Policy Innovation and the Role of the Bureaucracy: An Analysis of the Governing Disability of Taiwan after the End of Martial Law
Huei-Huang Wang*
Abstract
Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan has seen three changes of ruling party alternation. In 2016, the DDP achieved for the first time dominant positions in both the administrative and legislative branches. However, even just a little over one year since taking office, President Tsai’s administration has made a series of governing blunders like former President Chen and Ma. This paper summarizes the evolution of the incapacitation of the Taiwanese government and the role of the bureaucratic system from the later years of President Lee, Teng-hui’s terms of office (1996-2000) to the end of President Ma’s (2008).
This paper will then examine popular explanations for the trend of democratic governance failures as outlined before. By applying Daniel P. Carpenter’s approach of policy innovation to bureaucratic autonomy and capacity, this paper argues that in the process of the Taiwanese democratization, power diversification featured by multiplication of politician-bureaucrats-business ties is the root cause of the weakening of bureaucratic autonomy and capacity. Together, down with government performance. Major political parties are responsible for forging consensuses, visions, building governing coalitions across political parties, bureaucrats, and civil groups to pull the country out of the current impasse. They have to initiate cross-disciplinary policy integrations accompanied by bureaucratic reform so as to rebuild bureaucratic capacity and autonomy.
Keywords: policy innovation, roles of bureaucracy, cross-disciplinary integration, consensual governance, politician-business- bureaucrats ties
* Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Soochow University, email: wang0329@scu.edu.tw.