| In this study, the formation of party identification among the electorate in Taiwan between 1987 and 1996 was examined. The social bases of support for the three major parties were shown, and the functions of party identification were investigated. As the opposition parties were established and the elections became competitive, the electorates had chances to formulate their party identification to deal with the complexity of politics in Taiwan. However, as discussed in this study, second-generations voters were more likely than voters in the other two generations to have stable partisan preference, and they employed their partisan preferences to determine their national identity. Therefore, second-generation voters might formulate their party identification and employ that identification to determine their political attitudes. Because of the limitation of available data, it was not clear that whether voters in the first and the third generations formulated a long-term commitment toward a particular party and employed it as a cue to understand politics. |
