Road Not Taken: Current Status of Clientelism Studies in Taiwan and Its Predicaments

Electoral clientelism has been a persistent issue in Taiwan since the settlement of Chinese National Party (Kuomintang, or KMT) in the Island starting 1949. Sustained through long-term corporatist collaboration between local elites and the KMT, patronage politics in Taiwan underwent significant transformations in the 1990s due to democratisation and structural changes. Over the past few decades, both foreign and domestic scholars have extensively examined Taiwan’s clientelistic practices, shedding light on their mechanisms and evolution. However, despite these valuable contributions, the broader applicability and visibility of these findings remain limited. The localised theoretical frameworks and language barriers have constrained their engagement with the wider scholarly discourse on clientelism, leaving Taiwan’s case underrepresented in comparative studies. To bridge this gap, by exploring the configuration of clientelism scholarship in Taiwan over the decades while highlighting the challenges facing existing research, I aspire to pave the ‘road not taken’ for the scholarship by discussing its future potential to make new breakthroughs and approaches to integrate it into broader academic discussions.