Perceptions of Political Outsiders in Taiwan

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Title:	Perceptions of Political Outsiders in Taiwan
Authors:	Trojnar, Anna Rudakowska and Ewa
Keywords:	political outsiders, political amateurs, Taiwan 2016 elections, New Power Party
Date:	2016-05-26
Issue Date:	2017-11-15 02:10:12 (UTC+8)
Abstract:	Taiwan’s 2016 elections were victorious not only for the Democratic Progressive Party (Minzhu Jinbudang, DPP), and its front-runner Tsai Ing-wen, who was elected the President of the Republic of China. Another notable victory was that of Freddy Lim - front man of the metal band Chthonic and his not so long ago established (early 2015) New Power Party (Shidai Liliang, NPP). NPP has emerged as the third largest political party. If only with 5 out of 113 seats (4.4%) in the Taiwanese Legislative Yuan (Lifa Yuan), it was a great victory for the newcomer to the politics to come right after the two giants – the KMT (Chinese Nationalist Party, Kuomintang) and the DPP, reigning over the political stage of the island for the last decades. Popularly, success of such political novices is explained with reference to populist appeals. For example, the recent increasing dissatisfaction with politics as well as with the failure of the current parties to respond to pressing problems in the European Union and in the United States are identified as sources of the success of the populist newcomers to politics. Yet, those politicians who ride on a wave of public discontent with politics or with inability of the current governments to solve the serious social problems are not identical. They come from different political backgrounds, focus on various issues and propose multiple solutions to the social problems. Therefore, lumping together of various political phenomena blurs the differences between the component parts. As Robert Barr (2009: 29) noted, the category of the populist politician is often conflated in the literature with the anti-establishment politician or the political outsider. This article, therefore, turns to the phenomenon of the newcomers to politics (later referred to as outsiders, political outsiders, also abbreviated to POs or novices). It does not look at them through the prism of populist doctrine but leaves the theoretical classifications aside in order to inquire into the popular understanding and societal expectations held towards POs. It focuses on Taiwan, where the recent elections brought about the success of the newcomers to politics with their newly established parties.
Relation:	Conference Citizenship and Multiple Values, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica
Appears in Collections:	[Department of Global Political Economy] Proceeding

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