Adaptive Transformation Of The Chinese Nationalist Party (1980-2008)

The dissertation discusses the transformation of the political party during the transition of democratization. As the political regime becomes more and more democratic, the political party, especially the dominant party of the regime must adapt itself to the changing political institution. During this process, some parties survive, and maybe flourish; others decay, and finally diminish. The whole paper takes KMT (Kuomintang, or Nationalist party1) as an example, and analyzes the KMT' adaptive transformation during the Taiwan's (ROC) democratization from the authoritarian regime to democratic system.The litaretures' review shows that there are two basic approaches about the research of political party's transformation, one macro and the other micro. The macro concerns about the transformation of political party's model, and the micro focuses on the concrete aspects of the political party, not only in organization, but also ideology, government-party relationship, party's strategy, party's targets etc. From the birth of political party to now, the party's organizational model has experienced four-time changes: cadre/ elite model, mass party model(Duverger,1963), catch-all party model (Kirchhermer, 1966, maybe including the professional electoral party model) and cartel party model(Katz and Mair, 1995). Using the different indicators, mainly the relationship between political party to the state and the civil society, ideology's change, party's membership size; the political party has witnessed a great transformation of adaptation. Political parties are increasingly becoming associated with the state such that parties survive because of the state and vice versa. Some consequences of this change are that political party may not want so many members in the first place so that they decide do downsize, the ideology has become more and more weakened, the experts and consultants and the use of communications and electronic technology have been employed. These two approaches are unified to their analyzing objects. The dissertation uses adaptive transformation to test the political party's successful and, to some extent initiative transformation. When the main goal(s) has (have) changed and the political party can not dominate the environment, transformation takes place. Of course, the opportune moment also is decided by other aspects such as the leadership successor, organizational institutionalization, and outside environmental changes.As a traditional old political party with more than 100 years old history, KMT has experienced many changes There are four great changes that affect KMT's organization development, membership structure, relationship with the government and the military: 1919-1924, the first reorganization of the Party by Sun Yat-sen; 1950-1952 (or 1949-1952 by some students) reorganization of KMT; 1986-2000: the renewal of party affairs (dang wu ge xin); 2000- 2008, a new restart and the full reorganization (cong ling kai shi, quan mian gai zao). The first transition happened in mainland, the other three in Taiwan.The four historical changes of KMT can be divided into two different stages, 1919-1924 and 1950-1952 reorganizations are the first stage, as a result, the KMT established the Quasi-Leninist (or pseudo-Leninist) nature, the democratic-centralism and the party-state system. The 1950-1952 reorganization founded legitimacy in returning to the structure of the Party associated with its founder. KMT regains control over the government. In later years, greater decision-making authority was given to the Central Policy Committee (which remained subordinated to the Central Standing Committee). Some obvious changes happened since the liberalization and democratization of Taiwan in 1980's. Of course the democratization of Taiwan is the most important reason to the KMT's transformation. The last two-round reorganizations are about the disintegration of Quasi-Leninist party and party-state structure; as a result, changes happened in the party-state relationship, democratic-centralism, and ideology. KMT has transformed to be a political party with basic intra-democracy, a party within the government (especially in the parliament). This fundamental change during the democratization is called the adaptive transformation of KMT. The transformation of KMT has many new targets, the dissertation hypotheses that the three most important goals had to be realized: the professional-electoral, localization (or Taiwanization) and democratization. To realize these three targets require the KMT's great transformation. In organizational aspect, KMT with the revolutionary-democratic or Quasi-Leninist nature has transformed to the democratic nature. The dissertation analyzes the change of organization structure and the power of intra-party's decision. The goal of localization of KMT is mainly measured by considering the characters of party membership and the core power of KMT: the central committee and the standing committee. Another transformation is that the party-state relation changes from the party-dominate-over-state model to government-dominate-over-party model to some extent. This change means of course, the party within the public offices has dominated the party in the central organization, let alone the local organization.During the past twenty years, the constitutional structure in Taiwan (ROC) has changed greatly, from the cabinet system to semi-presidentialism (or dual-heads system by some scholars). This makes the operation of government become more complicated and also promotes the future transformation of party-state relation.Another part is about ideology of KMT. Political party's transformation has to deal with the problem of continuity and change. On one hand, since the democratization of Taiwan and KMT, the contents of ideology have many changes; on the other, some fundamental nature of ideology maintained. Why the nationalist party is still a nationalist party, not Taiwan KMT (KMT: change and un-change)? Ideological dimension can tell us the anwser. The contents of KMT's ideology have three parts: San Min Chu I (Three Principles of the people, San Min Zhu Yi), the nature of KMT organization and the attitudes to the cross-strait relationship. Three Principles is the most important ideology for KMT, and never been changed in their party program and policy program though amended many times. The nature of KMT is democracy, this idea has realized from the name-in-list to the reality. Cross-strait issue is the most fundamental problem for KMT; the policy on this issue has become the national guideline. Of course, the attitudes to Taiwan-mainland relationship have transformed. Some changes are apparent: such as mainland recovery from by force to by Three Principles of people; non-contact to contact, secret to public, establishment of party-to-party platform, and contact from ordinary person to official or semiofficial.The dissertation includes seven parts. The first chapter introduces the article s' review and analyzes the core definition: the adaptive transformation. The second chapter introduces the KMT before transformation in the 1980's, mainly discusses the party-state authoritarianism and quasi-Leninist party. The third chapter analyzes the societal, economic and political changes in Taiwan and their affection to KMT's transformation. The next three chapters are the core of the paper; focus on three most important dimensions of KMT's adaptive transformation: organization, party-government relationship, and ideology. The last chapter is conclusion: The KMTtransforms and the transformation succeed. All of these targets have been realized. Facing Taiwan's localization and great-China nationalism two different trends, The Taiwanese local nationalism (Taiwan sense) can affect the future of KMT; on the other hand, mainland also has great weight on KMT's future. KMT's future depends on the interaction between the mainland China and Taiwan China.