Government Spending and Party Fragmentation in South Korea and Taiwan

Abstract

How does government spending affect party fragmentation in emergent democracies? This paper considers that parties affect the environment within which they compete. As a result, supply-side factors - such as government spending - may affect party fragmentation. We investigate how government spending works as a supply-side factor in South Korea and Taiwan. The paper provides three findings of interest. First, qualitative case descriptions of South Korea and Taiwan since democratization shows a pattern of party splits following conflicts over resource use to develop winning strategies for political office. Second, statistical analyses support the qualitative investigation: they show that in both South Korea and Taiwan, government spending is not capitalized to win legislative office. Third, the statistical results also show that legislative fragmentation increased with increased defense spending and decreased when civilian spending is increased. In conjunction, the results show that where government spending is not capitalized to develop winning strategies for political office or where resource-usage shows a pattern of competition between executive versus legislative offices, it leads to party fragmentation and volatility.