CONSTITUTIONAL DIVERGENCE IN EAST ASIA: Causes and consequences

Constitutional structure in East Asian countries varies widely. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan opt for three distinctively different constitutional designs that are the most popular in the world: parliamentarism, presidentialism, and semi-presidentialism. A democratic constitutional monarchy was considered an appropriate form to serve the aforementioned purposes. Taiwan’s basic government structure was laid out in the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China promulgated on the Chinese mainland. In short, through the constitutional amendments in the 1990s, Yoonkyung Lee was able to consolidate the president’s position, and turned Taiwan into a semi-presidential system. In the parliamentary elections held under authoritarian rule and into the initial stage of democracy, both South Korea and Taiwan used a version of the Single Non-transferable Vote system. However, it was the conservative camp that was greatly strengthened by the merger of the Democratic Justice Party, Reunification Democratic Party, and New Democratic Republican Party into the Democratic Liberal Party in 1990.