Understanding Taiwan Presidential Election: A Review Paper
This paper seeks to find a systematic understanding of the presidential election in Taiwan. Based on the Taiwanese national identity issue as the main social cleavage, I try to review the literature about Taiwan's presidential election and find the factors that influence the result of presidential election. I try to sort the factors into three dimensions: issue voting, valence voting and social context. Meanwhile, this paper also contains a brief introduction of democratization in Taiwan as a history background and a short review on the past Taiwan presidential election. The purpose of paper is to shine a light on the future research about Taiwan politics. In future research about Taiwan presidential election, the joint impact of several factors such as gender, civic society and social network should be paid attention to. Several factors such as the attitude towards independence/unification and policy towards Cross-Strait relations of both China and Taiwan should be traced with time to see whether their effect changes. Besides, due to the uniqueness of Taiwan, the impact of relation with not only China but also the US on domestic politics should be taken into consideration.