Permanent Campaign and Democratic Governance : An Exploratory Study of Public Opinion Polls’ Influence on Taiwanese Local Governance

• Main Authors: Su, Kung-chih, 蘇孔志
• Other Authors: Chen, Don-yun
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5ytfaf

博士 === 國立政治大學 === 公共行政學系 === 105 === In the field of public opinion polls initiated in the 1930s, seeking collective preferences of citizens and customers for the government and the business sector by means of mail, telephone, or face-to-face interviews has brought about a significant impact on human political and business life in the 20th century. In the 1980, Sidney Blumenthal published the book "The Permanent Campaign". In this book, Blumenthal explained how the changes in American politics from old-style patronage and party organization to that based on the modern technology of computer driven polling created a fundamentally new system. The concept of a permanent campaign describes the focus which recent presidents have given to electoral concerns during their tenures in office, with the distinction between the time they have spent governing and the time they have spent campaigning having become blurred and political consultants had replaced the party bosses and brought with them a new model by which campaigning became the forms of governing. Is campaigning becoming the forms of governing in Taiwan? To answer this questions, this dissertation is beginning with the theory discussion of the perspective of the “permanent campaign” and the “democratic governance”. Then, with the help of the method of interview and secondary data analysis, author discuss the application and limitation of the public opinion poll using in the governance of the local government. Public opinion poll can help the elected leader to find out the problems but it is limited by financial condition of the government itself. The author also designed a two-stage public opinion poll and divided the respondents into experimental group and contrast group. The author hypothesizes that respondents will change their choices because of the impact of “Conformity” and used an evidence-based analysis to testify the hypothesis. Finally, the author gives his conclusion and suggestion.