PhD Panel II: Party Politics, Progressive Agendas and Security in Taiwan and Hong Kong

Ching-yu Huang (SOAS); Adrian Chiu (SOAS); Discussant: Professor Julia Strauss (SOAS)

Speaker 1: Ching-yu Huang
Title: Gender Mainstreaming in Taiwan’s Party Politics: An Institutionalist Perspective

Abstract

The institutionalization of gender equality has been the major goal for states to achieve. Parliamentary reforms are especially indicative. As a new-born democracy, Taiwan currently owns the highest level of women’s presences in the legislature among the North-East Asian democracies. Institutional reforms are recognized as the important factors of the high women’s presences in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan. Nonetheless, gender gaps still show up in the nominations of the two constituencies without reserved quotas. Elected members are also expected to represent different legislative interests based on traditional gender roles.

Taiwan’s case shows the limitation of electoral-system-based research, in which parties’ impacts are overlooked. Formal and informal institutions, including electoral systems, inner-party rules of candidates selections and parties' informal practices are the subjects this research looks into. The research further studies how these institutional variables shape women’s political representation. Applying Feminist-Institutionalist approach, this paper attempts to build a comprehensive understanding of the link between political parties, the level of women’s presences and members’ representative behaviors. Descriptive and substantive representations are the major types discussed in this paper. Archives, elite interviews and content analysis are the methods applied in this research.

Ching-yu Huang  received a MRes in Politics at SOAS. She is also a current associate researcher at National Chung-hsing University in Taiwan, ROC. Her current research focuses on Taiwan’s gender-mainstreaming reforms and Feminist-Institutionalist approach.

Speaker 2: Adrian Chiu
Title:Practice of post-handover conventional party interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan: A three-level ontological security framework

Abstract

This paper applies a three-level framework that is based on the logic of ontological security to the case of party interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan in the post-handover years. Rather than through domestication and subversion as the literature suggested, this paper argues that liminal actors enhance their ontological security through interacting with like-minded partners. Establishing the case of liminality for Hong Kong and Taiwan, this paper also finds that conventional parties in the two political units interact in a way that strengthens their stable sense of self. Firstly, there was heavy emphasis on electioneering in their interactions. Secondly, they interacted in a relatively institutionalised manner. And finally, because of the higher level of institutionalisation, change of practices also happened more gradually over the post-handover years. This paper illustrates the gradual change of interactions through the ideological movements of the parties, which is also consistent with the logic of ontological security. Therefore, this paper not only provides the first empirical mapping of the conventional party interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan, it also seeks to contribute a theoretical framework that can explain the close links between political units and their movements

Adrian Chiu is a 4th year PhD student at SOAS, University of London. The working title of his PhD project is “Practice of post-handover party interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan: A three-level ontological security framework”, comparing the interactions between conventional parties and movement parties. His research interests include interactions between Hong Kong and Taiwan, Hong Kong diaspora, China’s foreign relations and international relations theories. He is also an editor for Taiwan Insight.