【 國考達人 盧顧問 】

<本文轉引用自王寶鑑老師部落格>

Abstract

In order to achieve the manifesto of President Ma and provide the central government with the power to reform the local government, Taiwan amended the Local Government Act in 2009. Then, besides the original special municipality, Taipei, new four special municipalities were established in 2010. In addition, Taoyuan County has applied for becoming a special municipality in June 2012. The Executive Yuan approved of this application in January 2013, there will be one more special municipality from December 25, 2014. Also, the population of these six special municipalities is 15,959,975, which accounts for 68.55% of the total population of Taiwan. Why does every county want to become a special municipality? It should be noted that the townships election will be invalidated when a county becomes a special municipality; this seems anti-democracy. Considering that the special municipality seems to have its special purposes, it might work well if the city hall has stronger administrative power to enhance efficiency. Based upon the concerns above, this paper focuses on three issues: (1) To analyze the real motive of becoming a special municipality in terms of getting more finance and personnel power. (2) To redefine the special municipality as a kind of special-purpose government, for instance, capital or military purpose. (3) To examine whether Taiwan should adopt dual policies on the special municipality, consisting of the special-purpose municipality and the autonomy municipality. The former is supposed to adopt the “one tier autonomy” system; the latter, the “two tier autonomy” system. This paper employs the comparative method to discuss London and Tokyo, which are not only special municipalities but also the capitals of UK and Japan respectively. Moreover, this paper pays more attention to London, where Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have been in power, and the Coalition Government passed the Localism Act in 2011, whose main purpose is going to shift power from the government back into the civic society, individuals and communities.  (written by Pao-Chien Wang)

Keywords: Local government, special municipality, Taiwan, townships election, Localism Act