Designing Coercive Institutions: KMT Security Agencies during White Terror

• In Event: Gender and Transitional Justice and Democratization in Taiwan

Abstract

Can dictators learn from the past when they design coercive institutions? The prevailing theory argues that the divergent types of coercive institutions are established by dictators based on their threat perceptions. That is, dictators face a dilemma about whether to maintain fragmented coercive institutions to lower the risks of coups or to create a unitary and powerful security apparatus to manage the challenge of popular unrest. However, the existing theory could not explain why and how the Kuomintang (KMT) regime was capable of maintaining several security agencies under a coordinating authority, which cannot be categorized as a fragmented or unitary organization. This paper examines the origins of the security apparatus and proposes the concept of unified coercive institutions. This type of secret police functions with different agencies which can fulfill missions separately but coordinated under the same authority. This study employs archival research of the most recently declassified government documents and diaries of leaders to investigate the creation and operation of KMT’s unified coercive institutions. The qualitative evidence illustrates that KMT sought to create a unified coercive apparatus in order to address its perceived threats from both popular and external (i.e., the Chinese Communist Party and its spies in Taiwan). Theoretically, the findings demonstrate that dictators’ calculations to design coercive institutions not only to deal with threats to their power at present, but also rely on the lesson from the previous experience.

Author

• Lin Kirin PU, Tulane University