Political Corrupting in Taiwan

Eric Chang will be presenting the second of his two lectures, “Political Corrupting in Taiwan,” which aims to discuss the historical practice of political corruption in Taiwan. The lecture will begin by reviewing how the nationalist party’s reliance on the patron-client alliance with the local factions and their huge endowment in party assets contributed to pervasive corruption before Taiwan democratized, then discuss how the Democratic Progressive Party won the 2000 Taiwanese presidential election with a clean imagine but quickly followed the footsteps of the KMT toward corrupt politics, and hope to find out whether democratization in Taiwan, buttressed by institutionalized political competition and increased freedom of press, helps reduce levels of corruption. Dr. Chang received his Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University. His research interests are political corruption, democratization, East Asian politics, political economy, political methodology. His publications were included in Inequality and Democracy (Seoul: Korea University Press, 2014), and Electoral Systems and the Balance of Consumer-Producer Power (Cambridge University Press, 2010).