Inter-Party Competition in Taiwan since the 1990s

This paper compares the state of party competition before and after the change of ruling party in Taiwan in 2000. First the balance of power between Taiwan’s main political parties is discussed—the KMT’s electoral hegemony has come to an end, the DPP has won two presidential elections and become Taiwan’s largest parliamentary party. However, there is much continuity in Taiwan’s party politics, with the same two parties electorally dominant today as at the outset of multi-party elections in the late 1980s. The second part of the article analyses election propaganda to consider how the policy content of party competition has changed and proposes that there have been more signs of continuity than change in party issue emphasis over the last four years