Party Ideologies and National Development: A Covariance Structure Analysis

Abstract

自從第二次世界大戰以來，在國家發展的相關研究領域裏，社會科學家時常低估政治因素的重要性；本研究企圖探討政黨理念對國家發展的三個主要面向－－經濟發展、社會不平等與政治民主－－之影響，期間涵蓋西元一九五０年至一九五六年，以及一九五七年至一九六二年兩個時期。藉用共變數結構分析，本研究先以第一時期的資料檢證理論模型的適用性，而後再以第二時期的資料加以驗證；統計分析結果發現，兩個時期的資料獲得類似的結論。根據分析，政黨理念對於政治民主的確有重要影響，而政黨理念、政黨系統的利益代表性，以及經濟發展的程度，也有助於各國社會不平等的解釋；然而，政黨理念並非決定經濟發展的最重要因素。

The importance of political factors has been underemphasized in the study of national development since World War Two. This study investigates the impacts of party ideologies on three aspects of national development - economic development, social inequality, and political democracy - for the years 1950 to 1956 and 1957 to 1962. Using covariance structure analysis, this study applies theoretical model to data of the first period and then to data from the second period. The statistical test results are similar for both periods.Foremost, they show that party ideologies have important influence on political democracy. Party ideologies, interest representation of party systems, and the level of economic development also contribute to explaining variance in social inequality. However, party ideologies are not the most important determinants of variation in economic development. * This article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Chinese Association of Statistics, Taipei, Taiwan, the Republic of China, April 9-10, 1988. The author would like to thank Professor Yun-han Chu and other anonymous reviewers for their insightfill comments, suggestions, and criticisms. However, any flaws in the analysis remain the sole responsibility of the author.