived positions of the twoparties on the issues. (KMT)and (DPP)are dummy variables that distinguish respon-dents who are leaning toward the KMT,leaning toward the DPP, or indifferentbetween these two parties. The results of the regression analysis are reported inTable 7.

The coefficients for the independent variables, including the four issue variablesand the two partisan dummy variables, are all significant at 95 percent confidencelevel, indicating that they are all important factors in explaining respondents' evalu-ation of the two political parties. The impact of the democracy/stability issue ismuch greater than that of any of other three issues, and the environmental issuehas the least impact.Our analysis thus far shows that party identification and issues in generalhave a significant impact on the evaluation of the parties. It does not, however,accommodate issue salience in the model. Issue salience refers to the weightsthat individuals attach to the issues in deriving their evaluations of the politi-cal parties or candidates, and it has long been viewed as a central componentto the understanding of the impact of issues on voting behavior. Severalattempts have been made to capture the impact of issue salience on vote choice.For example, in Aldrich, Sullivan, and Borgida's study (1989), issue salience isinterpreted as the general importance of each issue on vote choices. If we adoptthis interpretation, referring to Table 7, we can say that issue 4 is the mostsalient issue and issue 3 the least salient one. But such an analysis does not

TABLE . Issues,PartyID, and Candidate valuation.Estimated StandardVariable coefficient error t-statistic

Constant 4.00 1.71 2.34*II 1.04 0.30 3.51**12 0.99 0.25 4.03**13 0.76 0.35 2.18*14 1.81 0.31 5.79**KMr 15.27 2.02 7.54**DPP -15.10 4.04 -3.74**R2 = .330 N = 688*Significant at .05; **significant at .01.

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J.F. HSIEHANDE.M.S. NIOUtake into account any differences in the salience of issues among respondents.As our data in Table 4 indicate, different people care about different issues, andeach of the four issues is regarded as the most important issue by a subset ofthe population.Another attempt to capture the importance of salience is Rabinowitz, Prothro,andJacoby (1982). They find that any issue singled out as personally most impor-tant plays a substantially greater role for those who so view it than it does forothers (p. 57). To test whether any issue singled out as most important plays asubstantially greater role for those who so view it than it does for others in Taiwan,we apply the same regression model specified in equation (2) for each issue to twogroups of respondents: one group represents those who think the issue is the mostimportant and the other represents those who value other issues as the most impor-tant.

The regression results are shown in Tables 8-11, one for each issue. Our resultsshow that the coefficient on an issue is generally larger for groups of voters whoregard the issue as most important than for groups who do not rank the issue asmost important. The coefficient ratios between the two groups are 1.01*/0.94*,1.70*/0.87*, 0.10/0.87*, and 1.79*/1.68*, respectively, * significant at the .05 level).The difference in coefficients is most substantial on issue 2. This means that thenational identity issue has a strong impact on a voter's evaluation of parties if therespondent thinks that it is the most important issue.

TABLE8. GroupDifferencen Salienceon Issue 1.Independent Estimated Standard t-statisticvariable coefficient error

Issue1 most mportantconstant 5.24 2.88 1.82I1 1.01 0.50 2.03*12 0.48 0.42 1.1413 0.58 0.62 0.93I4 1.20 0.57 2.12*KMT 14.79 3.62 4.09**DPP -25.35 6.93 -3.66**Number of observations 211Corrected R2 0.29504IssueI not most mportantconstant 3.54 2.12 1.67I1 0.94 0.37 2.56**12 1.27 0.30 4.20**13 0.95 0.42 2.28*I4 2.02 0.37 5.41**KMT 15.36 2.44 6.30**

DPP -9.80 4.95 -1.98*Number of observations 477Corrected R2 0.34680*Significant at .05; **significant at .01.

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IssueVoting n Taiwan's1992 YuanElectionTABLE . GroupDifferencen SalienceonIssue2.

Independent Estimated Standard t-statisticvariable coefficient errorIssue2 most mportantconstant 5.57 5.32 1.05I1 0.24 0.98 0.24I2 1.70 0.72 2.37**13 -0.77 1.03 -0.74I4 2.58 0.89 2.90**KMT 9.88 5.85 1.69DPP -16.02 10.07 -1.59Number of observations 109Corrected R2 0.30349Issue 2 not mostmportantconstant 3.96 1.79 2.22*I1 1.16 0.31 3.78**12 0.87 0.26 3.35**13 1.04 0.37 2.85**14 1.59 0.33 4.79**KMT 16.12 2.14 7.55**DPP -14.58 4.47 -3.26**Number of observations 579Corrected R2 0.33884*Significantt .05;**significantt .01.

TABLE 0. GroupDifferencen Salienceon Issue3.Independent Estimated Standard t-statisticvariable coefficient error

Issue3 most mportantconstant 3.35 2.98 1.12I1 0.95 0.53 1.7912 0.73 0.46 1.6013 0.10 0.61 0.16I4 1.37 0.56 2.46**KMT 16.01 3.68 4.35**DPP -17.31 7.86 -2.20*Number of observations 164CorrectedR2 0.28383

Issue3 not most mportantconstant 4.14 2.07 2.00*I1 1.10 0.36 3.10**12 1.01 0.29 3.46**13 0.87 0.43 2.03*I4 1.92 0.38 5.09**KMT 15.11 2.41 6.28**DPP -14.66 4.71 -3.11**Number of observations 524Corrected R2 0.33370*Significantt .05;**significantt .01.

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J.F. HSIEHANDE.M.S. NIOUTABLE 1. GroupDifferencen SalienceonIssue4.

Independent Estimated Standard t-statisticvariable coefficient errorIssue 4 most mportantconstant 2.94 3.34 0.88I1 1.41 0.55 2.56**12 1.44 0.47 3.05**13 2.50 0.68 3.66**14 1.79 0.59 3.05**KMT 17.24 3.69 4.67**DPP 5.30 8.34 0.64Number of observations 204Corrected R2 0.42050Issue4 not most mportantconstant 4.40 1.97 2.24*I1 0.90 0.34 2.61**12 0.86 0.28 3.02**13 0.13 0.40 0.3414 1.68 0.36 4.60**KMT 14.19 2.39 5.94**DPP -20.32 4.55 -4.47**Number of observations 484Corrected R2 0.30075*Significant t .05;**significant t .01.

ConclusionThis paper is an attempt to understand the role that issues play in Taiwan'selectoral politics. First, we identify the four non-valence issues that the KMTandthe DPP were competing on during the 1992 legislative yuan election: theeconomic, national identity, environmental, and social stability issues. Then, wemeasure voters' preferences toward the two parties on each of these four issues.On economic and environmental issues, the two parties have almost an evennumber of supporters; but on national identity and social stability issues, the KMThas overwhelming support. Third, voters are also asked to weight the importanceof these four issues. Surprisingly, only 13 percent of the respondents think thatthe national identity issue is the most important issue and 58 percent think thatthe issue is the least important one. The salience of the other three issues isalmost evenly distributed. It is also worth noting that respondents with highereducation levels tend to rank as most important the national identity issue overthe economy issue and the economy issue over the environment issue.Mainlanders tend to rank either national identity or democracy/stability as themost important issue.In the second half of the paper, we test a Downsian model of voting choice asapplied to the case of Taiwan. We find that issues do play an important role inexplaining the variation in the voters' evaluation of the two parties, which, inturn, affects their final electoral choices. Among the four issues included in theregression model, the democracy/stability issue has the greatest impact onvoters' evaluation of parties, followed by the economy and national identity

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IssueVotingon Taiwan's1992 YuanElectionissues, with the environment issue having the smallest impact. In addition, onthe economic, national identity and democracy/stability issues, our results showthat difference in salience between those who think of the issue as most impor-tant and those who think otherwise contributes to a difference in the impact ofissues on vote choices between the two groups, but on the environmental issueit does not.

Notes1. The 1978 supplementary election was postponed to 1980 due to the Carter administra-tion's decision to derecognize the ROCjust a few days before the election.2. In addition to those directly elected by the general populace, there were members of thelegislative yuan representing overseas Chinese, who were selected by the president. In1989, 101 seats were elected by the voters, and 29 were elected by the president to standfor the overseas Chinese communities.3. The national assembly is a type of electoral college for electing and recalling the presi-dent and the vice-president of the republic,and it possesses the sole powerof amendingthe constitution.4. There are a number of organizations conducting regular election surveys in Taiwan.The Hu Fu group of National Taiwan University and the Election Study Center atNational Chengchi University are the two most important ones. Apart from theseacademic research institutions, several other commercial organizations haveregularly provided polling information on electoral affairs as well, such as UnitedDaily News, China Times, Opinion Research Cultural Foundation, Gallup USA'sbranch office in Taiwan, and Opinion Research Taiwan (a member of GallupInternational). A careful reading of the survey data in the past decade shows clearlythat voters' opinions on candidates, factions, parties, and certain political issues aremore or less stabilized.5. We should note that valence issues-issues in which all or nearly all of the electorateholds identical preferences, e.g., anti-corruption-are not considered in our study sinceneither the KMTnor the DPP has incentives to take positions different from theelectorate's preferences on these issues.

ReferencesAldrich,J.H., J.L. Sullivan, and E. Borgida (1989). ForeignAffairs and Issue Voting: DoPresidential Candidates 'Waltz Before a Blind Audience'? ,AmericanoliticalScienceReview,83: 123-141.Davis, O.A., MJ. Hinich, and P.C. Ordeshook (1970). An Expository Development of aMathematical Model of the ElectoralPolitics. American oliticalScienceReview,64: 426-448.Downs, A. (1957). An Economic Theoryof Democracy.New York: Harper & Row.Enelow,J.M. and MJ. Hinich (1984). TheSpatial Theoiy f Voting:An Introduction.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Hsiao, H.M. (1992). The Rise of Social Movements and Civil Protests. In PoliticalChangein Taiwan,(Tun-jen Cheng and S. Haggard, eds). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.Kuo, S.W.Y., G. Ranis and J.C.H. Fei (1981). The Taiwan SuccessStory:RapidGrowthwithImproved istributionn theRepublic f China,1952-1979. Boulder, CO: Westview.Niou, E.M.S. and P.C. Ordeshook (1992). A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Republic ofChina's Emerging Electoral System. International olitical ScienceReview,13 (1): 59-79.Rabinowitz,G.,J.W. Prothro and W. Jacoby (1982). Salience as a Factor in the Impact ofIssues on Candidate Evaluation. Journal of Politics, 44 (1): 41-63.Riker, W.H. (1982). Liberalism gainstPopulism.San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.

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J.F. HSIEHANDE.M.S. NIOU 27Biographical NotesJOHN FUH-SHENGHSIEHis Professor of Political Science at the National ChengchiUniversity, Taipei. He has conducted research on the formation of political coali-tions, interest group activities, political consequences of electoral systems, and thepolitics of constitutional choice. ADDRESS:Department of Political Science, NationalChengchi University, Taipeh, Taiwan.EMERSONM.S. NIOU is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University.He specializes in formal theory, international relations, and East Asian politics. Heis the coauthor of TheBalance ofPower (Cambridge University Press, 1989). His mostrecent research focuses on the formation and dissolution of alliances in anarchicinternational systems. ADDRESS:Department of Political Science, Duke University,Durham, NC 27708-0204, U.S.A.Acknowledgements.he authors would like to thank Philip Paolino, Dean Lacy, Peter C.Ordeshook, John Aldrich, John Brehm, Andrew J. Nathan, and Edwin Winckler for theirhelpful comments.

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