The third wave of democratization has focused attention on how ethnic factors influence democratic development. Throughout Taiwan's democratization process, ethnic division has been an irresistible structural incentive to politicians. Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) resounding defeat of Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) in the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) first direct chairmanship election on Saturday proved that it remains impossible to avoid political mobilization along ethnic lines.

After six months of haggling, the KMT remained unable to use its calls for greater democracy within the party to hide the difficulty it is having to bring about internal consolidation. During the campaign, the Ma camp half-intentionally played the corruption card to defame Wang and imply that he was under the negative influence of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).

Together with sworn support from party elders and election monitoring, the two candidates grew more distant from each other, an indication of the shifting political map.

From the dangwai-period to the founding of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), democracy activists demanded that the Taiwanese should be the masters of their own fate. There were also two other ideological demands -- social reform and Taiwan's independence. Although these three approaches often reinforce each other, opposition politicians are still afraid of openly advocating ethnic division, while the slogan that the Taiwanese are voting for themselves isn't necessarily enough to mobilize voters.

The election of James Soong (宋楚瑜), a Mainlander, as provincial governor in 1994, proved that Taiwanese could vote across ethnic lines, and Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) must have been upset when he lost his re-election bid for the Taipei mayorship because Mainlanders voted along ethnic lines rather than voicing their satisfaction with his achievements as mayor.

Wang, a master of networking, must have felt the same when he was unable to win the trust of KMT Mainlanders despite having Mainlander legislators campaign for him.

It would seem that the KMT, with its massive local Taiwanese membership, would be better positioned than the DPP to promote ethnic conciliation. Despite some small problems, the party chairmanship of Lee -- a Taiwanese -- was never at risk.

Differences of opinion between traditional and localization factions, however, gradually began to appear, in particular when faced by the DPP challenge, and Lee's localization policies were interpreted as "Taiwanization" policies and later swept out of the KMT, in the end leading to the founding of the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU).

The issue of whether or not the localization faction should be allowed to remain in the party has thus been brewing for a long time, and is not the result of external forces.

Ma's situation was very similar to Chen's -- without another trustworthy candidate for the chairmanship, there would have been no strong incentive to accept the burden. With his win, Ma guaranteed his nomination as the party's presidential candidate in 2008.

The question is why, unless Wang has expressed a wish to run for president, Ma wouldn't consider separating the party chairmanship and the presidency, and let Wang as party chairman campaign on Ma's behalf.

With a Wang-Ma presidential ticket out of the question, Wang will only be allowed to deal with blue-green rivalry in the legislature. No matter how hard able legislators work, they will never measure up to party workers or technocrats.

Shih Cheng-feng is a professor of public administration at Tamkang University.