從政治發展的角度來看，台灣在2000 年的總統大選出現首次的政權輪替，由民進黨取代執政逾半個世紀的國民黨，到了2008 年的總統大選，國民黨再次取得執政權，透過選舉和平地完成政權二次輪替，雖然出現符合S. P. Huntington 對「第三被民主化」所定義之民主圈家的事實，惟公民在此一過程中，實質上是否粹練出成熟而穩定的公民意識，值此民主鞏固與深化的關鍵時期，實值得吾人高度關注此一議題。本研究以台灣民眾在政權二次輪替茄後的公民意識為分析標的，利用固定樣本追蹤調查(panel study) 的方法，分別從反權威意識、政治功效感、政治信任感、民主價值認同及民主深化認同等構面探討公民意識的消長變化情形。 本研究的分析結果得到幾點發現 : (1) 就單項指標而論，在政權二次輸替後，絕大多數指標不是呈現上升就是持平，若綜合這些指標的表現，無論是政權二次輪替前、後，民眾對表達個人意見權利的認同度最高，而對政治人物與政府部門的信任度則是最低；(2) 在五大構面中，反權威意識與民主價值認同在政權二次輪替前、後二次調查中是認同度較高也較穩定的兩個構向，市政治信任感與政治功效感則是變化最大的構面；(3) 民眾的公民意識變化與政站立場、黨派偏好的關聯相當高，尤其是在政治信任感和政治功效感方面，當個人所支持的候選人或政黨取得執政權時，對領導者或政府部門會有較高的信任感，同樣地，也傾向認為自己有影響政治的能力及感受到政府部門在政策上對其偏好的具體回應。

Huntington argued that when a nation transitions from an “emergent democracy" to a “stable democracy," it must undergo two democratic and peaceful turnovers of ruling parties, and Taiwan passed this test in the 2008 presidential election. However this is not a sufficient condition for democracy. Actually, many studies have proved that the healthy development of democracy is based on good citizenship. In other word, the concept of citizenship occupies a privileged position in democracy. So, in this study, we tried to construct five important dimensions of citizenship, which include anti-authoritarianism, political efficacy, political trust, cognition of democratic value and deepening democracy, for measuring people's political attitudes before and after the 2008 presidential election in Taiwan. The panel data we used in this study were gatheced by the Election Study Center, National Chengchi University in 2008. In this article, we concluded with some findings. First, for most single indicators, most citizens had a higher score after the election than before. Among these dimensions, people had the highest score on the anti-authoritarianism and the lowest score on political trust. Second, during this period, the situations of these dimensions are not consistent. Both dimensions of awareness of anti-authority and cognition of democratic values are stable. And it showed a sígnifícant change in political trust. Third, the changes of these dímensions have definite association with people's political position and party identification, especially for political trust and political efficacy.