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This paper compares the state of party competition before and after the change of ruling party in Taiwan in 2000. First the balance of power between Taiwan's main political parties is discussed — the KMT's electoral hegemony has come to an end, the DPP has won two presidential elections and become Taiwan's largest parliamentary party. However, there is much continuity in Taiwan's party politics, with the same two parties electorally dominant today as at the outset of multi-party elections in the late 1980s. The second part of the article analyses election propaganda to consider how the policy content of party competition has changed and proposes that there have been more signs of continuity than change in party issue emphasis over the last four years.

This article analyses the policies of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration's policies to fight corruption, organised crime and vote-buying from two different perspectives. The first looks at policy, examining formulation, implementation and the impact of the most relevant measures taken. The other is an institutionalist perspective, explaining how constraints have limited the relevant actors' scope of action, resulting in outcomes often not matching those intended.

Surprisingly, cross-Strait political relations under Chen Shui-bian's first term as President (2000-2004) on the whole diverged little from the trajectory set in the last years of Kuomintang rule. This article analyses the reasons for this continuity.

What triggered the change in Taiwanese identity in the 1990s? How has a sense of Taiwanese-ness been constructed since then? How does the state formulate Taiwanese culture and create meaning within that culture? This article looks at how Taiwan's ruling parties have constructed Taiwanese culture and identity since the lifting of martial law. It compares the continuity and differences in cultural policies between two political regimes — the KMT's apparent emphasis on indigenisation and the DPP's push for de - sinification — focusing mainly on the policy of Taiwanisation.

Media reform is a valuable indicator of democratisation. It provides an abundance of information about the levels of freedom, tolerance, social justice and pluralism within a political system. This article reviews the changes in the Taiwanese media that have occurred since the lifting of martial law in 1987 and considers how the media are faring at the beginning of Chen Shui-bian's second term. Taiwan's media are still at an early stage of democratisation but it cannot be denied that progress has been made and that Taiwan's media are looking increasingly like those operating in systems at comparatively similar stages of democratic consolidation.

The revival of the Taiwanese language (Taiyu) in the past two decades is a significant about-face, after the restrictive measures that the government has adopted for local languages in the past. This article compares the treatment of Taiyu by official language planning agencies during the Kuomintang) KMT and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) eras. It focuses on the debates on the creation of a written norm for Taiyu. Attention is also given to the activities of non-governmental language revival groups and the co-operation between official and unofficial language planners in the implementation of recent language reforms.