External Influences and Regime Transition: Five Transitions in Twentieth Century China and Taiwan

Abstract

Secondly, it is argued that impact from such external configurations is tempered or facilitated by two dimensions of vulnerability in a domestic political system, broad and specific. Broad vulnerability, or the general degree to which the domestic status quo can be insulated from the external world, may in theory substantially modulate external impacts. However, this study finds it to be far less salient than any existing specific vulnerability, i.e., that resulting from the confluence of (1) certain external configurations and (2) the prominent linkages of leading domestic power-holders with the outside world.