The Power of the Ballot Box analyzes the impact on Taiwanese politics of the "Third Wave" of democratization that swept across East Asia in the last decades of the twentieth century. Christian Schafferer's work looks beyond regional and global causes to pinpoint the true indigenous foundations of Taiwan's--and on a broader scale East Asia's--political development, and examines the pivotal importance of Taiwanese local elections in the island's democratization process. Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with leading Taiwanese politicians and political scientists, the book provides a detailed history of Taiwan's electoral experience from the turn of the twentieth century, through the Kuomintang regime, to the present day. This is supplemented by a focused case study of the watershed 1997 Taiwanese local elections and their profound impact on the Taiwanese political landscape.