Written by Russell Sherrard-Smith.
Image credit: 本處徐大使佩勇應邀參加臺商高領企業慈善基金會在邦板牙 (Pampanga)省Sitio Target學校舉辦的年度聖誕物資捐贈活動，幫助當地艾沓族(Aeta)原住民及弱勢民眾。(111-12-11) by 駐菲律賓臺北經濟文化辦事處 Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in the Philippines. / Wikimedia.
Taiwan’s high democratic quality is partly owed to high institutionalisation in its major parties. Young democracies typically see institutional power re-organised, so patterns of behaviour risk becoming informalised. As institutionalised parties manage these relations in reliable patterns, by representing non-state interests in state institutions, they can contribute to smooth regime changes. In Taiwan’s case, opposition parties rooted in democratic movements – particularly the DPP – provided a means for activists to pressure Lee Teng-hui’s government to accelerate democratic reforms.
The Philippines’ near-coincidental transition (beginning in 1986 and pursued with earnest to the late 1990s) overturned Ferdinand Marcos’s martial law regime, led by a broad coalition including disaffected landowning dynasties, military officers, trade unions and church leaders. But institutionally absent were parties – although most leading figures had memberships, their primary affiliations were often with a dynasty.
Landowning dynasties, or clans, have been the dominant socio-political institutions since the American colonial period when they began to co-opt state institutions for their interests. Through informal patron-clientelist networks, they are primarily responsible for managing institutional relations. Parties exist but are often short-lived, personalist vessels discarded once ambitions are met. This unwieldy system has produced an oligarchical, flawed democracy, and parties are not reliably politically significant institutions.
These differing contexts make comparative analyses difficult to operationalise. The conditions for assessing institutional changes and outcomes vary significantly and can undermine the ability to make broader generalisations. This has historically dissuaded comparisons between Taiwan and the Philippines in political science. However, attempts have been made – typically in broader quantitative studies of East and Southeast Asian, post-colonial, or “third-wave democracy” states, which confirm the correlation between highly institutionalised party systems (but not necessarily of individual parties) and high democratic quality in these younger democracies.
So, what can a deeper qualitative study of Taiwanese and Philippine party institutionalisation contribute to our understanding of democratic quality? Taiwan is, by many quantitative and qualitative measures, one of the closest post-colonial Asian states to a “full” liberal democracy. But the Philippines is also a democracy if a highly imperfect one, and more links the two than physical proximity – state-building from inherited multi-imperial colonial institutions, free and fair national elections, active civil societies and significant public support for liberal democratic principles. Philippine democracy has been described as a ‘paradox’ because it superficially possesses so many necessary qualities. Comparing its deeper institutional dynamics to its historical, geographical, and political counterpart in Taiwan may, therefore, expand understanding of the conditions that improve democracy. The two are not similar, but they are fundamentally comparable. Indeed, growing awareness of their proximity has prompted a growth in deeper comparative political, historical and cultural studies in recent years, though none yet compare individual parties.
A closer look at the two more successful historical opposition parties, Taiwan’s DPP and the Philippines’ Liberal Party (or LP), reveals further points of comparison, though they do not perfectly overlap. Both are major parties (the LP less so) and somewhat unreliably associated with liberal democratic principles, having spent time as outlawed opposition under martial law periods and in this weaker state associating closely with other democratic social movements. Afterwards, they have spent significant time as governing parties in the present democratic period, drawing on their democratic credentials (to varying extents) to win elections and then attempt reformist agendas.
Both also have varying associations with clientelism, though the LP is much more so than the DPP, which occasionally calls into question their institutional independence. From a historical institutionalist perspective, these similar experiences produce in them common functions as both legitimate wielders of state authority and as articulators of civil society interests (though not exclusively), ostensibly to promote democratisation. If viewed as agents of democracy, a joint analysis of their stability and organisation can reveal how effectively they can assist the democratic process.
Party institutionalisation has been defined and operationalised in many ways, often in multi-dimensional frameworks – internal and external, structural, and attitudinal – which acknowledge how parties rarely institutionalise evenly, as well as how the dimensions are often interrelated and should be studied together. It is still possible to draw limited conclusions from analysing a single dimension, particularly the internal, structural dimension that Panebianco calls ‘systemness’ – the structures, routines and procedures that make up a party’s overall organisation, both formally and informally. Better ‘systemised’ parties, therefore, have greater efficiency and unity, which in turn make them more capable of achieving their goals. As unreliable agents of democratic reformism, the LP and DPP’s systemness have implications for their state’s democratic quality.
There are many ways to measure systemness, but two variables neatly illustrate observations in the LP and DPP. Firstly, the formal decision-making structure comprises the sub-institutions and actors that coordinate party activities, clarifying the power of the official tools available to the party. The highly centralised, fundamentally Leninist structure of the DPP is adhered to regularly and somewhat rigidly, routinising party procedures over its 40-year existence. Major reforms have taken place, most recently in the 2000s, but it is still recognisably the same party structure as in 1986. Despite inflexibility, it appears able to quell disunity when electoral prospects are poor, contributing to low impetus for further reform.
Meanwhile, the LP is very poorly institutionalised in this component – some of the bodies mentioned in its constitution appear to have unofficially disappeared, and procedures in some decentralised local chapters have been co-opted by powerful dynasties altogether. However, there are prospects for institutionalisation, as the 2016-22 leadership of Leni Robredo has made efforts to re-organise the party by drawing on the experience of the Naga City chapter, where her husband was mayor. Under his leadership, the local LP maintains wide support through close cooperation with local NGOs, rather than from dynasties, reducing their influence. Combined with dwindling electoral prospects after 2016, dependence on dynasties is gradually declining. However, it is still unclear if these reforms will be formalised at the national level, as the constitution remains unamended and the new institutions and procedures introduced are weakly routinised.
Leadership stability, depending on the degree of centralisation and personalism, is emblematic of institutional continuity within the party. The DPP mandates that, if it is the governing party, the ROC president must also be its chairperson (Article 15-1). But its institutionalisation is marginally weaker here, as the tradition of party chair resignations after poor electoral results in frequently changing leaderships – Tsai Ing-wen resigned three times throughout her tenure. High routinisation of party structure keeps the DPP organised despite the internal fractures this causes, but the centralised chairmanship makes it susceptible to instability, and Lai Ching-te’s challenge to Tsai Ing-wen for the presidential nomination in 2019 exposed the potential shortcomings of poor leadership stability despite Tsai’s strong position.
Meanwhile, the LP’s president and chair appear to lead jointly in practice, despite the constitution saying otherwise. President Edcel Lagman and Chair Francis Pangilinan were ‘elected’ to their positions by the National Executive Council (NECO) in the interim and then permanent, capacities in 2022, after a short vacancy, with the latter serving a full term from 2016. The lack of acrimony over their selection reflects continued leadership stability, but this may also be partly attributable to a lack of enthusiasm following yet another poor electoral showing that year. The DPP still holds a routinised advantage over the LP in this variable, as the latter appears unsure about its own leadership selection procedures.
The ‘genetic model,’ or the party’s historical formation and consolidation, is an explanatory historically institutionalist component of systemness, although it is not comprehensive. The DPP’s genetic model has been more conducive to its institutionalisation, as Taiwan’s political system favours formal, empowered institutions as significant political actors rooted in the KMT’s party-state mode of governance. Emergence from the Tangwai movement in the 1970s and 80s ensured close links with grassroots social movements from the start, and the DPP’s internal structures reflect the tension between high centralisation and democratic accountability.
Meanwhile, the Philippines’ history of entrenched landowning elite interests hollowing institutional power out has not spared the LP, despite its longevity. It inadvertently bucked the personalist trend in the Marcos years by joining the democratic opposition movement but could not escape its past and continues to be dominated by patron-clientelism. However, it retains its reputation and identification with the democratic values that underpinned the 1986 EDSA Revolution, and a meaningful identity as a base for institutionalisation has emerged centred on ‘good governance’ reformism.
This comparison corroborates previous characterisations of Taiwan’s parties as highly institutionalised and the Philippines’ as poorly institutionalised. However, the LP has demonstrated a tendency toward stronger organisation in recent years, as the collapse of electoral support after the 2016 election and Naga-inspired reforms have jointly increased its independence against dynasties. But the greater significance of the comparison is that it is possible – despite significant systemic differences between the two, Taiwan is not isolated from its less democratic, less developed southeast Asian neighbours, and vice versa. The common experience of building democracy from institutions that were imposed and fundamentally undemocratic provides a base from which their divergent developments can be jointly assessed. There remain misunderstandings between Taiwan and the Philippines over how their democracies work, but finding common ground is a useful starting point for building greater knowledge.
Russell Sherrard-Smith is a graduate of MA Taiwan Studies at SOAS, with a BSc in Politics at the University of Surrey. Russell’s research interests are primarily in the evolution of democratic institutions and their relationship with civil society, particularly in comparative contexts between East and Southeast Asian countries
Taiwan Insight 