International

Review of
Administrative
Article Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
78(2) 305–327
The historical institutionalism ! The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852312438523
reform ras.sagepub.com

Mei-Chiang Shih
Tunghai University, Taichung, Taiwan

Milan Tung-Wen Sun

National Chi Nan University, Nantou, Taiwan

Guang-Xu Wang
National University of Tainan, Tainan, Taiwan

Abstract
Government restructuring has been discussed extensively in Taiwan for more than
three decades, and the first NPM-style administrative reform programme, which
emphasizes ‘a leaner and businesslike government’, was launched in 1996. Since then,
NPM has been the key guideline producing a strong path-dependence effect for subse-
quent administrative reform programmes in Taiwan. This article examines the trajectory
of administrative reform in Taiwan from 1949 to 2010, the latter being the year when
the Organizational Act of the Executive Yuan was passed, which symbolically represents
the end of the current phase of administrative reform. Similar to many Asian countries,
exogenous and endogenous factors have induced efforts at administrative reform in
Taiwan. Although it is argued that it is difficult to generate any common path of admin-
istrative reform among Asian countries, the analysis of the case in Taiwan may provide
some observations for future discussions on this topic, such as evidence of political
manipulation, the transformation of the role of the state, the desire for an indigenous
reform strategy, and the demand to revitalize the civil service system.

Points for practitioners

1. Administrative reform is a political process, and pubic servants have to deal with
value conflicts carefully.
2. Professionalism and political neutrality are the two most important things in the
administrative reform process.

Corresponding author:
Mei-Chiang Shih, Tunghai University, Taichung, 40704, Taiwan
Email: [email protected]

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306 International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

3. Public servants can have a critical role in the administrative reform process when
the critical juncture appears, but democratic values and public purposes should be the
cornerstone for the bureaucrats in action.

Keywords
administrative reform, critical juncture, developmental state, historical institutionalism,
national development conference, path dependence, punctuated equilibrium

Introduction
Since the 1980s, the notion of a ‘lean, small, and capable’ government has been
the benchmark for the administrative reform movement, and the era of retrench-
ment has emerged on the horizon (Pierson, 1994, 2001). After the lifting of
Martial Law in 1987, drastic changes in the political and economic environments
both internationally and domestically have imposed severe challenges upon
the Taiwan government. Its traditional administration system was no longer
capable of responding to the swift changes caused by globalization and
democratization.
New Public Management (NPM), the underlying management philosophy of the
recent reform movement, was introduced in Taiwan in the late 1980s.
Administrative reform is definitely a painful and conflict-filled process. Peters
(2001: 362) observed, when examining the history of such reforms, that they
have not always been a success, and that the ultimate obstacle might be the
Weberian bureaucratic system itself. The continuous expansion of the size of the
government paves the way for speculation about the optimization of bureaucratic
interests, and ‘big government’ encourages accusations of government failure
(Tullock et al., 2002). Privatization to downsize government is considered to be
an urgent task for dealing with the problem. However, the essence of administra-
tive reform is politics (Maynard-Moody et al., 1986), or it can be perceived as a
political activity of the administrative sector (Knott and Miller, 1987: ix). The cost
of reforms induced by internal and external political elements cannot be ignored
(Fesler and Kettle, 1996: ch. 5).
There have been many discussions on administrative reform in Taiwan by local
scholars of public administration (Hsiau, 1996; Shiau, 1995; Shih, 2009; Sun, 2002).
Most of their studies have focused on the idea of an entrepreneur government, the
relationship between NPM and reinventing government, or the legal dimension of
reform. Relatively less effort has been expended on examining the reform from a
historical perspective. This article examines Taiwan’s administrative reform from
the viewpoint of historical institutionalism. The balance of the article is structured
as follows. The section that follows reviews historical institutionalism and provides
the research framework. Administrative reform in Taiwan according to the
phases of antecedent conditions, critical juncture, punctuated equilibrium, and

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Shih et al. 307

the outcome of institutional development are then discussed sequentially. The

research findings and implications are discussed, and conclusions are drawn.

Historical institutionalism
Historical institutionalism is sensitive to the operation of power among actors, and
to the effects of institutional change initiated by critical juncture and positive feed-
back from the institution itself (Pierson, 2000a, 2000b). It emphasizes the under-
lying interactive mechanism that will influence an individual actor’s choice of
action, and it is capable of explaining how a certain institution of governance is
selected. Historical institutionalism treats stakeholders as self-interest maximizing
actors, and sees different institutional structures as setting different political rules of
the game, which subsequently shapes the preferences of stakeholders for action
(Steinmo and Tolber, 1998: 168). Essentially, historical institutionalism views the
institutional environment as an independent variable, the political behaviour of
actors as the dependent or intermediary variable, and policy outcome as the
dependent variable. In order to understand institutional change, it proposes the
examination of three critical elements: path dependence, critical juncture, and
punctuated equilibrium.
Path dependence suggests that ‘what happened at an earlier point of time will
affect the possible outcomes of a sequence of events occurring at a later point in
time’ (Pierson, 2004: 20). Once a particular track is chosen, the costs of reversal will
be very high. In the presence of positive feedback, the probability of further steps
along the same path increases with each move down that path (Pierson,
2000b: 252), and the reversal might invoke conflicts or the increasing sunk costs.
Therefore, there is a tendency for path dependence to generate self-reinforcement
sequences or positive feedback.
Critical juncture is a point during which a particular policy is selected from more
than one policy alternative. Despite the existence of other policy alternatives, once
a particular choice is designated, it becomes very difficult to return to the old track
later on. The occurrence of critical juncture is the effect of the interactions of social,
economic, political, or international forces. From the policy-making perspective,
critical juncture is similar to Kingdon’s policy window in the policy output process
(Koppenjan and Klijn, 2004: 54). The opening of a policy window is the result of
interactions of three parallel streams – the political stream, policy stream, and
problem stream (Figure 1). The convergence of the three streams and the opening
of the policy window will lead to the emergence of a winning coalition’s policy
alternative. Both critical juncture and policy window emphasize the influence of
actors, the political environment, and incidental or unpredictable political oppor-
tunities in the development of an institution.
Punctuated equilibrium illustrates the situation in which a long period of sta-
bility is punctuated by a crisis, abrupt institutional change occurs accordingly, and
a new institutional stasis sets in thereafter (Krasner, 1984). Mahoney (2001: 114)
argued that after a particular institutional arrangement is selected at a critical

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308 International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

Problem Policy
window window

Problem
stream

Policy
stream
Political
Political stream window

Figure 1. The creation of a policy window

Source: Koppenjan and Klijn (2004: 54).

juncture, a subsequent but more deterministic causal process will reproduce the
institution without the recurrence of the original causes. The reproduction mech-
anism will produce a ‘locked-in’ effect, in which a new course of action is locked
into a certain institutional pattern that is very difficult to reverse.

Research framework
In this research, the analytical framework proposed by Mahoney (2001) is revised
and applied to analyse administrative reform in Taiwan (Figure 2). The arrows in
Figure 2 indicate the effects of path dependence. First, antecedent conditions refer
to the historical factors that define and shape the available policy alternatives.
Second, critical juncture is a point at which an institutional change is initiated or
a particular policy is selected. Third, punctuated equilibrium consists of two com-
ponents: structural persistence (i.e. the production or reproduction of a structural
pattern after institutional change) and reactive sequence (i.e. the conflicting and
counter-reactions toward a structural pattern). Finally, outcome is the resolution
of conflicts generated in the reactive sequence stage, and the stability of a structural
pattern is achieved.
As in many countries in the world, the current wave of administrative reform in
Taiwan also involves a comprehensive transition of state roles and functions. For
the purpose of simplicity, this research will only focus on what is probably the most
important project of administrative reform in Taiwan – the reorganization of the
Executive Yuan of the central government. To access the trajectory of the reorgan-
ization efforts from an institutional perspective, administrative reform in Taiwan
is divided into four phases: the antecedent conditions for reorganization
(before 1996), the critical juncture for reorganization (1996–99), the process of

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Shih et al. 309

Punctuated equilibrium

Antecedent Critical Structural Reactive Outcome

conditions juncture persistence sequence

Historical Selection of Production and Reactions and Resolution of

factors that a particular reproduction of counterreactions conflict
define available option (e.g., an institution or to an institution generated by
options and policy option) structural or structural reactions and
shape selection from among pattern pattern counterreactions
processes multiple
alternatives

Feedback

Figure 2. Research framework

Source: Revised from Mahoney (2001).

punctuated equilibrium (1999–2008), and the outcome of institutional development

(after 2008).

Antecedent conditions for reorganization (before 1996)

The impact of the institutional legacy
The Kuomintang (KMT) government retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and the original
government structure was transplanted from Mainland China and imposed on the
island. During this period of time, the KMT government declared martial law,
through which all constitutional provisions were suspended in the same year.
The immediate threat of ‘militarily liberating Taiwan’ from Mainland China
eased temporarily after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. Under the lead-
ership of Chiang Kai-shek, the KMT government had become an authoritarian
party-state regime.
Within a relatively stable domestic environment built on the basis of tight
political control, the KMT government concentrated its efforts on economic devel-
opment. As argued by Lin (2008: 98–100), similar to many developmental
states such as Japan and South Korea, the legitimacy of the KMT government
was based on its ability to maintain a high level of economic performance
and social equality. When faced with the recession caused by the first oil crisis
in the early 1970s, a relatively uncorrupt administrative machine and many

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310 International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

capable technocrats, such as Li Kwoh-Ting (1910–2001), Sun Yun-Suan (1913–

2006), and Yi Chun-Rong (1903–63), helped Taiwan to achieve an ‘economic
miracle’.
In 1971, the Republic of China (ROC) resigned from the United Nations,
and the People’s Republic of China became a member of the UN Security
Council. Although martial law was abolished in 1987, the ROC government
still claimed sovereignty over Mainland China until the Constitution was
amended in 1991. In order to uphold its political legitimacy, the KMT govern-
ment preserved the original design of the central government as stated in the
constitution, which had been signed into effect in 1947. Although the basic
structure of the Executive Yuan, which originally consisted of eight ministries
and two commissions, remained unchanged, many new commissions, councils,
and cabinet-level agencies were created to satisfy the expansion of govern-
ment functions over the past six decades, with overlapping structures and
jurisdictions.
During this phase, the KMT government launched many administrative reform
programmes (Table 1) to improve administrative efficiency and capability.
Essentially, administrative reform efforts before 1987 were all executive decisions;
the Legislative Yuan had no veto power. These reform efforts were designed to
consolidate the KMT government’s governing power. Noticeably, most of these
reform programmes were merely functional adjustments, and did not lead to a
structural transformation of the administrative system.
An authoritarian party-state regime upholding the doctrine of political legitim-
acy, a developmental state emphasizing economic performance, and a persistent
and capable administrative system all constitute the antecedent conditions for later
administrative reform in Taiwan. The historical legacy constitutes a particular
pattern of institutional development that has produced high internal and external
costs for administrative reform.

Challenging factors
The institutional legacy was facing political, economic, and social challenges after
1987, and the situation was getting worse in the 1990s. First, since the Second
World War Taiwan’s survival has been contingent upon the financial, military,
and political support of the American government. This relationship of dependence
allowed the US government to exert a powerful influence on Taiwan’s democra-
tization process. Since the mid-1970s, the US government had been employing
formal and informal channels to express their concerns about the authoritarian
KMT government’s suppression of the opposition movement and its violations of
human rights (Shiau, 1990: 48). The overbearing pressure from the US government
forced the KMT regime to accelerate its political reform process, which partially
contributed to the lifting of martial law in 1987. Second, as suggested by Shiau
(1991), the rise of a new protectionist sentiment in the US in the 1980s was one
of the driving forces in weakening the dominance of the developmental state.

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Shih et al. 311

Table 1. Administrative reform programmes in Taiwan (1949–87)

Year Administrative reform programmes Missions/Focus

1955 Committee on the Organizational Research and Development; Public

Responsibility of the Executive Yuan Relations; Managerial system;
and Associated Agency (Huang Chi- Reducing Red-tape; Meeting pro-
Lu Committee) cedures and effectiveness
1958 Presidential Office’s ad hoc Committee Organizational structure;
for Administrative Reform (Wang Organizational responsibility;
Yun-Wu Committee) Administrative system;
Administrative procedures; Cost
reduction; Administrative efficiency
1966 Research Committee on Administrative Administrative system; Taxing; Law and
Reform regulation; Research, development,
and evaluation
1967 Civil Service Reform Examination-based personal placement
system; Civil service training pro-
gramme; Public employee’s salary
and motivation
1969 Administrative Procedures Reform Modern managerial principles; Planning,
implementation, and evaluation;
Efficiency; Serving the public
1972 Ten Items Reform Economic development; Personnel cut-
backs; Responsiveness; Document
management; Administrative theory
and practice connection
1974 Administrative Operations Reform Procedure and results transparency on:
1. Personnel; 2. Finance; 3. Opinion;
4. Reward and punishment
1979 Administrative Simplification Strengthen the ‘Ten Items Reform’;
Comprehensive planning;
Delegation; Research, development,
and evaluation; Serving the public
Sources: Cheng (1975); Chiang (1998: 62); Liu (1998); Sun (2002: 114–15).

The Trade and Tariffs Act of 1984 demanded that the beneficiary countries of the
Generalized System of Preferences open up their markets and enhance the protec-
tion of American property rights. Because of its heavy reliance on the US govern-
ment, Taiwan was forced to undertake necessary economic liberalization measures.
As a result, the new protectionism was an important exogenous factor in stimulat-
ing the process of economic liberalization and internationalization in Taiwan
(Shiau, 1991: 80–82).
Third, after the lifting of martial law in 1987, the disappointment and dissatis-
faction that Taiwan’s citizens felt with the KMT government erupted. Not only did

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312 International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

Table 2. Corruption Perception Index: 1995–99

South Hong Total

Year Taiwan Japan Korea China Kong Singapore countries

1995 Ranking 25 20 27 40 17 3 42
Score 5.08 6.72 4.29 2.16 7.12 9.26
1996 Ranking 29 17 27 50 18 7 54
Score 4.98 7.05 5.02 2.43 7.01 8.8
1997 Ranking 31 21 34 41 18 9 52
Score 5.02 6.57 4.29 2.88 7.28 8.66
1998 Ranking 29 25 43 52 16 7 85
Score 5.3 5.8 4.2 3.5 7.8 9.1
1999 Ranking 28 25 50 58 15 7 99
Score 5.6 6 3.8 3.4 7.7 9.1
Source: http://www.transparency.org/ (accessed 21 July 2010).

the frequency of social protests increase substantially (from 175 incidents in 1983 to
1172 in 1988), but so did the scale of these protests (from an average of 74 par-
ticipants per protest in 1983 to 268 in 1988) (Chu, 1992: 105). The first opposition
party (the DPP; Democratic Progressive Party) was established in 1986. The DPP
demanded freedom of information and expression, the full-scale election of the
members of the Legislative Yuan and, eventually, the direct election of the presi-
dent. On the other hand, the authoritarian KMT government was charged by the
general public and the opposition party with corruption, inefficiency, and an
increasing budget deficit. Taiwan’s Corruption Perception Index was not only
getting worse year on year, but was also ranked one of the lowest among Asian
countries, compared with Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore (Table 2). In order to
react to challenges from the civil society and to stabilize its regime, the KMT
government, under the leadership of Chiang Ching-kuo, gradually started the pro-
cess of political reform on the one hand, and initiated administrative reforms to
enhance performance-based legitimacy on the other hand. These developments can
be viewed as the rise of the political stream.
In 1976, Taiwan’s GDP growth rate was 13.9 percent, it fell to 5.02 percent in
1992, and to 2.2 percent in 2002 (Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and
Statistics, Executive Yuan, various years). Facing an increasingly competitive inter-
national economic environment, in the 1990s a consensus gradually took shape that
the traditional administrative system was neither adequate nor capable of elevating
Taiwan’s economic development.
The political reforms and changing state–society relations represented the pol-
itical stream in which the legitimacy of the KMT government was being challenged.
On the other hand, economic liberation/internationalization and administrative
corruption represented two dimensions of the emerging problem stream that the

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Shih et al. 313

KMT government had to deal with. In the early 1990s, public administration
scholars in Taiwan started to advocate the concept of NPM in universities, in
pre- and in-service training programmes for civil servants, in their publications,
and in their recommendations to the government. Their suggestions for reinventing
government, for an entrepreneurial government or small government, gradually
began to find favour in the public sector. NPM has been perceived as the
remedy for solving the practical problems of governing, and can be identified as
one of the sources of the policy stream.

Critical juncture for reorganization (1996–99)

The first presidential election by popular suffrage in Taiwan was held in 1996,
which marked the symbolic beginning of Taiwan’s democratic politics. The first
Taiwanese politician, Lee Teng-hui, was elected president; and the DPP won the
presidential election and became the ruling party for the first time in 1999. Taiwan
was quickly and peacefully transformed from an authoritarian regime into a full-
fledged democracy (Aspalter, 2002: 4).
Lee Teng-hui, the first Taiwanese president, succeeded Chiang Ching-kuo in
1988. Lee was elected to his own term by the National Assembly in 1990, and
was elected by direct election as the ninth President of Taiwan in 1996. During
his administration, although the KMT still enjoyed a majority in the Legislative
Yuan, Lee was facing tremendous challenges to his governance from both within
the KMT and without, from the opposition DPP. In order to consolidate his power
and to change the negative impressions of citizens about the KMT government,
Lee successfully initiated six stages of constitutional reform from 1991 to 2000.
President Lee’s ‘quiet revolution’ was definitely an important step in Taiwan’s
political development. But more significantly, the problem and policy
streams were able to enlarge each other in the midst of this seemingly volatile
political stream. Solutions therefore had to be found in order to satisfy the
demands and expectations of Taiwan’s citizens for a better and sustainable
government structure.

The appearance of a critical juncture

From 23 to 28 December 1996, a bipartisan National Development Conference
(NDC) was organized by the KMT. Former Vice-President Lien Chan chaired this
conference. The participants included 42 party representatives, 37 legislators, 33
public servants, and 57 scholars or members of the social elite. The incentives
varied among the different participants of the NDC. The KMT wanted to resolve
the crisis of legitimacy, and to create the legacy of Lee’s presidency, by playing the
leading role in reform; the DPP was targeting to extend its political influence by
challenging the KMT’s reform proposals, which symbolically placed the DPP as a

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314 International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

legitimate competitor of the KMT at the national level thereafter; the civil servants
were to provide their administrative expertise and to protect their own turf; and the
other participants were eager to undo the evils of the authoritarian era and to
promote their preferred reform proposals, respectively.
The goal of the NDC was to develop a consensus among the participants regard-
ing critical issues in the process of transition from authoritarianism. The agenda of
the NDC consisted of constitutional amendments, cross-strait relations, and eco-
nomic development. One hundred and ninety-two recommendations were made in
the NDC, and the concept of NPM prevailed. Privatization, downsizing, and
deregulation activities were recommended as the strategies for reinventing govern-
ment (Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission, 2000).
Although the reorganization of the Executive Yuan was discussed in the NDC,
no consensus was reached. One important institutional change was to downsize the
Taiwan Provincial Government. The process started in 1996 and was officially
completed in 1999. According to the original design, the functions and manpower
of the provincial government should have been transferred to the county and city
governments. But, in reality, the central government absorbed most if not all of the
functions, manpower, and deficit of the provincial government (Chiang, 2005;
Shih, 2009: 151).
Although the reorganization of the Executive Yuan and the downsizing of the
provincial government are two separate events, the latter can be viewed as the
beginning of the process of ‘punctuated equilibrium’, and the NDC can be per-
ceived as the critical juncture (also the policy window) in which a particular policy
option was selected. From the perspective of path dependence, the expansion of the
Executive Yuan that resulted from the downsizing of the provincial government
has made the reorganization of the Executive Yuan more difficult.
The influence of the NDC on administrative reform in Taiwan is indisputable.
After the NDC, the idea of an ‘entrepreneurial government’ was fully adopted by
the Executive Yuan. Subsequently, the Draft of the Basic Organizational Law of
the Executive Agency of the Central Government (the blueprint and the legal
foundation for the Amendments to the Organizational Act of the Executive
Yuan; Basic Organizational Law hereafter) and the Draft to the Law for the
Total Staff Size of Central Government Agencies were drawn up (Shiau,
1998: 395). In essence, the NDC was an ‘adhocracy’ in that no formal authority
was ever assigned to it. It was held during a time when the political environment in
Taiwan was extremely turbulent. Although the NDC might have been designed by
the KMT to ease its crisis of legitimacy, it provided a platform upon which critical
issues were discussed during the period of authoritarian transition. The consensus
reached in the NDC included major recommendations for political and adminis-
trative reform that have served as the final objectives for many, if not most, reform
programmes in Taiwan thereafter. Due to party competition, hostilities between
the KMT and the DPP have intensified in recent years. The expectation that any
bipartisan agreement can be reached by means such as the NDC is unimaginable in
the foreseeable future.

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Shih et al. 315

The rise of the policy stream

Following the consensus reached in the NDC, former Premier Hsiao Wan-Chang
introduced the Government Reinvention Programme at the beginning of 1998.
This programme consisted of three major aspects of reform (Hsiau, 2000):
Organization Reinvention, Human Resources and Service Reinvention, and
Legal System Reinvention.
The Guidelines for Government Reinvention were drawn up by the Executive
Yuan in 1998, and were the top priority on the government’s agenda. Two com-
mittees – the Committee for the Promotion of Government Reinvention (CPRG)
and the Consultative Committee for Government Reinvention (CCGR) – were
established to promote and monitor reform activities. Although the Government
Reinvention Programme was placed at the top of the government’s agenda, these
two committees, the CPGR and CCGR, had only held a joint meeting once, on 19
April 1998. For political considerations, the KMT government decided to withhold
the process of reform in 1999 and was shifting its efforts to winning the next
presidential election, scheduled for 2000. It would seem that reform activities
have always been suspended in order to reduce political controversies when an
important election is approaching. The arguments for administrative reform are
usually disregarded when political interests are at stake (Moe, 1989).

The process of punctuated equilibrium (1999–2008)

Although the NDC had opened a policy window for administrative reform and
subsequent reform programmes had been proposed, the fundamental structure of
the central government remains unchanged. After the DPP won the election,
another ad hoc National Administrative Reform Conference (NARC), which
was modelled after the NDC but smaller in scale, was held in 2001. To support
the conclusions reached in the NARC, the Office of the President set up a
Committee of Government Reform (CGR) in charge of the task of promoting
and restructuring ‘an energetic government that is globally competitive’.

Structural persistence in institutional development

As revealed in Table 3, the contents of the Government Reorganization
Programme and Government Reinvention Programme are similar in upholding
the concept of NPM. The Government Reorganization Programme consisted of
three dimensions: (1) to restructure the functions and organizations of central
government; (2) to strengthen the partnership between central and local govern-
ments; and (3) to construct a partnership between the public and private sectors. To
achieve these objectives, a Committee for Promoting Restructuring of the
Executive Yuan was established on 29 May 2002. There is no doubt that the
reorganization of the Executive Yuan has become a vital part of the DPP govern-
ment’s administrative reform proposals. After careful evaluation of government

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 Table 3. Administrative reform in Taiwan after 1987
316

Administrative reform
Year programmes Missions/Focus Results

1993 Administrative Reform Principle: The manpower of the Executive Yuan (and all of its
Programme Organizational downsizing; Institutional legalization; agencies) was cut by 5.63% in 2 years. 55 executive
Manpower rationalization; Operational agencies and units were terminated, combined, and
modernization adjusted.
Focus:
Transparency; Effectiveness; Convenient service
1998 Government Reinvention Missions: Passed and implemented the Guidelines for Government
Programme NPM; Reinventing.
Creative, flexible, and responsive government; Established the Committee for the Promotion of
National compatibility Government Reinvention (CPGR), which includes
Goals: three working groups on ‘Organizational
Organizational reinvention; Reinvention’, ‘Human Resource and Service
Civil service reform; Reinvention’, and ‘Legal System Reinvention’.
Learning from the private sector to enhance Established the Consultative Committee for
effectiveness; Government Reinvention (CCGR);
Constructing a learning organizational culture Downsized the provincial government.
2001 Government Missions: Established the Committee of Government Reform
Reorganization Reinventing administrative organization (the Executive (CGR).
Programme Yuan);
Inter-governmental relations;
Administrative culture;

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Deregulation and creativity;
Public opinion and policy-making;
Policy implementation and evaluation;
Quality of service delivery and serving the public;
Policy advocacy and communication
Strategies:
Deregulation; Decentralization; Outsourcing;
Corporatization
International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

Sources: Chiang (1998); Shih (2009); Sun (2002); Wei (2000).

Shih et al. 317

functions and structure, four types of reform strategy (deregulation, corporat-

ization, decentralization, and outsourcing) were adopted to achieve the above-
mentioned objectives.1 Hence, the design of administrative reform in Taiwan has
been relatively consistent, and the central theme can be traced back to the NDC.
The consistency in the design of administrative reform can be perceived as an
indication of structural persistence.
The process for restructuring the Executive Yuan was not unhindered. The
Amendment to the Organizational Act of the Executive Yuan had been drafted
and widely discussed since 1987. However, after nine premiers and over 20 years,
it had still not been passed by the Legislative Yuan. In June 2004, the Basic
Organizational Law of the Central Government was finally passed by the
Legislative Yuan with one condition attached: the Executive Yuan should
submit the Draft Amendments to the Organizational Act of the Executive Yuan
and the Draft Provisional Statute on the Adjustment of the Function, Business,
and Organization of the Executive Yuan to the Legislative Yuan within three
months.
The successful legislation of the Basic Organizational Law is the effect of path
dependence and the opening of another policy window for implementing subse-
quent reforms, and the attached condition can be perceived as a reaction from the
institutional development perspective. However, throughout the DPP’s regime
(2000–08), the Draft Amendments to the Organizational Act of the Executive
Yuan were never approved by the Legislative Yuan. During this period of time,
the size of the Executive Yuan was still expanding (Table 4).

Reactive sequence of institutional development

The reasons for the pause in the structural reform of the Executive Yuan may be
attributed to three factors: political, bureaucratic, and common pool problems.
Although the DPP won the presidential election in 2000 and 2004, the majority
of the Legislative Yuan was still in the hands of the KMT. From the perspective of
institutionalism, a divided government implies the existence of more players with
veto power over the reform process. Due to fierce political competition and a lack
of mutual trust between the KMT and DPP, a majority of the Legislative Yuan
tended to block any reform programme proposed by the DPP government. Under
the pressure of citizen expectations for further reform, the KMT-dominated
Legislative Yuan took the unprecedented step of setting a limit to the number of
organizations permitted in the Basic Organizational Law, so as to restrain the
influence of the DPP government. The Executive Yuan is only allowed to have
13 ministries, four commissions, and five independent agencies. This is a dramatic
reduction from the original size of 37 cabinet-level organizations.
However, a significant reduction in the number of organizations may cause the
problem of common pool resources (Ostrom, 1990). As long as the total number of
ministries is set by law, the result will be a crisis of survival for every ministry
and the segmental social interests represented by individual ministries.

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318 International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

Table 4. The expansion of the Executive Yuan

Structure of
the Executive Expenditure
Phase Yuan Manpower (NT$ 1000) Expansion Notes

1949 12 cabinet NA NA Established firmly Martial law period

KMT ministries the structure of 8
departments and
2 committees
1987 27 cabinet NA NA Established 6 Lifting of martial
KMT ministries mission-orientation law
committees
1993 29 cabinet NA 1,070,718,166 Established 2 Lee administration
KMT ministries mission-orientation
committees
1998 34 cabinet 116,000 1,225,264,656 Established 5 Before downsizing
KMT ministries mission-orientation the Provincial
committees Government
2001 36 cabinet 181,282 1,458,476,645 Established 2 After the first
DDP ministries mission-orientation party turnover
committees
2003–06 37 cabinet 157,209 1,334,245,980 Established 1 After the Code
DDP ministries mission-orientation for the Total Staff
committee Size of Central
Government
Agencies was
passed
2007 37 cabinet 154,328 1,511,713,010
DDP ministries

Source: Extracted from website of the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics,
http://www.dgbas.gov.tw/mp.asp?mp ¼ 1 (accessed 16 December 2009).

Consequently, each individual ministry has to mobilize every available resource to

win support within the Executive Yuan and Legislative Yuan to revise the reform
programmes and to delay the enactment of the Draft Amendments to the
Organizational Act of the Executive Yuan.
The lack of mutual trust, and the tension between the DPP administration and
the technocrats who were viewed as players within the KMT’s party-state regime,
were also formidable obstacles. The transfer of power from the KMT to the DPP
broke the original reciprocal relationships between the ruling party and the bur-
eaucracy. The DPP regime was beset by suspicions that the bureaucrats might still
be loyal to the KMT and that they were too conservative to support the policies of
the DPP government. Furthermore, the DPP government regarded reinventing
government as a strategy to remove the residual problems associated with the
KMT’s authoritarian regime (Sun, 2008: 62). The ‘old’ bureaucrats might have
felt frustrated by the sense of distrust emanating from the leadership.

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Shih et al. 319

It can be observed that although both the KMT and the DPP governments
support the reorganization of the Executive Yuan, there are few connections
between the intended objectives and the actual changes that have taken place
since 1987. During the KMT regime, conflicts among elected politicians, bureau-
crats, and members of the legislature could be resolved and coordinated by the
KMT’s party disciplinarians. With regard to the DPP government, however,
Chen’s administration had no prior experience with managing the central govern-
ment, and he had to work under a much more complicated political environment
than that faced by the KMT regime. A divided government and the distrust of
the bureaucracy were two major obstacles on his path to reform. Before 2008,
administrative reform in the central government was more cosmetic than
fundamental.

Outcome of institutional development (after 2008)

The KMT’s victories in the congressional and presidential elections in 2008 indi-
cated the opening of another policy window for the administrative reform move-
ment in Taiwan. In the 7th Congressional elections held on 12 January 2008, the
KMT won 81 seats out of 113, while the DPP won only 27 seats. This was the most
major setback for the DPP since 2000. On 20 March 2008, the KMT presidential
candidate Ma Ying-Jeou received more than 7 million votes (58.45 percent), and
became the 12th President of the ROC. This was the second instance of the over-
turning of a party in the history of political development in Taiwan. The KMT not
only has a majority in the Legislative Yuan, but also controls the executive branch;
therefore, the dilemma of a divided government has been resolved.
After the KMT regained power, the Basic Organizational Law was revised
twice. The current version (revised on 12 January 2010) of the Basic
Organizational Law has expanded the number of organizations in the central gov-
ernment: in addition to four special-function organizations (for example, the
Central Bank and the National Palace Museum), the number of cabinet-level
agencies has been increased to 14 ministries, 8 commissions, and three independent
agencies (see Table 5). The Amendments to the Organizational Act of the Executive
Yuan were enacted by the Legislative Yuan and promulgated by the President on 3
February 2010.
Compared to the original size of 37, eight cabinet-level organizations are to be
eliminated, and almost all of the newly created organizations are the result of
mergers and takeovers. For example, the National Development Council is the
result of a merger between the National Science Council and the Research,
Development, and Evaluation Commission. Another example is the taking over
by the Ministry of Education of the functions performed by the National Youth
Council and the Sport Affairs Council. In addition to mergers and takeovers, the
status of some organizations will be transformed from council to ministry.
The Ministry of Culture will become the Council for Cultural Affairs; and the

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320 International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

Table 5. Reorganization of the Executive Yuan in 2010

Ministry Council Independent agency Others

Ministry of the Interior Overseas Compatriot Central Election Directorate-General

Affairs Commission Commission of Budget,
Accounting, and
Statistics
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Veterans Affairs Fair Trade Central Personnel
Commission Commission Administration
Ministry of Finance National Development National Central Bank
Council Communications
Commission
Ministry of Education Council of Indigenous National Palace
Peoples Museum
Ministry of Justice Council for Hakka Affairs
Ministry of Economic Financial Supervisory
Affairs Commission
Ministry of Council of Maritime
Transportation and Affairs
Construction
Ministry of Health and Mainland Affairs Council
Welfare
Ministry of Culture
Ministry of Labour
Ministry of Agriculture
Ministry of Environmental
Resources
Ministry of Science and
Technology
Ministry of National
Defense

Source: Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission, Executive Yuan: http://rdec.gov.tw/ (accessed
12 July 2010).

Environmental Protection Agency will become the Ministry of Environmental

Resources.
Nowadays, all the major laws required by the administrative reform programme
have been passed. According to the schedule set by the Executive Yuan, all prep-
arations have to be accomplished before December 2011. In January 2012, the new
structure of the Executive Yuan should start to function. After more than three
decades of struggle, Taiwan’s administrative system is gradually moving into a new
era. Of course, administrative reform is a never-ending process. From a historical
institutionalism perspective, the institutional development of Taiwan’s central
government has already been locked into a direction which is very difficult to
reverse even if there were to be another ruling party change in 2012.

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Shih et al. 321

Discussion
According to the revised Mahoney’s framework (Figure 3), the trajectory of admin-
istrative reform in Taiwan can be divided into four phases. In searching for political
legitimacy, an authoritarian party-state regime emphasized the importance of main-
taining the orthodoxy of the government structure and a high level of economic
performance. These constituted the antecedent conditions for later administrative
reform in Taiwan. Exogenous political and economic pressures triggered the liber-
alization process and the subsequent administrative reform. The critical juncture was
characterized by Lee Teng-hui’s success in winning the first presidential election by
popular suffrage and the convention of the bipartisan NDC. Together, these events
opened up the policy window for institutional change, and the NPM concepts were
formally accepted as the reform strategies. However, due to party struggles and the
increasingly complicated international and domestic environments, the phenom-
enon of administrative retrenchment and institutional entrenchment appeared in
Taiwan’s administrative reform process. The size of the central government continu-
ously expanded. The KMT won the congressional and presidential elections in 2008,
which solved the dilemma of a divided government and led the way for institutional
development. The outcome of 30 years of effort on administrative reform in Taiwan
is that the Basic Organizational Law has been revised, the Organizational Act of the
Executive Yuan has been passed, and a reformed government structure will be in
effect in 2012.
This article is more about theory application than testing the fitness between the
theory and the experience of Taiwan. Historical institutionalism is a social science
approach that analyses the impacts of social, political, and economic behavioural
changes on the development of an institution across time. It offers significant
insights into the trajectories of institutional development, but this approach has
to face the conventional critiques of lacking the ability to cope with institutional or
policy change (Peters et al., 2005: 1275) and the renowned concepts (such as posi-
tive feedback and path dependence) often appear to be a kind of metaphor for
policy changes/persistence (Greener, 2002).
Therefore, there remain some uncertainties or problems embedded in the admin-
istrative reform in Taiwan. Similar to many Asian countries, the process of dem-
ocratization is a relatively new experience for Taiwan. Consequently, the impact of
party turnover on the process of administrative reform is more significant than is
the case in many Western countries. In other words, the influence of political
manipulation may be more visible in the process of administrative reform in
Asia than in the West. For the same reason, the professionalism and administrative
neutrality of the bureaucracy have potentially been compromised and damaged.
How to revitalize the civil service system will be a major challenge in the future for
administrative reform in Taiwan. This issue is equally pertinent to many Asian
countries.
Although how the reforms will change the administrative organizations in terms
of its capacity to perform and contribute to good governance remains to be seen,

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 322
Punctuated Equilibrium

Structural persistence Reactive sequence Outcome

Antecedent condition Critical juncture

Highly stable Congressional

authoritarian election on 12
administrative The first The first party A divided January 2008
system presidential turnover government Presidential election
election by The Basic Organizational More veto players on 20 March 2008
Pressures of
popular suffrage Law of the Executive The lack of mutual KMT has both the
globalization and
in 1996 Agency of Central trust Legislative Yuan and
economic competition
A bipartisan Government The distrust of the old the Executive Yuan.
The rise of social
‘National The Drat Amendments to bureaucrats Amendments to the
movement and civil
Development the Organization Act of More cosmetic than Organizational Act of
protests
Conference’ the Executive Yuan fundamental the Executive Yuan
The opposition
The introduction of The expanding size of the In January 2012, the
movement challenged
the NPM Executive Yuan new structure of the
the legitimacy of ruling
(Government Central Government
KMT
Reinvention
Corruption,
Programme)
inefficiency, and
increasing budget
deficit

Feedback

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Figure 3. Taiwan’s administrative reform from the perspective of historical institutionalism
International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)
Shih et al. 323

NPM ideas such as outsourcing, privatization, and the participation of the private
and non-profit sectors in providing public services have been absorbed into admin-
istrative practices in Taiwan (Shih, 2007: 304). On the other hand, the Taiwan
government has been facing international pressure for a more open market and
domestic calls to improve income distribution. Resolving how to drive a balanced
course between these two types of pressure is crucial for the future development of
Taiwan. To a certain degree, Taiwan has gradually been transformed from a devel-
opmental state into a regulatory one, which requires a different set of administra-
tive arrangements. For many Asian countries on a similar developmental
path, another round of administrative reform is needed to cope with the new
challenges.

Reform as a reflection of local experiences

Essentially, the organizational restructuring of the central government in
Taiwan can be described as the interplay of three factors: in search of legitimacy,
Western (i.e. American) influence, and the reflection of local administrative
experiences.
As described previously, the original government structure was transplanted
from Mainland China and was imposed on the island by the KMT government
after it retreated to Taiwan in 1949. To support the claim that the ROC govern-
ment still had legitimate authority over both Mainland China and Taiwan, the
same government structure had to be maintained. The claim of legitimacy had
ensured the stability of the organizational structure of the central government
for more than four decades. However, the criterion of legitimacy was changed
after 1987. The process of democratization has demanded that the government
structure be reformed in order to recognize the de facto jurisdiction of the ROC
government and to reflect the unique conditions and experiences of Taiwan. The
task of searching for de jure legitimacy has been accomplished through the seven
rounds of constitutional amendment in the 1990s. Administrative reform pro-
grammes before 1987 were designed to maintain the transplanted government
structure; those after 1987 were initiated to restructure the central government.
The search for legitimacy has pushed administrative reform in Taiwan, although
in different directions.
Furthermore, Taiwan’s administrative reform has been dominated by American
influence. The influence can be explained in two ways. First, one of the original
causes of administrative reform in Taiwan was the demand for economic liberal-
ization and political democratization made by the US government. Second, it can
be argued that the development of the public administration discipline in Taiwan
was assisted by the US government. The National ChengChi University (NCCU),
in conjunction with the University of Michigan, established the Center of Public
and Business Administration Education to provide on-the-job training pro-
grammes for government officials in 1962 as a part of the technical assistant

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324 International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(2)

programme sponsored by the US government. After the Department of Public

Administration was established in 1963, the NCCU established the first Graduate
School of Public Administration in 1964 (under the same cooperative plan with the
University of Michigan) and the first doctoral programme in public administration
in 1989. Moreover, there are many American-trained public administration scholars
in Taiwan. Currently, there are 25 institutional members of the Taiwan Association
for Schools of Public Administration and Affairs (TASPAA), an institutional mem-
bership organization analogous to the NASPA, and the number of faculty members
has increased from 67 in 1990 (Sun, 1992), to 156 in 2002 (Chiang, 2002), and to 258
in 2009.2 Among the 258 public administration scholars, about 44 percent of them
graduated from universities in the United States, and about 40 percent of them
graduated from universities in Taiwan. From the beginning, it has been generally
recognized that public administration discipline in Taiwan is heavily influenced by
American theories, concepts, and practices. In addition to public administration
scholars, many government officials and social elites are also former graduate stu-
dents who had studied in US universities. Third, the notions of NPM and reinvent-
ing government have served as the blueprint for administrative reform efforts since
1990. The administrative reform initiated in 1998 was named the ‘Government
Reinvention Programme’, and the reform strategies mainly consist of NPM-related
concepts. Without doubt, Taiwan public administration is largely shaped by the
Western NPM/Reinvention paradigm.
Although the trajectory of Taiwan’s administrative reform can be characterized
as a ‘transplanted’ government structure that has been shaped by American public
administration theories and concepts, the restructuring of the central government
has to be recognized as an attempt to draw lessons from indigenous local experi-
ences in Taiwan over the past 60 years. Given Taiwan’s position in the inter-
national political and economic structures, its geographic location, and the
potentially threatening cross-strait relations, the design of the new organizational
structure of the Executive Yuan has to take these conditions and the indigenous
Taiwan administrative experiences into consideration; the creation of the Overseas
Compatriot Affairs Commission, Council of Maritime Affairs, and the National
Development Council are good examples. The argument is not about whether the
public administration community in Taiwan has developed any self-awareness of
becoming independent of Western influence. It is to recognize the fact that the
outcomes of the administration reform movement in Taiwan represent reflections
of the indigenous administrative experiences. From a comparative perspective, the
trajectory of administrative reform in any individual nation will demonstrate that it
occurred in a country-specific time and space. Exogenous pressures will be detected
and digested differently according to an individual nation’s position in the inter-
national political and economic structures, and diverse responses will be proposed
and implemented on the basis of domestic conditions. The observations extracted
from the trajectory of administrative reform in Taiwan may serve as a starting
point for further discussions on the topic of Asian characteristics of administrative
reform in a post-NPM era.

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Shih et al. 325

Conclusion
Political democratization and economic liberalization have forced the Taiwan gov-
ernment to concentrate its efforts on administrative reform to meet the challenges
imposed by exogenous and endogenous threats. Administrative reform has to be
supported by an amicable political environment. Without success in political dem-
ocratization, administrative reform and institutional rearrangements would be dif-
ficult to achieve in Taiwan. After decades of reform efforts, the character and
nature of Taiwan’s administrative system have been fundamentally transformed.
Furthermore, a new round of struggles can be observed in two directions: bureau-
crats and politicians, and state and market. Demonstrating the mixed characteris-
tics of a developmental and regulatory state, Taiwan is potentially moving into
another era of administrative reform.
It has taken 30 years for the Taiwan government to accomplish part of its original
objectives of institutional adjustments. District and local government reforms have yet
to be achieved. Although the Ma administration has successfully pushed through the
organizational reform of the Executive Yuan, dealing with issues such as healing
cross-strait relations, signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement
(ECFA) with Mainland China, and managing natural disaster relief has nearly
exhausted Ma Ying-Jeou. Facing mayoral elections in five metropolitan cities at the
end of 2010, and a presidential election in 2012, it remains unclear whether he and the
KMT have sufficient political capital and will to carry through further administrative
reforms. In theory and in practice, administrative reform is a never-ending process.

Notes
1. See the website of the Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission, Executive
Yuan, http://reform.rdec.gov.tw/
2. The 2009 data are generated from the home page of every public administration depart-
ment affiliated with the Taiwan Association of Schools of Public Administration and
Affairs (TASPAA).

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Mei-Chiang Shih is professor of the Department of Public Management and Policy

at Tunghai University in Taichung, Taiwan, where he teaches public administra-
tion, social science research methods and organization theory at undergraduate
and graduate levels.

Milan Tung-Wen Sun is Professor of the Department of Public Policy and

Administration at National Chi Nan University in Puli, Taiwan where he teaches
public policy, intergovernmental relations and Q method at undergraduate and
graduate levels.

Guang-Xu Wang is assistant professor of the Department of Public Administration

and Management at the National University of Tainan in Tainan, Taiwan where he
teaches cross-boundary management, social science research methods and public
management at undergraduate and graduate levels.

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