英文摘要 |
Ma Ying-Jeou's victory in the 2008 presidential election brought about changes in the political opportunity structure under three dimensions: a conservative shift of policy orientation, the closing of policy channels and the opposition party's pro-environmental turn. The existing literatures on the environmental protests under Ma Ying-Jeou government are either focusing on the dynamics, process, and consequence by single-case studies, or concerned with the normal aspects of environmental justice, democratic values, human rights, alternative agricultural production, as well as the problems with the developmentalism and land speculation, etc. However, what has been absent is an overall description of the environmental protests under the Ma Ying-Jeou government. This paper analyzes the development of Taiwan's environmental protest since the second power transfer in 2008. We apply the method of protest event analysis by using the journalistic reports in United Daily and Liberty Times, with special focus on the dynamics of protest, event number, mobilization scale, protest repertoire and the composition of participants. We maintain that the Kuomintang's return to power radically alerted the political opportunity structure. Our study reveals that environmental protests and their scales were on the rise under Ma Ying-Jeou government. Protests against new pollution and resource extraction became the new major themes. The emergence of ethnicity-based and occupation-based protests was also a new feature. |