Concurrence of Institutional Arrangement between Hakka and Indigenous: Focus on Four Hakka-Indigenous Complex Administrative Districts in Hualien(1/2)

In 2010, the Taiwan government enacted the “Hakka Basic Act” and introduced “major Hakka cultural areas”. Some of the new “major Hakka cultural areas” overlapped in territory with certain indigenous districts that had existed in Taiwan since 1945, and therefore were combined with the latter to become known as “Hakka-indigenous complex administrative districts”. The ethnic Acts which includes the Hakka Basic Ac, Indigenous Peoples Basic Act, Status Act for Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous Languages Development Act, and draft National Language Development Act apply in the Hakka-indigenous complex administrative districts. The legal concurrence and practice of the ethnic Acts, which perform in the Hakka-indigenous complex administrative districts, are the important issue of the ethnic governance between Hakka and indigenous peoples. This three-year project aims to examine the influence of the institutional arrangement on the ethnic governance between high Hakka population areas (located in Fonglin Township and Fuli Township) and low Hakka population areas (located in Guangfu Township and Hualien City) in Hualien County’s Hakka-indigenous complex administrative districts. Under the integrated research project’s framework for discussing the interactivity between institution and behavior, the project employs theories of ethnic politics and legal hierarchy, as well as research methods such as literature review and in-depth interviews to explore the influence of institutional mechanism such as Acts, regulation, and administrative orders intervention on ethnic behavior. In order to do the research on comparative ethnic governance, the project analyzes legal concurrence of the ethnic Acts and political participatory Acts (like the Local Government Act, and Civil Servants Election and Recall Act) implement in the Hakka-indigenous complex administrative districts. In addition, policy issues surrounding Hakka-indigenous complex districts are rigorously constructed in this project based on public policy-related theories. Drawing on focus group discussions and the principles for screening policy options, this project proposes one solid, feasible policy recommendation out of several options.