Expanding Rights through Confidence: Electoral Politics and Housing Policy Changes in Taiwan (1987-2016)

Chih-Hua Tseng, University of California, Irvine

When do rights become recognized and expanded for newly democratized countries? Existing accounts on democratization in Asia argue that Asian states choose to democratize because of strong confidence in authoritarian leaders to win even after democratization (Slater and Wong, 2022). This paper builds on this account and argues the expansion of social rights in Asian states also followed a similar logic, and it relied more on building a viable model of rights protection that can confidently win elections and maintain stability. Following Slater and Wong (2022), Taiwan, as a prime example of democracy through the strength of the authoritarian KMT party, is the most likely case for regime confidence to matter in electoral politics. Using data from governmental documents, meeting minutes, and interviews with key informants of housing movement activists and governmental officials, I examine how activists were gradually incorporated into the policy network through democratization and electoral politics, and thus, they were able to introduce new policy ideas and construct a viable model for housing rights and social housing policy to be used in election campaigns and later implemented. This research speaks to the democratization experience in Asian states, and it can contribute to the discussion of democratization to include mechanisms of social rights expansion in newly democratized countries.

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 Presented in Session 157. Sources and Social Networks