當臺灣正邁進民主化進程中的民主鞏固階段，政治制度是否能完善的運作在相當 程度上取決於制度之「正當性」的獲得。由於政黨能提供「符號」與「組織」來影響選民定 位自身的政治取向，從而有助於降低投票的訊息成本，使選民能更「方便」地參與政治，因 此，政黨乃是現代代議政治中的重要機制。然而，國內對政黨制度的研究長期以來大多從「社 會分歧」的角度來觀察政黨的存在或區隔，傾向於視政黨為依變項的研究取向。與此相反地， 本文基本上將政黨制度做為自變項處理，從新制度論的角度出發，以葛蘭西(Antonio Gramsci) 及哈柏瑪斯(Jurgen Habermas)對「正當性」的思考來分析、批判臺灣目前的政黨制度，強調 制度的正當性不能單從個體的自願互動角度來解釋，而必須回歸到制度自身的運作邏輯方能 更精確掌握經驗現象的權力本質。

　　　　　Currently Taiwan is moving into a period of democratic consolidation, and whether or not the political institutions can function depends mainly on its legitimacy. The symbols and organizations of political parties not only influence political orientation of voters but also help reduce information costs and make political participation accessible. Thus, political parties are the important mechanism in modern representative politics. Up to this point domestic research of political parties has long concentrated on social cleavage as a perspective of viewing the existence and separation between political parties. Rather than looking at political parties in this way , this thesis aims to analyze political parties as an independent variation from the perspective of The New Institutionalism; as laid out in the model of legitimacy set forth by Antonio Gramsci and Jurgen Habermas. The emphasis of this thesis is that the legitimacy of the institutions cannot be explained solely in terms of voluntary interaction of agents but by logic of operation, which allows one to more clearly understand the phenomenon of the nature of power in the empirical world.