Explaining green party electoral fortunes

The study of green parties has tended to be located within the field of small or niche parties in comparative politics. Within this field, a number of perspectives on how to best explain the impact of smaller parties have been proposed. However, these have almost exclusively been based on cases in Western Europe.

One popular approach is to examine the role of sociological variables in explaining the impact of smaller parties. Here the link is made between the salience of challenger parties’ favoured issues and their electoral impact. For instance, Robert Inglehart (Reference Inglehart1997) and Ferdinand Müller-Rommel (Reference Müller-Rommel, Laurent and Villalba1998) have argued there is a relationship between higher levels of post-materialism in society and green party success. In Taiwan, the dominant political cleavage since democratization has been national identity and relations with China (Hsieh, Reference Hsieh, Hsieh and Newman2002). Other issues have been important periodically, but are generally regarded as secondary issues by Taiwanese studies of voting behaviour. However, the salience of environmental issues and rising environmental consciousness should offer greater space for pro-environmental political parties. Nevertheless, the rise in environmental awareness cannot fully explain the impact of the GPT as the party suffered a serious decline after 1998, despite rising environmental salience and consciousness. A number of studies have suggested a relationship between certain sociological variables and green party support. For instance, younger voters, female voters, those with higher education, socio-cultural professionals, and those in the public sector are viewed as more supportive of green parties in Europe (Rüdig, Reference Rüdig2012). The relatively high education levels of the Taiwanese electorate, large public sector, and socio-cultural sectors should provide space for the GPT. However, a challenge in testing these variables is the lack of survey data regarding support for smaller parties such as the GPT.Footnote ⁵

Another explanation that has been applied to analyse small party fortunes is to focus on institutions, particularly the electoral system. Simply put, single member district (SMD) systems promote the emergence of a two party system, while proportional representation (PR) systems provide greater space for smaller parties (Duverger, Reference Duverger1954; Müller-Rommel, Reference Müller-Rommel, Laurent and Villalba1998). This institutional effect can be seen in the Green Party of England and Wales winning seats in the proportional European Parliament elections, but repeated failures in the SMD UK parliamentary elections. This approach is important for the Taiwan case as its parliamentary and local council elections use the semi-proportional single non-transferable vote (SNTV) with a multi-member district (MMD) electoral system.Footnote ⁶ In 2005, Taiwan reformed parliamentary electoral system from a semi-proportional MMD system to a SMD and PR hybrid system. The new parliamentary electoral system now consists of 73 SMDs and 34 proportional representation seats allocated based on voters’ second party list vote. However, the threshold for party list seats is 5%. Whereas the high proportion of SMDs offers less space for small parties such as the GPT, the PR element provides a whole new chance for the GPT to gain national attention. We find that unlike most other smaller parties, the GPT has actually performed better in the new hybrid system than in the earlier MMD system.

A writer that has been critical of both sociological and institutional explanations of challenger party impact is Bonnie Meguid (Reference Meguid2008). She argues that mainstream party strategies are key to understanding the success of smaller parties, such as ecological parties. In this framework, large parties can take dismissive, accommodative, or adversarial strategies on the niche party's core issue. Meguid argues that where the mainstream parties take dismissive or accommodative stances towards new party issues, the small parties will be negatively affected. The more favourable scenario for small parties is where mainstream parties take adversarial approaches. Meguid suggests that small parties will benefit as its core issues will rise in salience and its issue ownership will be strengthened.

Nevertheless, Jae-Jae Spoon (Reference Spoon2011) argues that the fate of small parties is not completely determined by the strategies of the mainstream parties. Her agency approach suggests that green parties can survive even in unfavourable institutional environments if they can get the right balance between the sometimes conflicting goals of maintaining their core party ideals and the needs of vote or seat maximization. She employs the comparative cases of the French and British green parties to show how the French greens have been more successful at balancing these goals and thus have a greater political impact.

A final approach to understanding the fate of green parties is Paul Lucardie's (Reference Lucardie2000) hybrid framework that can incorporate elements of a number of the frameworks discussed above. He proposed that green party success can be explained according to three main variables: (1) a political project that addresses problems considered important by much of the electorate, (2) sufficient resources, and (3) the political opportunity structure. We follow Lucardie in understanding the political opportunity structure as the degree to which the political environment (including political institutions, salient issue cleavages, and the party system) is favourable or hostile for new parties. In other words, green party electoral impact depends on their ability to advocate a clear and distinct party appeal that addresses salient political issues; their human, financial, organizational, and media resources; and whether the political environment for small parties is favourable. Initially, Lucardie applied this framework to explain the limited success of the Dutch Green Party. The distinctive element about Lucardie's approach is the emphasis on resources. This is especially significant in the Taiwan case where election campaigns are extremely expensive and the resource poor GPT must compete against one of the richest political parties in the world, the KMT. Moreover, a perennial challenge for green parties is to develop a political project that goes beyond just environmental issues.

Establishment of the GPT: a beautiful accident

The GPT was formally established on 25 January 1996. Thus the party was established almost a decade after the initial wave of party formation immediately before and after the lifting of martial law in 1987. Environmental issues had already become politically salient during the democratic transition period. In fact, party founder Kao Cheng-yen (高成炎) argued that the momentum that had been building up in the environmental movement in the early 1990s was critical to the eventual formation of the party.Footnote ⁷ A close relationship developed between the DPP and the environmental organizations. The closeness can be seen from Ho's (Reference Ho2003: 695) analysis which reveals how the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union and DPP often shared offices and even staff. The issue that especially cemented the relationship between the DPP and the environmental movement was opposition to nuclear energy, with the controversial Fourth Nuclear Power Station (N4PS) particularly important. This also played a key role in the formation of the GPT in 1996, an event described by Kao as ‘a beautiful accident’.Footnote ⁸ He argued that a key factor in the formation was because the DPP Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had agreed to hold a referendum on the N4PS on the same day as the presidential and National Assembly elections in 1996.Footnote ⁹

Although the DPP had the reputation as a pro environment or even anti-business party, the relationship between some environmentalists and the DPP began to sour in the mid 1990s. According to early GPT figure Linda Arrigo, the key reason for the formation of the GPT was ‘a general disappointment with the DPP’.Footnote ¹⁰ A critical moment in the process came in a 1994 legislative vote on funding for the N4PS in which the DPP offered lukewarm opposition (Arrigo and Puleston, Reference Arrigo, Puleston, Fell, Klöter and Bi-yu2006: 177). In 1995, the environmentalist Fang Jian (方儉) made the first attempt to establish a GP but this was not approved by the Ministry of Interior. The GPT,s leaders claimed that the social movements had decided to form their own political party as a result of their growing distance from the DPP. Many felt that the DPP had made too many compromises in its efforts to become the ruling party.Footnote ¹¹ Similarly, Ho (Reference Ho2003: 701–6) views the formation of the GPT as part of the environmental movement's attempt to assert its autonomy from the DPP. However, at least initially the GPT maintained quite close relations with the DPP. For instance, the DPP chairman actually welcomed the formation of the GPT and its founding member Shih Hsin-min (施信民) suggested the party was inclined to support the DPP's presidential candidate team in 1996.Footnote ¹²

Electoral fortunes of the GPT

We summarize the electoral record of the GPT in Tables 1 and 2. Table 1 shows the record in national elections and Table 2 shows the local city council elections. These suggest the GPT has gone through three distinct phases in its electoral development. First is an initial period when the party came close to an electoral breakthrough in its first two and a half years. The second phase lasts from 1999 through until 2005, when the GPT seems to disappear electorally, as it either did not nominate or only nominated a single candidate. The third phase begins in 2006 and features a return to nomination and a gradual increase in the party's vote share through to its impressive party list vote in 2012 and winning its first local council elections seats in 2014.

Table 1.

Green Taiwan Party Performance in National Level Elections (National Assembly: NA and Legislative Yuan: LY)

Table 2.

Green Taiwan Party Performance in Local Level Elections

Less than three months after its formation, the GPT enjoyed an impressive first electoral performance in the 1996 National Assembly election. It gained a total vote share of 1.1% and had one successful candidate, with Kao Meng-ting (高孟定) winning in Yunlin district 1. The party nominated 13 candidates in a range of districts in north and central Taiwan. In addition to Kao Meng-ting, four candidates garnered over 10,000 votes in their districts. The best county for the GTP was Yunlin with 8.8% of the vote, but it also won close to 2% in Taipei City, Taipei County, and Changhua. In fact, in the 13 multiple member districts with GPT candidates, they averaged 2.5% of the vote (Ho, Reference Ho2006: 193). According to party founder Kao Cheng-yen, ‘In terms of elections, that year (1996) was our best performance.’Footnote ¹³

Although national elections were again held for legislators in 1998, the GPT switched its focus to local council elections. That year it nominated party founder Kao as its sole legislative candidate in Taipei. There were signs that the party had not built on the foundation of its initial election in 1996. The GPT's vote share and actual total votes in Taipei City were almost exactly the same in 1996 and 1998. Another sign of the party's limitations was that it concentrated on Taipei, as it only nominated in Taipei City and County.Footnote ¹⁴ However, in 1998 the GPT came particularly close to a major breakthrough in Taipei City Council elections, where Peng Yen-wen (彭渰雯) gained 10,501 votes (3.38%), coming just 6,000 votes short of the lowest successful candidate.

Another way we can gain a sense of the visibility of the GPT is from the number of newspaper articles mentioning the GPT in each year. In a United Daily News (UDN 聯合報) database search, the first and third most mentioned years were 1996 and 1998. However, both the newspaper data and the election data suggest the GPT entered a dormant period from 1999 through to 2005. The fact that only ten UDN newspaper articles in 2005 mentioned the GPT shows the party had almost ceased to exist. Electorally, the party barely existed too. While the GPT had managed to gain over 10,000 votes in Taipei districts in 1996 and 1998 with electorally inexperienced candidates, in 2001 its party founder only gained just over a thousand votes. It only nominated a single candidate in the 2001 Legislative Yuan and 2002 Taipei City Council elections. In fact, it did not nominate any candidates in the 2000 National Assembly, 2004 Legislative Yuan, and 2005 National Assembly elections.Footnote ¹⁵ Since the GPT had made its initial breakthrough in a National Assembly election, its absence was especially costly, as of course small parties do tend to have an advantage in second rank elections where voters are often more willing to punish the mainstream parties. For example, in the United Kingdom, green parties have tended to perform better in European Parliamentary elections and the devolved assembly elections in Scotland and Wales. Moreover, the case of the 2005 National Assembly election is especially noteworthy, as that was the one and only time when Taiwan used a pure proportional representation electoral system. If the GPT had nominated that year, it would have been inevitable that it would have won seats. For instance, that year the Taiwan Independence Party, Farmer's Party, Chinese People's Party, and Civil Party all won seats with 1% of the vote or less. According to the GPT's former Convenor (召集人) Chang Hong-lin (張宏林), ‘We should say that in this period (GPT) had basically ceased to operate.’Footnote ¹⁶

The re-emergence of the GPT can be dated from 2006. That year the GPT nominated two candidates for Taipei City Council and though neither was competitive in their districts, it marked the start of a period of gradual improvement in the electoral performance through until 2012. At least in 2006, it was not entirely yet clear that this was the start of a new era. When Pan Han-sheng (潘翰聲) (Reference Pan2006) compared 1998 and 2006, he noted that despite having more experienced candidates ‘the GPT's total vote and vote share had shrunk by two thirds’. The GPT enjoyed its best national election percentage since 1996 two years later in the first legislative election under the new electoral system in 2008. That year it won 0.6% in the party list vote, performing especially well in Taipei city (1.1%), Hualian (0.94%), and Chiayi city (0.81%). This made GPT the sixth most popular party on the party list, but like the other small parties it failed to reach the required 5% for gaining seats.Footnote ¹⁷ The GPT also nominated ten district candidates and thus for the first time appealed outside of its base of Taipei for a number of elections. However, the new SMD electoral system meant that its district candidates were not competitive. The growth trend continued into 2010 when the GPT nominated four district candidates for Taipei City and one for New Taipei City Council. The vote share in Taipei City saw a three-fold increase, though none was close to winning the election in the MMD. In New Taipei City, Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘) garnered over 8,000 votes, the highest vote share for a GPT candidate since 1998. The gradual growth in GPT vote shares between 2006 and 2010 is especially noteworthy as this occurred in a period when the other existing small parties were all losing support (Fell, Reference Fell2014). Another sign of the party's re-emergence was that in 2010 there were more UDN articles about the GPT than any year other than 1996.

The 2012 legislative election represented more of a challenge to the GPT as the election was held on the same day as the presidential election for the first time. Once again, in order to have a party list set of candidates it needed to nominate ten district level candidates. The election showed the GPT's improvement on a number of levels. Firstly, the party list vote was 1.7% (229,566 votes), making it the fifth largest party in terms of vote share and exceeding the NP's vote share for the first time. Unlike in the 2008 election, its party list share was much more evenly distributed throughout the country. Its highest vote shares were in Taipei City (2.7%), Hsinchu City (2.2%), and New Taipei City (2%). While the NP had large geographical variation in its vote share, the GPT gained over 1% in every city and county. One particularly interesting case was the offshore island of Lanyu, where the GPT gained 35% of the party list vote, coming a close second to the KMT's 39%. The GPT also enjoyed a five-fold increase in its district vote share, though half of this was down to the case of Pan Han-sheng in Taipei City Legislative District 7. This was because an informal agreement had been reached with the DPP that it would not nominate a candidate in this KMT stronghold and let the GPT stand against the incumbent KMT legislator. Pan came second with 24% of the vote (43,449 votes), making it the highest ever single GPT candidate's vote share. Nevertheless, this is one of the KMT's safest seats and its candidate won with 63% of the vote.Footnote ¹⁸

Despite not winning any seats in 2012, the GPT's vote share and distribution showed it has the potential to win party list legislative seats as well as local council seats contested under a MMD system. This potential was realized in November 2014 when the GPT won its first local assembly seats. Thus, its next big test will be to see whether it can build on this foundation to make a breakthrough in the national parliamentary elections of 2016.

Explaining the GPT's electoral fortunes

The above electoral trends suggest that there are three main patterns needing explaining. The first is the GPT's promising but limited performance between 1996 and 1998. The second is the virtual disappearance of the party as an electoral actor between 1999 and 2005. The third trend is the re-emergence and gradual revival of the GPT between 2006 and 2012.

The virtual disappearance of the GPT 1999–2005

During the period from 1999 to 2005, the GPT virtually disappeared as an electoral actor. In our interviews and focus groups, the two most common explanations for this trend were the DPP coming to power in 2000 and the departure of many of the early GPT figures to study abroad. In the next section, we consider how we can best understand the development of the GPT during this period through the lens of political science theories.

Firstly, in Meguid's terms the DPP switched to a more accommodative approach to environmental issues during the 2000 presidential campaign and in the year after winning the election. For instance, during the campaign it came out firmly against the N4PS and the controversial plan for a dam project in Meinong. Following the election, it appointed the veteran anti-nuclear figure Edgar Lin as its first Environment Minister. Then in October 2000, it announced the halting of the N4PS project (Arrigo and Puleston, Reference Arrigo, Puleston, Fell, Klöter and Bi-yu2006: 176–80). This accommodative strategy can be seen in Tsui Shu-hsin's (崔愫欣) documentary How are you Gongliao (貢寮你好嗎?). In the film, there is a scene where the Gongliao anti-nuclear protestors confront the three main presidential candidates outside the TV station before the presidential debate. Of the three, only the DPP's Chen Shui-bian came out unequivocally for stopping construction. Thus in the public's eye, the DPP was able to regain ownership of the environmental issue.

The coming to power of the DPP with its pro-environment image thus radically changed the political context for the GPT. It was initially harder for the environmental movement to attack the government. As Peng Yen-wen explained, ‘The early generation of the GPT tended to be much closer to the DPP, they were much more similar in their outlooks.’Footnote ³⁰ After being excluded from the policy-making process under the KMT, environmental groups could get access to government ministers. One of the key impacts of the DPP coming to power was how it recruited from social movements in search of election candidates and political appointees. As GPT figure Robin Winkler explained, ‘the DPP came to power in 2000. So that really collapsed the social and environmental movements. I’ve heard from reliable sources and I am sure there is a way to verify this that there are about 6,000 government appointees every time the government changes. 6,000 political appointees. We kept hearing the DPP needs talent and where do they get the talent? They get it from the social and environmental movements.’ Footnote ³¹ In other words, the DPP coming to power hollowed out the human resources of many social movements and undermined their autonomy.

Thus, a key factor undermining the fortunes of the GPT in this period was a shortage of resources. Financially, this was a severe problem in the aftermath of 1998 because of the party's over-dependence on Kao Cheng-Yan's fundraising in the initial period. Equally damaging was the departure of a number of the younger party activists and candidates who had stood in the 1990s elections such as Peng Yen-wen, Chang Shu-mei (張淑玫), and Chen Kuang-yu (陳光宇) to study abroad. This meant that when the next round of elections arrived in 2001 and 2002, the party had almost no candidates. As Calvin Wen explained, ‘The GPT is mainly young people. My feeling is everyone went to study abroad or had disappeared.’Footnote ³² As none of the post 2000 GPT candidates (until 2008) had pre-2000 election experience, a huge amount of campaign experience was lost. As Wen explained, ‘Our experience was we suddenly got 10,000 plus votes and then stopped joining elections. Later I went to work in the Legislative Yuan and discovered this was such a waste.’Footnote ³³ The fact that some core members’ career choices played such havoc upon the party illustrates just how un-institutionalized the GPT was at this time.

Re-emergence and growth of the GPT 2006–12

In our interviews and focus groups, the most commonly raised reason for the re-emergence of the GPT was the return from abroad of graduates. As Robin Winkler explained, ‘I think (Peng) Yen-wen and Bin-yuan (Calvin Wen) came back in I think 2004 or 2005. They started reorganizing the Green Party.’Footnote ³⁴ As Peng explained, ‘I felt it was my responsibility, I felt guilty . . . we’d let the GPT fall into decline. I did not really rebuild the party. We hired a part-time assistant. Then we looked for some good people to come to the GPT. I tried to bring in many people from the environmental movement.’Footnote ³⁵ Representative figures in the new era included Pan Han-sheng, Robin Winkler, Chang Hong-lin, Hsu Wen-yen (徐文彥), Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘), Wan-ju Yu (余宛如), and Dinna Hsu (徐蟬娟). This was the start of a recruitment drive that allowed the GPT to once again contest elections. A major consequence of the new human resources was a much more diverse set of figures that enabled the party to engage with new audiences and issues. Thus, for instance, gay rights issues have become a prominent appeal since the 2010 city council elections. While other parties have offered mixed messages on gay marriage, the GPT has been the only party strongly in support. This new approach can be seen in the incorporation of the LGBT pride colours in the GPT's party badge and the nomination of openly gay candidates.Footnote ³⁶ However, the new diversity of the party membership also sowed the seeds for some of the internal clashes between activists closer to the DPP and the new intake.

A sign of the richer resources was that the GPT party finally nominated more extensively with serious candidates for Taipei City and New Taipei City council in 2010 and then island-wide in 2012. Nevertheless, finding candidates remains a challenge. Party co-convener in 2011 Yang Chang-ling (楊長苓) explained, ‘Until July, because of the election in the end of the year, we had to find out some candidates. Time was running out, so I participated in the activities very hard since August and also detected it's hard to find the candidates. We tried to convince others but were always rejected.’Footnote ³⁷

The shift to a new predominantly SMD electoral system meant that the institutional environment for small parties was becoming less favourable. This contributed to the overall decline in smaller parties from 2004 to 2010, as the purifier parties suffered severe erosion of votes, seats, and politicians going back to the mainstream parties. However, the GPT bucked the trend by showing progressively improved election results between 2006 and 2012. In addition to the new human, organizational resources and financial resources, changes on the political opportunity structure and the interparty relationship all played a role in the GPT's improved fortunes.

Firstly, there became more space for the GPT to develop on environmental issues as the DPP government took a more adversarial position in the second DPP term (2004–8). The failure of the DPP to halt the N4PS and remove nuclear waste from Lanyu seriously undermined its credentials with the environmental movement. Ho Tsung-hsun (何宗勳) explained how the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union began to reorganize and rebuild autonomy and effectiveness of the scattered environmental groups (Arrigo and Puleston, Reference Arrigo, Puleston, Fell, Klöter and Bi-yu2006: 172). It carried out large-scale forums in 2004 and 2005, youth training camps, and environmental public education programmes in schools.

The space for the GPT was expanded as the DPP tried to make compromises with big business to deal with the perceived sluggish economic growth. The tensions were highlighted in the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee term between 2005 and 2007 when the EPA Minister Chang Kuo-long appointed a number of GPT members or sympathizers such as Robin Winkler and Li Geng-jheng (李根政). As Winkler explained, ‘We did get in and all that pent up energy, it expressed itself. I was a pretty acerbic commissioner. I would cut people off and let the environmental groups in.’Footnote ³⁸ The clashes between the government supported development plans and this committee served to raise the visibility of environmental issues and widened the split with the DPP. As Winkler explained, ‘We had such a negative experience with the DPP.’Footnote ³⁹ By the end of the DPP era social movements, including the environmental movement were once again attempting to regain their autonomy from the DPP. However, if we consider how unpopular the DPP was by 2008, the GPT's electoral performance in 2008, though an improvement, still has to be regarded as disappointing.

Ironically, it has been the return to power of the developmentalist KMT that has provided a more fertile environment for the environmental movement and the GPT to develop after 2008. The KMT at both the national and local government level has tended to take a clearly adversarial approach to environmental issues, leading to a series of large-scale protest movements in which GPT figures, such as Pan Han-sheng, have often played a prominent role. An example of this was the Miramar Resort project (美麗灣), where the KMT run Taidong County government colluded with developers to ignore environmental laws, indigenous rights, and court rulings.Footnote ⁴⁰ On an even larger scale was the proposed Kuokuang Petrochemical plant in Changhua. This was initially strongly backed by KMT national and local government, but eventually the scale of the protests movement led President Ma to fear it could undermine his and the KMT's re-election plans in 2012. Ma's decision to halt the project represented a major victory for environmentalists.Footnote ⁴¹ As had been the case in the mid 1990s, the rejuvenated environmental movement benefitted the GPT's development.

The anti-nuclear movement, particularly the movement against the N4PS has been a constant feature of Taiwan's environmental movement. However, it regained prominence in the aftermath of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear disaster in March 2011. This meant that nuclear power was again on the agenda for much of the 2012 election campaign. The GPT was able to benefit from this; although the DPP's presidential candidate included Nuclear Free homeland as a slogan, the DPP had disappointed environmentalists while in power. In other words, the adversarial KMT stance on nuclear issues and a marginalized DPP gave the GPT space to develop.

In contrast, the KMT remained adamant on pushing the N4PS into operation. The consistent anti-nuclear position of GPT was able to attract the growing number of voters with anti-nuclear views. Indeed, one interviewee who voted for GPT in the 2012 national election suggested that GPT should concentrate all its efforts on anti-nuclear issue because ‘this is a big issue, and its impact is huge!’Footnote ⁴² She also criticized the main parties for their shallow position toward environmental issues: ‘The two main parties are just interested in votes. They change policies all the time to get votes. They say the East coast needs development and then say we must conserve the East coast. They say we need nuclear power, then say we don’t. That is why we do not want the GPT to become like a real party. Because once you become a real party, you’ll just get politicians. We hope that by becoming strong, the GPT can protect us.’Footnote ⁴³ In almost all our supporter interviews, we were told of how they had switched to the GPT after having become tired of the choice of two bad apples (mainstream parties).

Nevertheless, the GPT's expanded support in 2012 is not solely due to its anti-nuclear appeals. From our interviews with party supporters, we found many had been attracted by the GPT's advocacy of issues generally ignored by mainstream parties, such as gay rights and animal rights. In fact, some interviewees even said that they were not so concerned about the anti-nuclear issue. As one supporter explained, ‘Of course it's best to be nuclear free, but I feel it's a very hard objective to achieve. To tell you the truth, I don't really care whether you support or oppose nuclear energy.’Footnote ⁴⁴

In the GPT's 2012 core policy proposals, it clearly called for ‘Respect for multi-culturalism, an anti-discrimination law, legal status for cohabiting couples. Animal protection to be written into the constitution and establishing an animal protection agency.’Footnote ⁴⁵ Such appeals are starkly different from mainstream parties. As one new GPT supporter explained, ‘I had always been interested in ecological protection issues, and when I discovered a party that pays special attention to animal rights, I was deeply moved.’Footnote ⁴⁶ Thus, the GPT has used its unique political project to attract new voters that have specific niche issue interests. For example, since 2008 the GPT has nominated the openly gay candidate Wang Chung-ming to contest seats in Taipei County. Wang has been one of the GPT's highest vote winners and his candidacies have served to attract the attention of the gay community. The new type of party supporters that the GPT has been attracting fit well into the characteristics of post materialists (Inglehart, Reference Inglehart1997). Like the case of the New Zealand Green Party in 2011, the GPT was able to expand its support base by broadening its issue appeal beyond its core environmental policies (Lees-Marshment, Reference Lees-Marshment2014: 54–6).

The relationship between the GPT and the DPP has however remained controversial and a severe challenge for the GPT. This was highlighted in the case of Pan Han-sheng's campaign in Taipei City in 2012 where the DPP gave Pan a free run against the KMT's candidate. According to Pan's campaigner Hsiao Yuan (蕭遠), there were other tangible benefits such as extensive media coverage of Pan and the GPT and how the DPP taught Pan campaigning methods.Footnote ⁴⁷ Nevertheless, the majority of party activists in our focus groups were extremely unhappy about this informal alliance. This reveals how the majority of the new generation activists prefer to make a clearer distinction between the GPT and the DPP. This was made clear in a recent online GPT ad slogan: ‘GPT is not the DPP, say it ten times.’

It should also be noted that the relationship and development of other small parties also remains a challenge for the GPT in the post 2000 period. For instance, the TSU, like the TIP in the 1990s, has attempted to take an anti-nuclear and pro-environment policy line to appeal to a similar constituency dissatisfied with the DPP. Similarly, the TSU has tried to poach GPT politicians. For instance, in 2008 the TSU placed Chen Yu-feng (陳玉峰), who had been a key figure in the environmental movement and supporter of the GPT, on the top of its legislative proportional party list. More recently, the former GPT office manager Li Yi-chieh (李宜潔) switched to the TSU and stood unsuccessfully in the New Taipei City council election in 2014.

In addition to the interparty relationship summarized above, the PR element to the new electoral system does offer some space for small parties. However, this only became clear in the second election held under this system in 2012. Not only did the TSU and PFP win party list seats, the GPT gained a quarter of a million votes and became the fifth largest party. This growth in support even surprised some GPT activists. The GPT tried to make its potential voters aware how the new PR vote worked.Footnote ⁴⁸ Our interviews with GPT supporters found that after the experience of 2008, many voters had understood the significance of the two vote system and adopted split ticket voting. As one respondent explained: ‘I do not want to see someone I hate getting elected, so I will be strategic. So in order to prevent the person I don't like, I’ll vote for the opposing camp. Later we got a party list vote, I’ll give my party list vote to the GPT. The reason for voting GPT is simple, because I really don't like the two big parties. Why won't I vote for a GPT candidate in a district? First, I don't think they had a candidate in my district. Second, voting for a GPT candidate (in SMDs) is like an invalid vote, I don't want to waste my vote.’Footnote ⁴⁹

A final element that has contributed to the development of the GPT has been changes in the media environment. A common complaint among our interviewees has been how hard it is to gain attention in the mainstream media, which has grown increasingly partisan. The GPT does not have the finances to compete with the mainstream parties in buying TV or newspaper ads, huge stadium rallies or vote buying. However, the rise of the internet and social media use have served to lower political communication costs. As Hsiao Yuan explained, ‘Overall the internet helps the GPT, as too many people are not aware of the GPT.’Footnote ⁵⁰ For instance, in 2010 the GPT had a number of innovative TV ads that were only shown on YouTube.Footnote ⁵¹ Generally, it has not been the GPT's official sites that have been particularly effective but those of its supporters and candidates. For instance, in the initial revival stages, blogs such as those run by Huang Shu-wei (黃書瑋) and Pan Han-sheng were especially effective in gaining attention. The widespread development of social media has clearly been even more effective. This can partly explain why the GPT vote was so well distributed in 2012 compared to the concentrated nature in 2008. Our GPT supporter interviews also reveal the party has benefitted from the rise of the internet and social media. There appeared to be two main ways that voters were being persuaded to vote GPT. These were through involvement in the rising environmental movements and exposure to messages on social media. We can get a sense of the effectiveness of social media for the GPT from the I-Voter studies led by political scientist Liao Da-chi (廖達琪). Out of their sample of 538 respondents who had voted in the 2012 party list, the GPT was actually the most popular party with 35.5% (Liao and Chen, Reference Liao and Po-yu2013). In fact, if Facebook likes can be considered a mark of party support levels, then the GPT is now the third most popular party in Taiwan, with 62,000 likes.Footnote ⁵²