Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:32:15.250Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Partisanship in East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Emile C. J. Sheng
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article compares partisanship across East Asian nations, with four indicators reflecting different dimensions of the concept. Across these indicators, partisanship in East Asian nations was found to be relatively weak compared with most Western democracies, reflecting the less institutionalized nature of their party systems. This could be caused by insufficient time to develop partisanship through mechanisms such as electoral experience and parental socialization. Further breakdowns of income, gender, age groups, and educational levels of partisans showed that more advanced democracies share a relatively uniform pattern across demographics, while young democracies in East Asia showed a more skewed distribution of partisan identifiers, unevenly distributed across income and gender groups. This pattern suggests partisanship is likely to start its development from certain segments of the population and then spread into other segments of the society as a party system becomes more institutionalized.

Keywords

party identificationpartisan strengthEast Asia
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Party Choice and Partisanship in East Asia , August 2007 , pp. 275 - 293
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Converse, Philip E., “Of Time and Partisan Stability,” Comparative Political Studies 2 (1969): 139–171; Dalton, Russell J. and Weldon, Steven, “Partisanship and Party System Institutionalization,” Party Politics (March 2007).Google Scholar

2. Campbell, Angus et al., The American Voter (New York: John Wiley, 1960); Converse, Philip E. and Dupeux, Georges, “Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States,” Public Opinion Quarterly 26 (1962): 1–23; Dalton, Russell J. and Wattenberg, Martin, eds., Parties Without Partisans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), chap. 1.Google Scholar

3. Niemi, Richard G. and Weisberg, Herbert F., Classics in Voting Behavior (Washington: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1993), pp. 210–221.Google Scholar

4. Weisberg, Herbert and Greene, Steve, “The Political Psychology of Party Identification.” In MacKuen, Michael and Rabinowitz, George, eds., Electoral Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003), p. 115.Google Scholar

5. Miller, Warren E. and Merrill Shanks, J., The New American Voter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 117.Google Scholar

6. Thomassen, Jacques, “Party Identification as a Cross-National Concept: Its Meaning in the Netherlands.” In Budge, Ian, Crewe, Ivor, and Farlie, Dennis, eds., Party Identification and Beyond: Representations of Voting and Party Competition (New York: Wiley, 1976), pp. 63–79.Google Scholar

7. Clarke, Harold D. et al., Political Choice in Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1979).Google Scholar

8. Converse, and Dupeux, , “Politicization of the Electorate”; Westholm, Anders and Niemi, Richard G., “Political Institutions and Political Socialization: A Cross-National Study,” Comparative Politics 25 (1992): 25–41.Google Scholar

9. Dalton, and Wattenberg, , Parties Without Partisans, chaps. 1–3.Google Scholar

10. Brader, Ted and Tucker, Joshua A., “The Emergence of Mass Partisanship in Russia, 1993–1996,” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 1 (2001): 69–83; Huber, John, Kernell, Georgia, and Leoni, Eduardo L., “Institutional Context and Party Attachments in Established Democracies,” Political Analysis 13, no. 4 (2005): 365–386.Google Scholar

11. Dalton, and Weldon, , “Partisanship and Party System Institutionalization.” Google Scholar

12. Satoshi, Machidori, “The 1990s Reforms Have Transformed Japanese Politics,” Japan Echo 32, no. 3 (2005): 38; Mishima, Ko, “The Failure of Japan's Political Reform,” World Policy Journal 22, no. 4 (2006): 47–54.Google Scholar

13. Pempel, T. J., ed., Uncommon Democracies: The One-Party Dominant Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

14. Cox, Gary, Making Votes Count (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 245–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Schickler, Eric and Green, Donald, “The Instability of Party Identification Among Eligible Japanese Voters—A Seven-wave Panel Study, 1993–6,” Party Politics 4, no. 2 (1997): 151–176; also see Hrebenar, Ronald J., Japan's New Party System (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000).Google Scholar

16. Bolongaita, Emil P., “The Philippines: Consolidating Democracy in Difficult Times,” Southeast Asian Affairs (1999).Google Scholar

17. Chhibber, Pradeep and Kollman, Ken, “Party Aggregation and the Number of Parties in India and the United States,” American Political Science Review 92, no. 2 (1998): 329–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Laver, Michael and Benoit, Kenneth, “The Evolution of Party Systems Between Elections,” American Journal of Political Science 47, no. 2 (2003): 215.Google Scholar

19. Green, Donald and Palmquist, Bradley, “How Stable Is Party Identification?” Political Behavior 43 (1994): 437–466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Detail information about the dataset can be obtained from www.cses.org. The Philippines is not included in the release. The author would like to thank Russell Dalton for providing the data.Google Scholar

21. Voting Record: there are three types of electoral results in the dataset—presidential election, party list district-level election, and elections where voters can directly vote for candidates. Twenty-one countries held district-level party list elections, and these records are used as an indicator for percentage of party identifiers voting for their supported party. Seven other countries held only elections where voters cast votes for candidates instead of parties, and the parties of the candidates receiving votes were identified and used as indicators. Finally, three countries (Lithuania, Belarus, and the Philippines) have only data on presidential elections, and these data were used. (A2029 Party voted for President; A2030 Party list voted for district; A2031 Party of candidate voted for district.) Google Scholar

22. (A3020 “I'd like to know what you think about each of our political parties. After I read the name of a political party, please rate it on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means you strongly dislike that party and 10 means that you strongly like that party. If I come to a party you haven't heard of or you feel you do not know enough about, just say so. The first party is PARTY A.”) Google Scholar

23. Huber, , Kernell, , and Leoni, , “Institutional Context and Party Attachments.” Google Scholar

24. Duverger, Maurice, Political Parties, Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (New York: Wiley, 1954); Rae, Douglas W., The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); Lijphart, Arend, Electoral Systems and Party Systems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

25. Lipset, Seymour Martin and Rokkan, Stein, Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: Free Press, 1967); Inglehart, Ronald, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Inglehart, Ronald, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Dalton, Russell J., Citizen Politics, 4th edition (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006).Google Scholar

26. Norris, Pippa, Electoral Engineering: Voting Rules and Political Behavior (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

27. Curtice, John, “Elections as Beauty Contests: Do the Rules Matter?” paper presented at Comportamento Eleitoral e Atitudes Políticas: Portugal no contexto Europeu, Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa, April 27–28, 2005; Dalton, and Wattenberg, , eds., Parties Without Partisans, chap. 3.Google Scholar

28. Louie, K. S., “Political Parties.” In Sung, T. W. and Lee, M. K., eds., The Other Hong Kong Report 1991 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

29. Information available from www.cuhk.edu.hk/ipro/pressrelease/040524.htm (viewed on June 26, 2006).Google Scholar

30. Sidel, John T., Capital, Coercion and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Standford: Standford University Press, 2002); Sidel, John T., “Siam and Its Twin? Democratization and Bossism in Contemporary Thailand and the Philippines,” IDS Bulletin 27, no. 2 (1996).Google Scholar

31. Sherrill, Clifton, “Promoting Democracy: Results of Democratization Efforts in the Philippines,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 32, no. 4 (2006): 211–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. Hicken, Allen D., “The Market for Votes in Thailand,” paper presented at “Trading Political Rights: The Comparative Politics of Voting Buying,” International Conference, Center for International Studies, MIT, August 26–27, 2002.Google Scholar

33. The 1997 new constitution changed the system to a mixed-member system in which 400 seats are elected from single-member districts under plurality rule, and an additional 100 seats are elected from national proportional representation. Since we believe partisan attitude to be a long-term psychological attachment, we assumed partisanship in 2001 should be influenced more by the previous system, rather than the new mixed-member system first enacted in 2001.Google Scholar

34. Multivariate regression models are also available on request from the author. They were not presented here because of space considerations.Google Scholar

35. See Dalton, and Weldon, , “Partisanship and Party System Institutionalization.” Google Scholar

36. Perhaps the most unusual case is Hong Kong, where the age gradient is strongest. This may illustrate the predemocratic experiences of the older Hong Kong citizens even without electoral experience. But all age groups also display very weak levels of partisanship because of the unique nature of this system.Google Scholar

37. Chu, Yun-han, and Lin, Tse-Min, “Elections and Elite Convergence: The Path to Political Consolidation in Taiwan,” paper presented at the 1998 annual meeting of the Taiwanese Political Science Association, December 12–13; Cheng, Tun-jen and Hsu, Yung-ming, “Issue Structure, the DPP's Factionalism, and Party Realignment.” In Tien, Hung-mao, ed., Taiwan's Electoral Politics and Democratic Transition: Riding the Third Wave (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996), pp. 137–173.Google Scholar