Despite the growing interest in the causes and consequences of the party primaries, there has not been a systematic inquiry of the East Asian cases on this matter. In order to fill the gap, this paper attempts to make a comparative analysis of Japan and Taiwan regarding the party leader elections. This paper consists of four parts.
The first introductory section will address the political context, summarizing the explanatory factors at political system level for the adoption of primary elections, such as the political culture, the electoral system, and the format of the party system.
The second section examines the rationales for the adoption of primary elections at individual party level, with special focus on main organizational features of the political parties, such as the degree of decision-making centralization, role of the leader and of the dominant coalitions. An overview of the main strategic incentives for each party to resort to inclusive processes of leader selection will be also supplied.
The third section will be devoted to the analysis of the processes of primary elections in the major parties in Japan and Taiwan. This section will explore the process as a whole, taking into account both the rules managing the internal elections and the actual functioning of the latter. More specifically, it will examine various aspects of the process of primary election, such as the party formal rules, the degree of ‘negativity’ in individual campaign communication, the degree of participation in internal elections, and the degree of competitiveness of primary elections.
The fourth section deals with the impact of the adoption of primaries on political parties, focusing on the electoral performance of the party in general elections, membership recruitment and internal participation, and leadership-membership relations in organizational terms.
