Taiwan Studies Seminar II

Electoral defeat is often viewed as the mother of party change. However, studies show that parties do not necessary learn the right lessons of defeat. The way that parties react to electoral setbacks is often closely tied to the internal power structure and power struggles in the aftermath of the election. Parties also need to face the demands of competing goals, and the way they react to electoral defeat may be affected by whether the party prioritises goals such as winning votes or office, party ideals or representing members’ interests. While much of the literature on the way parties deal with electoral defeat relies on cases in European party systems, a number of studies have also been conducted on mainstream parties in Taiwan. In this paper Professor Fell focused on the case of one of the oldest movement parties in Taiwan, the Green Party Taiwan. He examined how the party has dealt with electoral defeat and if it can be said to have learnt the right lessons of defeat. Since movement parties are generally seen as prioritising policy or ideological goals over electoral success, he was interested to see whether the Green Party’s responses to defeat differed from earlier studies of Taiwan’s mainstream parties.  

Dafydd J. Fell is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is also the Director of the SOAS Centre of Taiwan Studies. In 2004 he helped establish the European Association of Taiwan Studies. He has published numerous articles on political parties and electioneering in Taiwan. His first book was Party Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2005), which analyzed party change in the first fifteen years of multi-party competition. His second book was Government and Politics in Taiwan (Routledge, 2011) and the second edition was published in early 2018. He has edited a number of volumes on Taiwan, with the most recent Taiwan Studies Revisited, published in 2019, Taiwan’s Economic and Diplomatic Challenges and Opportunities (2021) and Taiwan’s Contemporary Indigenous Peoples (2021). His latest single authored book is Taiwan’s Green Parties (Routledge 2021) He is also the book series editor for the Routledge Research on Taiwan Series.