Legitimate Force in a Particularistic Democracy: Street Police and Outlaw Legislators in the Republic of China on Taiwan

• Published in: Law & social inquiry Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 615 - 642
• Main Author: Martin, Jeffrey T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-09-2013; Wiley Periodicals; Cambridge University Press
• Subjects: "Cultures of Legitimacy and Postcolonial Policing"; Asian culture; Authoritarianism; Democracy; East Asian culture; Electric substations; Ethnography; Government bureaucracy; Ideology; Investigations (Law Enforcement); Law; Legislators; Legitimacy; Outlawry; Peoples Republic of China; Police; Police services; Reform; Representation; Social law; State Power; Taiwan; Taiwan
• ISSN: 0897-6546; 1747-4469; 1545-696X
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-4469.2013.01326.x

This article explores a "particularistic" concept of legitimacy important to Taiwanese democracy. This form of legitimacy, I suggest, has been instrumental for Taiwan's successful democratic consolidation in the absence of the rule of law. As evidence, I combine ethnographic observation of neighborhood police work with historical consideration of a type of political figure emergent in the process of democratic reform, which I call the "outlaw legislator." I focus my analysis on the institutional and ideological processes articulating local policing into the wider political field. The center of these processes is a mode of popular representation that positions the outlaw legislator as a crucial hinge articulating the particularistic local order with central state powers. By analyzing the cultural content of the dramaturgical work used to reconcile low policing with higher-level state operations, this article shows how a particularistic idiom of legitimacy helps hold Taiwanese democracy together.