The changing role of business associations in democratizing Taiwan

This article examines the role of business associations in Taiwan. It begins by comparing the three approaches used to explain state-society relations in modern Taiwan: capitalist, corporatist, and pluralist. Legal requirements for economic organizations reflect a corporatist impulse. However, empirical measurements of associations' communications with government, government supervision of associations, and economic impacts on state policy demonstrate increasing pluralism. Today's business associations have greater autonomy than previously, but at the cost of reduced control over their members. SMEs and large conglomerates have growing political influence in Taiwan's changing political economy.