The Transformation and Challenges of Local Governance in Taiwan: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

The impacts of globalization, localization and the global “governmental reinvention” movements have created an atmosphere in which major government reform programs have been designed and implemented in recent years. From the perspective of the historical new institutionalism, this study examines the evolution and challenges of local governance in Taiwan. Since the martial law was lifted in 1987, local governance and structures in Taiwan had gone through three significant restructuring phases in less than twenty years. The path-dependent nature of the transformation process indicates that every reform is designed to solve specific problems in the previous phase, and the results of the reform tend to generate new problems. Currently, there is a new wave of reform on the reform agenda in Taiwan.