Suchergebnisse

On the first electoral defeat of the age-old Kuomintang (KMT) in the year 2000, many predicted its disintegration. However, as the 2004 election unfolded, many forecast its triumphant return. This article identifies the key institutional factors that have kept the defeated party from becoming defunct, and the strategic choice that the KMT leadership has made for its political recovery. The party pursued a reform strategy before forging a pact with like-minded parties, and reestablished its leadership among the alliance of political opposition parties. Lacking a vision and unable to confront the most salient political issue in newly democratized Taiwan, the KMT is suffering an identity crisis and struggling to be a party of the present and the future.

This article is the introduction to a special issue of articles written in honour of Peter Mair. The general theme of the issue is party adaptation and change, which is traced here through an analysis of contributions by Peter Mair as an individual author or with co-authors. The result is an assessment of the current state of the art of what can be cumulatively considered Peter Mair's theory of party adaptation and of the debate it has generated up to and including the contributions included in the special issue itself.

Charlotte P. Lee considers organizational changes taking place within the contemporary Chinese Communist Party (CCP), examining the party's renewed emphasis on an understudied but core set of organizations: party-managed training academies or 'party schools'. This national network of organizations enables party authorities to exert political control over the knowledge, skills, and careers of officials. Drawing on in-depth field research and novel datasets, Lee finds that the party school system has not been immune to broader market-based reforms but instead has incorporated many of the same strategies as actors in China's hybrid, state-led private sector. In the search for revenue and status, schools have updated training content and become more entrepreneurial as they compete and collaborate with domestic and international actors. This book draws attention to surprising dynamism located within the party, in political organizations thought immune to change, and the transformative effect of the market on China's political system. -- Provided by publisher