(iPoster) The Challenge of Single-Party Autocracy on Later Democratic Consolidation

• In Event: Poster Session: Democracy and Autocracy II & Health Politics and Health Policy
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Democracy and Autocracy II

Abstract

How does the opposition ascend in a nascent democracy when the preceding autocracy has provided extensive public goods? As Paglayan (2021) suggests, democratization may not result in significant changes in public goods when the former autocracy has already catered to the need of median voters. Public goods have a lifecycle; the marginal cost of expanding this provision is much higher when the original scope is already wide. In other words, for the purpose of credit claiming, politicians and candidates tend to favor providing public goods in their nascent stages rather than those that are already widely available. I use the case of Taiwan's mandatory routine vaccine policy to illustrate how an opposition party and its politicians managed to expand their electoral gains after democratization. However, the Democratic Progressive Party, the opposition party in Taiwan, focused on a major public good—infant mortality through expanding vaccines that both foreign and domestic experts believe the former autocratic Kuomintang Party managed excellently. Surprisingly, although it was anticipated that this public good would not yield significant electoral benefits, the Democratic Progressive Party expanded its voter base and support, ultimately winning the presidential election and strengthening Taiwan's democratic consolidation. How can we explain the success of a strategy that, contrary to Paglayan's (2021) expectations, helped the DPP overcome the legacy of single-party autocracy and seize power? Using content analysis and interviews, I identified a strategy that I coined as "artificial inequality", this inequality is formed when the incumbent creates an underprovided situation by targeting the poor. Before the 1980s, under an authoritarian regime, the central government determined which vaccines to provide freely, and the world highly applauded this effort of over 90% vaccination rate. In the democratization process, the opposition party started to get elected to local positions, and they utilized this opportunity to provide vaccines that were "not on the list" only to the poorest voters. This narrow provision did not fit with the goal of vaccine policy, nor did medical experts support it. However, the opposition created an artificial inequality between the median and poor voters nationally. Median voters complained about being second-tier citizens with lower protection. This manufactured inequality not only pressures the government to eventually change its routine vaccine policy in response to the demands of the median voters but also establishes the opposition's issue ownership of social welfare.

Author

• Jou Fei Huang, Academia Sinica