Abstract

Of the emerging democracies in the 20th century, Taiwan demonstrates itself as a distinguished case as its pre-authoritarian party, the Kuomintang (KMT), was able to prolong its rule in the government after regime transition from authoritarian regime to democracy. According to scholars of dominant parties and party systems, Taiwan's dominant party, the KMT, existed in a dominant party system because it was able to defeat the opposition party, the DPP, until 2000 even after martial law was lifted in 1987. The existing literature investigates the factors of the development of political parties and how it links to the literature which discusses the development of dominant parties and party systems. From the discussion, I argue five factors are the cause of the development of the KMT one-party dominance including 1) social influence from the U.S., 2) the KMT’s ability of crisis management in 1971 event, 3) the development of voting behaviors affected by generational social experiences, 4) the effect of SNTV system on the development of political parties, 5) the effect of the leadership, Lee Teng-Hui, on the KMT’s party internal structure. We found that these five factors confirm our suggesting theories