Evaluation of Local Government Systems in Taiwan
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Date of Award
1997
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Format
Abstract
The suggestion of “the town and country chiefs should be appointed by government and dismiss the representatives of countryfolks and townfolks” proposed by the Tai-Tung County Government to the Taiwan Provincial Government according to a country chiefs i ejection recently has caused a backlash from the representatives of country and townfolks This was the headline that appeared in the southern Taiwan edition of the Taiwan Times on September 1, 1996. Whether the chiefs of country and town should be assigned by government or not is an old issue. Because of the malady resulting from the system of popularly elected chiefs of town and country in 1972, the suggestion of governmentally assigned chiefs was proposed. It also caused the backlash from those who want to maintain the popularly elected system. Each party has his own contention, and the issue was concluded without concrete results and the existing system was maintained. During this period in 1982, the topic of “if the chiefs should be governmentally assigned” was among the political science‘s paper in the high ranking administrator Examination held by government. The government hoped the advantages and disadvantages of this policy would be discussed and advanced through the official examination. Recently, the issue was repeated and caused an argument because of political reformation. Taiwan‘s political situation has been keeping continuously changing in the past twenty years. First, the authorization system was disrupted. As the “Provincial and County s Autonomy Act and the “ Municipal Autonomy Act” was passed under the Legislative Yuan’s third reconsideration, the political status of the local governments had significant change. The governmentally assigned chiefs of provinces and cities was changed to be popularly elected. The local governments were no longer submissive to the central government for everything like before as they had a more popular basis. At the same time, Taiwan Province and the two cities, Taipei & Kaoshiung, have formed different political essences of the same status As they are controlled by different parties, the differences in the welfare of people has gradually shown. Besides, as the democratic appeal rose, the central government, local governments and the parties are competing with each other to win the public‘s hearts. In the meanwhile, they abated the regular administrative planning and used attractive welfare Programs to flatter the public. Their measures often led to the financial difficulty of the province and city/county government. Consequently, how to modify Taiwan‘s existing administrative districts in order to effectively retrench administrative levels to achieve the goals of decreasing the unnecessary personnel and saving the nation’s resources without decreasing the service quality have become important issues among the people who are concerned about Taiwan‘s political ecology. In addition, to change the governmentally assigned chiefs of countries and towns to be two levels of province and counties, the abolition of provinces and the two Executive Yuan’s-governed county/city, country/town were among the issues. This research is designed to analyze the current Taiwan local government system and find the best system for Taiwan based on the public opinions and theories.