| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 政治學研究所 === 104 === This thesis examines the relationship between democratic transition and institutional choice, and the relationship between institutional choice and democratic performance. Theoretically, the focus is on explaining why and how the majority of post-Leninist states have chosen a semi-presidential constitutional structure after democratic transition, and how this constitutional structure tends to lead to certain political, economic and social results in the democratic consolidation period. Utilizing a “most-similar cases” strategy of comparative analysis, this study focuses on Taiwan, Russia and Mongolia, three post-Leninist semi-presidential regimes, with regard to their initial institutional choices during the early 1990s and their more recent institutional performance during the 2014-2016 period.
In seeking to explain these phenomena, this study develops a holistic theory that integrates several perspectives and analytical approaches from the existing literature. The resulting model encompasses several pairs of explanatory factors that are usually viewed as contradictory in the literature, such as “macro” versus “micro”, “structural determinism” versus “elites’ rational choice”, “institutional” versus “non-institutional” factors, and “elites” versus the “public”. In particular, the thesis highlights the causal effects of three key non-institutional variables (or structural preconditions) on both institutional choice and institutional performance: external influence, economy and nationalism.
Drawing on the experiences of Taiwan, Russia and Mongolia, the study concludes several important empirical observations. First, during the phase of initial institutional choice (the early 1990s), the Leninist institutional legacy of dual-leadership provides a structural foundation from which semi-presidentialism takes shape. Against this structural backdrop, country-specific background dynamics, including structural preconditions and intra-elite relations, as well as involvement by the public under crisis situations during democratization, led to the variation in presidential powers among the three semi-presidential regimes. As a result, stronger crises and public opinion more in favor of strongman politics lead to stronger bargaining power for pro-presidentialism elites that, in turn, results in stronger institutional power being bestowed on the president (vis-à-vis the parliament) under a semi-presidential framework. Second, in the more recent phase of institutional performance (2014-2016), the three key non-institutional variables from which particular social background and public opinion are derived, combine with the semi-presidential institutional configuration, influence democratic performance.
This study aims to achieve theoretical innovation through in-depth comparative analysis, and to leverage the perspective of “initial conditions” to gain insights into the process of institutional evolution. Through cross-regional comparison, it also aims to bridge the study of Taiwan with the experiences of post-communist countries with regard to democratic transition and democratic development, and to put the institutional study of semi-presidentialism in dialogue with the mainstream study of democracy in comparative politics. The author anticipates this study to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the issue of the constitutional design of nascent democracies and to the discussion of the overarching topics of political transformation and global democratic development.
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