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Yeh, Jiunn-rong --- "Experimenting with Independent Commissions in a New Democracy with a Civil Law Tradition: The Case of Taiwan" [2010] ELECD 817; in Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter (eds), "Comparative Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Comparative Administrative Law

Editor(s): Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lindseth, L. Peter

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848446359

Section: Chapter 15

Section Title: Experimenting with Independent Commissions in a New Democracy with a Civil Law Tradition: The Case of Taiwan

Author(s): Yeh, Jiunn-rong

Number of pages: 19

Extract:

15 Experimenting with independent commissions in
a new democracy with a civil law tradition: the
case of Taiwan
Jiunn-rong Yeh


In 2005, the Taiwanese government established the National Communication
Commission (NCC), the first ministerial-level independent regulatory commission in
Taiwan. Not surprisingly, its establishment triggered intense political confrontations,
partisan fights and constitutional court rulings against the backdrop of contentious
polity in a new democracy.
Independent commissions, primarily based upon the American model, have been
introduced and institutionalized in various legal and political contexts.1 In spite of the
growth of the commission form, we know little about their adoption and functioning in
different socio-political contexts in emerging democracies. This chapter begins to remedy
that lack by using Taiwan as a case study to demonstrate the perils of and prospects
for introducing independent commissions into new democracies with civil administra-
tive law systems. First, Section 1 presents some background on the use of commissions
in Taiwan and a case history of Taiwan's first independent commission, the National
Communication Commission (NCC). Section 2 then places the NCC in the context of an
institutional and functional analysis of the many meanings of `independence' as applied
to regulatory commissions. Next Section 3 turns to positive political economy to explore
the political dynamics behind the creation of such commissions and the application of
these arguments to Taiwan. Finally, Section 4 considers how to match the design of com-
missions to the disparate reasons why they may seem valuable.
I conclude that independent ...