Suchergebnisse

Although the "Administrative Reform Program" was initiated by former Premier Lian Chain in 1993, the comprehensive "Government Reinvention" programs which emphasized the notion of entrepreneurial government were proposed and implemented by former Premier Vincent Shiew in 1998, and similar reform strategies and designs have been followed by the DPP administration since 2000. Despite the continuity in reform efforts, full scale reform assessment based on concrete empirical evidences is still difficult to be found. The proposed study attempts to evaluate the results of government reform in Taiwan's local government by focusing on one major question: Have local governments in Taiwan become "smaller and better"? This question will be addressed by looking at indicators in three areas: changes in the size of local government in terms of human and financial resources, changes in the level of corruption, and changes in citizen's evaluation of the performance of local government. It is argued that the progress of government reform at the local level is slow, and the tentative evaluation show warning signals.

This article presents a description of the discipline of public administration in Taiwan and a survey of research on the subject. A total of 1,090 articles appearing in five public administration journals during the period of 1990 to 2010 were examined from three aspects: authorship and productivity, research subject and keyword, and research purpose and method. Comparisons were made across time (1990-1999, 2000-2010) and by type of journal (TSSCI and Non-TSSCI). Research findings indicate that, in Taiwan, the focus of public administration research has been on such topics as public policy, new public management (NPM), public organization management, and intergovernmental relations. The style of scholarship is typically not empirical, though there is evidence of change here over time. In a broader perspective, public administration research has been conducted in an increasingly very competitive circumstance. It is argued that there will be ample opportunity for dialogue between scholars of public administration in Taiwan and the international community in the field.

Abstract. Due to unique historical and structural conditions Taiwan society has long been troubled by a national identity problem. While this dilemma has captured significant academic interests in recent years, most treatments of the subject pay insufficient attention to the subjective factors which shape the national identity discourse on the island. This study attempts to reconstruct, from the subjects' perspectives, the discourses on national identity as they are devised by Taiwan residents. Based on Q methodology, we identify five discourses: Chinese nationalism, status‐quoism, confused identity, Taiwan‐prioritism and Taiwanese nationalism. These discourses are intertwined along the independence/unification continuum and share the common ground of respect for democratic institutions and liberal values and an awareness of Taiwan's de facto autonomy/independence. Our findings stand in sharp contrast to the 'unification/independence' dichotomy or the 'unification/status quo/independence' trifurcation commonly applied by the existing literature. Thus, the findings may serve as the basis for constructing a more comprehensive analytical framework facilitating further research on national identity issues in Taiwan.

Public Administration (PA) as a field of study in China has made tremendous strides over the last three decades. This paper provides an overview of PA research in China from a sample of 2,877 articles published in six top PA journals in mainland China and Taiwan between 1998 and 2008. Our analysis based on these journal publications reveals several critical shortcomings of PA research in China in research reporting, approaches, and methodologies, pointing to a long journey ahead before the full potential of such research can be unleashed. Our comparison of journal publications between mainland China and Taiwan suggests that scholars in Taiwan have made great strides in improving quality of research in a short period of time, and that such experience could provide their colleagues across the Taiwan Strait with valuable insights into the future direction of the field.