| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 社會學研究所 === 95 === Civic engagement in modern societies has been an important academic issue, both in Western countries and Taiwan. Unlike that in the Western societies, the civic engagement in Taiwan has a more complex operating mechanism in that authoritarian ruling in the past and democratization of Taiwan in the recent decades have a joint effect on the associations. On the one hand, because democratization greatly reduced the constraints on civic engagement, all kinds of associations have become prosperous and goal-oriented associations become the most important form of civic engagement. On the other hand, under the influence of traditional culture, primary associations still keep their power even with the collapse of authoritarian regime; they still play a key role in the local elections.
This thesis analyzes the network structure formed by associations to understand the special meaning of civic engagement in Taiwan after the abolition of martial laws and the changes the network may encounter after the democratization. It looks at three investigations of Social Change Survey in 1992, 1997, and 2002 to find the structure and change from the network embeddedness of associations and political parties and from the effects of social capital obtained by association network.
This thesis presents the following important findings: First, the associations in Taiwan are not as prosperous as mentioned in previous research. The data show that the proportion of participants among Taiwanese civilians decreases and the educational degree of the members does not significantly increase. Second, in the three surveys, the embeddedness of political parties and associations does not show obvious change. Generally speaking, KMT still strongly embed in association network, while DPP remains isolated from the network. The shift of political power does not cause strong effects. Third, the grassroots associations still are important basis of social forces, having a high ratio of members joining other associations. However, because of specialties of their members, the capacity of the grassroots associations is limited. Finally, association network has its effects on accumulating social capital, which can be shown by the capacity of association network and by the structural locations of different associations. However, such social capital in Taiwan is selective. Generally speaking, people who join the associations tend to support the pan-blue parties.
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