From Five No`s to Referendum: The Making of National Security Policy in Taiwan

Abstract

This paper analyzes the development of Taiwan`s security policy by exploring the decision-making of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government under the leadership of President Chen Shui-bian from 2000 to 2004. The first part of the paper reviews the development of Taiwan-China relations and theoretical developments related to this subject, as well as the major theoretical approaches adopted by scholars and strategic analysts, to explain the influence of Taiwan-China relations on Taiwan`s security. Next the paper attempts to define the structure and process of the security policymaking mechanism during Chen`s government to identify the major ”players” in the decision-making process and their roles. The last part of the paper examines the development of the referendum issue before the 2004 presidential election in order to show how President Chen`s decision-making style affected the decision to hold the controversial referendum in March 2004, and how such a decision-making mechanism makes a foreign policy crisis inevitable. This paper finds that President Chen and his DPP government have a top-down decision-making style in which the president is supreme in deciding foreign policy objectives. Limited numbers of high-ranking officials are consulted or involved in the formulation of key policy objectives. This decision-making style often leads to poor communication between different decision-making levels and sometimes misunderstandings among government agencies.