Democracies threatened by war require strong solidarity between society and military. This article uses the case of Taiwan to test recent findings in the literature on civil–military relations regarding the influence of partisanship on public trust in a country’s military. As an émigré ‘party-army’ which retreated to Taiwan after the Chinese Nationalists were defeated in the Chinese Civil War, Taiwan’s military has a strong historical association with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), currently the largest opposition party. At the same time, the party-army’s role in the repression of calls for greater self-rule and democracy during the immediate post-World War II and martial law periods (1945–1987) created distrust of the military among segments of Taiwan’s society, who would go on to establish and support the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the current ruling party. Using public opinion data, we test the impact of partisanship on trust in the military, as well as the theme in the literature of a persistent distrust of Taiwan’s military due to its historical legacy. Confidence in the military among various segments of society is examined, with a focus on supporters of Taiwan’s two major political parties. Our case study of Taiwan holds sociological significance for other liberal democracies threatened by the expansionism of authoritarian regimes. We argue that trust in the military needs to go beyond partisan affiliation to stand up against authoritarian power.
Wenger et al. (Sun,) studied this question.