ABSTRAK
Throwing the rascal out,is one of the bedrock principles in modern democracy. The idea of accountability is thus realized by replacing under-performed politicians by qualified ones. However, its often found that citizen fails to identify the real rascal as well as non-performance issues carries more weight in citizens voting choices in election. In Taiwan, the demand for accountable governance is even more pressing as Taiwan has entered a new phrase of democratic consolidation. This paper focuses on the event of gas blast in Kaohsiung City in 2014 as a case study of the association between political accountability and voters choice in the year end election for city mayor. Special attention is paid to citizens perception affects citizens vote choice in mayoral election. Based on the analyses of post-election survey, this paper concludes that, in addition to the conventional factors such as party identification and approval rating, citizens perception of reponsibility attribution and evaluation of governments responses toward the event also play significant roles in election. It also show that, comparing to the long term psychological or ambiguous approval factors, the gas blast event as a case study of political accountability is more able to examine the electoral impact of political accountability is more able to examine the electoral impact of political accountability. In the last part of this paper, a brief concluding remarks and the suggestions of studying political accountability in Taiwan will be provided.