The Taiwan Democracy and Security Project at Stanford University is hosting a presentation today by Gary Hamilton, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Washington. Prof. Hamilton will speak about his new book from Stanford University Press, Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy. 

The talk is free and open to the public. Additional details can be found at the official event page. 

Abstract
Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy is a record of a thirty-year research project that Gary G. Hamilton and Kao Cheng-shu began in 1987.  A distinguished sociologist and university administrator in Taiwan, Kao and his research team (which included Prof. Hamilton during his frequent visits to Taiwan) interviewed over 800 owners and managers of Taiwanese firms in Taiwan, China, and Vietnam.  Some were re-interviewed over ten times during this period.  The length of this project allows them a vantage point to challenge the conventional interpretations of Asian industrialization and to present a new interpretation of the global economy that features an enduring alliance between, on the one hand, American and European retailers and merchandisers and, on the other hand, Asian contract manufacturers, with Taiwanese industrialists becoming the most prominent contract manufacturers in the past forty years.

Bio
Gary G. Hamilton is a Professor Emeritus of International Studies and Sociology at the University of Washington.  He specializes in historical/comparative sociology, economic sociology, with a special emphasis on Asian societies. He is an author of numerous articles and books, including most recently Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths, Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan (with Robert Feenstra) (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Commerce and Capitalism in Chinese Societies (London: Routledge, 2006), The Market Makers: How Retailers Are Changing the Global Economy (co-editor and contributor, Oxford University Press, 2011; paperback 2012), and Making Money: How Taiwanese Industrialists Embraced the Global Economy (with Kao Cheng-shu, Stanford University Press, 2018).

My latest review essay, entitled "The China Model: How Successful is the Chinese Regime?" is now out at the Taiwan Journal of Democracy.

More on the themes of that piece below, but first, If you are a China-watcher, you really need to read Edward Wong's terrific new article in the New York Times, "A Chinese Empire Reborn." Wong was a China correspondent for the NYT for a decade, and he cuts through a lot of the crap about the nature of the Chinese regime. China's rise as a global power, he rightly notes, is occurring mostly through its accumulation of economic and military clout, rather than through emulation of its system and values by ordinary people and elites in other countries. That is, China's rise to date has been mostly about increasing its "hard", not "soft", power, and that order shows few signs of changing anytime soon.

There's one assumption in that essay that bothers me a bit, though. It's that the Chinese regime is inevitably going to continue its ascension in the world--that is, though it probably won't attract more admirers or imitators any time soon, China's relative hard power will continue its rapid increase. Here's the end of Wong's essay:

What I question is Wong's implicit assumption that China will inevitably continue on an upward trajectory over the next several decades. It's true that the relative power of the United States is declining ("fading" is a bit strong, but we'll leave that aside for now), as it has been since its early post-Cold War peak. It's also true that the "liberal hegemony" of the current global order, and especially the capacity, and willingness, of the United States to maintain it, is under considerable short-term threat right now.

But it is not obvious to me that China is especially well-positioned to benefit from these trends, because it's not self-evident that its current economic expansion will continue much longer, or that Chinese leaders will be able to adapt very effectively to the challenges looming on the horizon. The Chinese economy has grown quickly over the last 35 years, but despite many assertions that China's growth record is unprecedented, it is not--over a similar time interval, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and before them Japan registered equally impressive growth, with a much more equal distribution of gains, to boot. And those earlier "economic miracles" followed a broadly similar pattern--a greater role for market forces, increasing connectivity to the global economy, export-oriented development, high savings rates, broad investment in education and infrastructure, but a continued privileged role for an activist state. 

Here's the kicker: in all of those cases, the economy inevitably slowed down, and at the same time their  "demographic dividends" also ended. The transition to a different growth model has been wrenching, and it's not clear that Japan, or South Korea, or Taiwan or Singapore has hit on the right balance of reforms--in particular, improved corporate governance, strengthened rule of law, and banking reforms--that would improve their long-term economic prospects. (Singapore has probably come the closest so far.) So why should we expect China to? On all these dimensions, China actually looks much worse than its Asian predecessors, and it has the added burden of a hugely unequal distribution of wealth and a political system that suffers from a grievous, long-term legitimacy deficit. (This leaves aside, too, the question of whether its reported GDP figures actually reflect anything close to reality.) It also is facing a dire demographic picture made worse by the One-Child Policy: its workforce-age population is already declining, and its total population is projected to begin falling in less than 20 years. That does not sound like a country destined for global hegemony to me.

For a more detailed discussion, check out my essay at the Taiwan Journal of Democracy.   

On October 30 at 4pm, the Taiwan Democracy Project at Stanford University will host our next event of the fall quarter, a talk by Alan Romberg, Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center. The talk is co-sponsored with the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. Among other research contributions, Mr. Romberg writes a regular report for the Hoover Institution's China Leadership Monitor that covers developments in Cross-Strait relations and the US-PRC-Taiwan trilateral relationship. 

The title of his talk is "Cross-Strait Relations after the 19th Party Congress." The event is free and open to the public; details on the talk and speaker are below.

On October 17, the Taiwan Democracy Project at Stanford University will host our first event of the fall quarter, a talk by James Lee of Princeton University. The talk is co-sponsored with the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative in the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. Mr. Lee's talk will draw from his dissertation research, which examines the role of the United States in the emergence of the "developmental state" in Taiwan--the interlocking set of state and regime institutions that oversaw the island's transformative economic growth from the 1960s through the 1980s. 

The title of his talk is "U.S.-China Rivalry and the Origins of Taiwan's Developmental State." The event is free and open to the public; details on the talk and speaker are below.

 The Conference Group on Taiwan Studies is a special Related Group of the American Political Science Association. For this year's annual APSA conference in San Francisco, CGOTS is hosting two panels, a business meeting, and a reception. All are open to registered conference participants. Details can be found here and below.

 4:00-5:30pm, Westin St. Francis, Georgian Room
CGOTS Panel I. Legitimacy Issues in Taiwanese Politics
 
1. "Personality Traits and Individual Attitude toward the Independence/Unification Issue in Taiwan,"
Dennis Weng, Sam Houston State University (Author)
Ching-hsing Wang, University of Houston (Author) 
 
2. “The Rise of Cause Lawyers and the Rule of Law in Taiwan”
Chin-shou Wang,  National Cheng Kung University (Author) 
Yu-Hsien Sung, University of South Carolina (Author) 
 
3. “Framing Effects of Pro-Gay and Pro-Family Activism in Taiwan”
Shih-chan Dai, University of Massachusetts-Amherst (Author) 
Chung-li Wu, Academia Sinica (Author) 
 
4. “Generation and Identity in Taiwan: Change and Continuity”
T.Y. Wang, Illinois State University (Author) 
Su-Feng Cheng, National Chengchi University (Author) 
 
Chair:
Yao-yuan Yeh, University of St. Thomas
Discussants:
Chien-kai Chen, Rhodes College
Aram Hur, New York University
 
 

4:00-5:30pm, Parc 55, Hearst Room
CGOTS Panel II. Parties and Elections in Taiwan
 
1. “Accounting for Legislative Candidate's Donation and Spending”
Chia-hung Tsai, National Chengchi University (Author) 
Nathan F. Batto, Academia Sinica (Author) 
Su-Feng Cheng, National Chengchi University (Author) 
Ching-hsin Yu, National Chengchi University (Author) 
 
2. “Electoral Institutions, State Subsidy Rules, and the Party System in Taiwan”
Yen-Pin Su, National Chengchi University (Author) 
 
3. “The Emergence of New Parties: A Case Study of the New Power Party in Taiwan”
Chi Huang, National Chengchi University (Author) 
Kah-yew Lim, National Chengchi University (Non-Presenting Co-Author) 
Lu-huei Chen, National Chengchi University (Author) 
Eric Chen-hua Yu, National Chengchi University (Taipei) (Author) 
 
4. “The Issue Structure of Voter Choice in Taiwan’s 2016 Presidential Election”
Caleb M. Clark, Auburn University (Author) 
Karl Ho, University of Texas, Dallas (Non-Presenting Co-Author)
Alexander C. Tan, University of Canterbury (Author)
 
Chair: 
Hans Stockton, University of St. Thomas
Discussants:
Lu-Cheng Dennis Weng, SUNY, Cortland
Austin Horng-En Wang, Duke University
 
 
6:30-7:30pm, Hilton Union Square, Golden Gate 1
Conference Group on Taiwan Studies Business Meeting
Open to all CGOTS members
 
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7:30-9:00pm, Hilton Union Square, Golden Gate 3
Conference Group on Taiwan Studies Reception
Open to CGOTS members and guests; food and drink provided

The 2017 American Political Science Association annual conference will be held in San Francisco, CA, from August 31-September 3, 2017. One of the new formats that APSA introduced last year is a "mini-conference"--that is, a day-long set of panels that share a related theme and set of questions, considered in a more flexible format than the standard, rigid APSA section panels. 

This year I have had the privilege, with Netina Tan of McMaster University, to organize a mini-conference on electoral malpractice in East and Southeast Asia. The event will run all day Saturday, September 2, and is open to all registered APSA conference attendees. The full schedule of panels is below. 

Venue: Westin San Francisco, California Room West
Date: Saturday, September 2, 8:00am-5:30pm
​
8:00am-9:30am          Panel 1: Comparative Perspectives and Methodological Issues

1. Welcome (Netina Tan, McMaster University and Kharis Templeman, Stanford University)
2. Keynote: “Electoral Integrity and Democratic Practices in Asia” (Larry Diamond, Stanford University)
3. “Methodological Challenges in the study of Electoral Malpractice” (Carolien Van Ham, University of New South Wales)

Chair: Allen Hicken (University of Michigan)
Discussant: Allen Hicken (University of Michigan) 

9:30am-11:00am      Panel 2: Types of Electoral Malpractice

1. “Drivers of Pre-Electoral Manipulations in the 2013 Cambodian Election” (Max Groemping, University of Sydney)
2. “Pre-Electoral Malpractice in Single-Party Dominant Malaysia” (Kai Ostwald, University of British Columbia)
3. “Electoral Malpractice in Myanmar: A Comparison of the 2010 and 2015 Elections” (Marco Bünte, Monash University, Malaysia)
4. “The Use and Abuse of Electoral Rules to Manipulate Election Outcomes in Thailand” (Joel Selway, Brigham Young University)

Chair: Larry Diamond (Stanford University)
Discussant: Jorgen Elklit (Aarhus University)

11:00-11:15pm           Break 

11:15pm-12:45pm      Panel 3: Effects of Electoral Malpractice  

1. “Gerrymandering and Malapportionment in Singapore” (Netina Tan, McMaster University)
2. “Voting for the Incumbent in Single Party Regimes: Fear or Conviction?” (Guillem Riambau, Yale-NUS and Kai Ostwald, University of British Columbia)
3. “Voting in the Dark: How Vietnamese Voters Negotiate Low Information Elections” (Paul Schuler, University of Arizona)
4. “Silent Manipulation: Effects of Polling Place Distance on Voting Behavior in Hong Kong’s Electoral Autocracy” (Stan Hok-Wui Wong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University)

Chair: Kenneth McElwain (University of Tokyo)
Discussant: Meredith Weiss (University at Albany, Suny)

12:45pm-2:00pm    Lunch Break

2:00pm-3:30pm          Panel 4: Sources of Electoral Integrity   

1. “Sources of Electoral Integrity: Reforming the Central Election Commission in Taiwan” (Kharis Templeman, Stanford University)
2. “Violations of Electoral Integrity in the Myanmar 2015 Election” (Elin Bjarnegard, Uppsala University)
3. “Free and/or Fair? How Japanese Courts Rule on Election Campaign Regulations” (Kenneth Mori McElwain, Tokyo University)
4. “Restricting free speech in the name of fairness: Campaign regulation in South Korea” (You Jong-Sung, Australian National University)

Chair:  Jorgen Elklit (Aarhus University)
​Discussant: Allen Hicken (University of Michigan)  

3:30-3:45pm              Break 

3:45-5:00pm               Panel 5: Challenges of Electoral Reforms 

1. “Challenges of Electoral Reforms and Engineering in Mongolia” (Michael Seeberg, University of Southern Denmark)
2. “The Menu of Manipulation: Reform and Malpractice in Contemporary Indonesian Elections” (Sarah Shair Rosenfield, Arizona State University)
3. “The Decline of the Effectiveness of Vote-Buying as Electoral Mobilization Strategy in Taiwan” (Wang Chin-Shou, National Cheng Kung University)
4. “Using Election Forensics to Detect Fraud and Strategic Behavior in the Philippines” (Allen Hicken, University of Michigan)

Chair: Guillem Riambau (Yale-NUS)
​Discussant: Carolien Van Ham (University of New South Wales)

5:00pm-5:30pm          Panel 6: Roundtable  Discussion 

1. Comparative Regional Implications, Publications and Steps Forward (Netina Tan, McMaster University and Kharis Templeman, Stanford University)

The Varieties of Democracy project has posted a call for applications for up to two new post-doctoral fellows to join their team at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. This is a terrific opportunity to be part of the next wave of quantitative research on comparative democracy and democratization. Gothenburg is also a fantastic city to spend time in. I've reposted the full call for applications below.

The American Political Science Association's Conference Group on Taiwan Studies has issued a call for paper proposals for the 2017 annual conference, August 31-September 3, 2017, in San Francisco. 

CGOTS is one of APSA's "related groups" organizations. Founded in 1990, it serves to promote Taiwan studies in the broader political science community, as well as to foster connections between Taiwan-based and U.S.-based scholars with substantial research interests in Taiwan. 

For applicants with a Taiwan-related proposal, submitting to CGOTS can substantially improve one's chances of acceptance to the conference. The formal call for papers is reposted below; the deadline to submit applications is January 9, 2017. 

The 2017 American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting will be held from August 31-September 3 in San Francisco, CA. The conference theme is “The Quest for Legitimacy.”
 
CGOTS invites paper and panel proposals on Taiwan’s domestic politics and cross-Strait and international relations that are consistent with the theme of “The Quest for Legitimacy.”
 
The concept of legitimacy is fundamental to many classic debates in political science. At the same time, legitimacy is core to numerous contemporary political issues. Across the world and our discipline, questions about political legitimacy ensue. Salient debates—whether about representation, equality, voice, accountability, institutionalization, protest, revolutions, international norms, disputes, war—can all contain questions of legitimacy at their core. Moments of social and political change often center on contestation about what is considered legitimate, including some of the more prominent movements in Taiwan in the last several years such as demonstrations against nuclear power, government land expropriation, the death of a military conscript due to harsh corporal punishment, and of course the Sunflower Movement. Legitimacy is also closely tied to numerous core concepts, including the creation and maintenance of order, the proper exercise of power, and the nature and role of political authority. The legitimacy of state actions in Taiwan has become more contested in recent years, most notably in the conduct of cross-Strait relations with the People’s Republic of China. So has the legitimacy of the law-making process, particularly questions about how far majorities can go to implement policies over minority objections.
 
For the 2017 Annual Meeting, we encourage participants to consider questions about legitimacy in contemporary Taiwanese politics. These could include exploring legitimacy in the context of Taiwan’s contested international standing, or its complicated and shifting relationship with the People’s Republic of China. And on the domestic front, a wide range of questions speak to the issue of legitimacy. How, for instance, is the issue of “transitional justice”—itself a highly contested concept—understood by different sides of the political spectrum? What does public opinion tell us about the relative legitimacy of different democratic institutions—the judicial system versus elected officials, for instance? How is the spread of new technologies reshaping how citizens understand “legitimate” political behavior and discourse, or affecting the accountability of representatives to their constituents? How do citizens and elites understand the rule of law, and how might this vary across different issue areas and subsets of the population? There are also important questions about procedural legitimacy: to what extent do those on the losing side of political outcomes, from elections to government policies to judicial rulings, accept the legitimacy of decisions which hurt their own interests? Finally, there are important unresolved questions about the legitimacy of the definition of citizenship in Taiwan: should immigrants from the PRC be treated differently from immigrants from Southeast Asia, for instance?
 
We encourage papers that tackle these and related questions.
 
Please send proposals to APSA: (http://community.apsanet.org/annualmeeting/call/papers) 
 
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Kharis Templeman (kharis@stanford.edu), CGOTS Coordinator. The deadline for proposals is January 9, 2017. Decisions on the proposals will be communicated to you in March 2017. Travel support for CGOTS panelists is subject to the availability of external funding.
 

​One of the more interesting developments in Taiwan's 2016 general election was the rise of so-called  "Third Force" parties--completely new entrants into the political system, rather than break-aways from the KMT or the DPP.  While some of the media commentary got a bit carried away about the significance of these new parties, the founding of one, the New Power Party (NPP), did pose a serious threat to the DPP's chances of winning a majority in the legislature. As an offshoot of the Sunflower Movement, the NPP positioned its message in a way calculated to appeal to pan-green voters, and it recruited high-profile candidates to run in district races, not just the party list. These district candidates had the potential to split the pan-green vote in what everyone expected would be a very anti-KMT year, and in a worst-case scenario for their side, help the KMT hold on to their legislative majority. 

In the end, a pan-green split didn't happen. A key reason is that the DPP headed off the threat early: the party formed a kind of pre-electoral coalition by yielding 11 districts to the NPP and other non-DPP candidates in exchange for their support not to run against DPP candidates elsewhere. And the districts that the DPP yielded were, with one exception, far past the critical 57th seat needed to deliver a legislative majority. It turned out to be a good deal for the DPP, which won 68 seats overall. It also, more surprisingly, turned out well for the NPP, which won all three district seats and five overall and became the third largest party in the LY. 

The NPP Surprise
My own expectation going into the election was that the NPP candidates would perform worse, on average, than a generic DPP challenger. (In fact, if you read that linked post closely, I was even more specific: 2-4 points worse, on average.) The rationale was pretty simple: Freddy Lim, Hung Tzu-yung, and Huang Kuo-chang were already household names, but their close association with the Sunflower Movement, and the acerbic rhetoric of Huang, especially, suggested they would be fairly polarizing as candidates. And in the traditionally blue-leaning districts of Taipei 5 (Lim) and New Taipei 12 (Huang), I thought they would turn off more voters than they attracted with that approach. 

So what actually happened? In the graph above, I've plotted the vote share of each DPP and DPP-endorsed district candidate against Tsai Ing-wen's share of the presidential vote in the same district. DPP incumbents are represented by solid dots; challengers (i.e. non-incumbents) by hollow ones; NPP candidates by hollow squares, and other non-DPP candidates by hollow triangles. (A hearty thank you to Frozen Garlic for doing the yeoman's work of sorting the presidential race vote totals by LY district and making these data publicly available.)

Thoughts on this below the break. 

​The 2016 American Political Science Association Annual Conference will be this week, from Thursday, September 1 through Sunday, September 4, in Philadelphia, PA. There's over a dozen panels planned with Taiwan-related content. For those interested, I've listed below all the presentations I could find in the conference program. 

​First and foremost, the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies has two special panels this year, one on domestic politics and one on foreign relations. We strongly encourage anyone with even a passing interest in Taiwan studies to attend at least one panel (and bring your friends!)--our ability to retain a special conference group on Taiwan is contingent on good turnout at these organized events, and we take attendance to help make our case to APSA. The panels are:
​
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2:00-3:30pm 
Marriott Rm 414
CGOTS PANEL 1: Preferences, Identity, and Taiwan's 2016 Election
This panel discusses and examines how democratic consolidation and the changing domestic political preferences, identity, and social cleavages have shaped Taiwan's 2016 election.

Chair: Da-chi Liao, National Sun Yat-sen University

• "Coattail and Reverse Coattail Effects: The Case of Taiwan's 2016 Election," Chi Huang and Kaw-yew Lim, National Cheng Chi University
• "Legislative Co-sponsorship Networks in Taiwan," Jinhyeok Jang, University of Louisville
• "Political Cleavage in Taiwan: Is There a Shift?," T.Y. Wang, Illinois State University, and Su-feng Cheng, National Cheng Chi University
• "The Legal Complex in Taiwan's Democratization," Chin-shou Wang, National Cheng Kung University
• "The Psychological Cognition and Vote Choices in Taiwan," Chung-li Wu and Hsiao-chien Tsui, Academia Sinica.

Discussants: Dennis Weng, SUNY Cortland; Kharis Templeman, Stanford University

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 10:00-11:30am 
Marriott Rm 414
CGOTS PANEL 2: Cross-Strait Relations and Economic Integration
This panel discusses and examines cross-strait ties in the wake of Taiwan's 2016 elections and the implications for Taiwan's economic integration policy.

Chair: Shelley Rigger, Davidson College

• "China's Foreign Policy Transformation: Implications for Cross-Strait Relations," Nien-chung Chang Liao, Academia Sinica
• "Cross-Strait Relations in the Aftermath of Taiwan's 2016 Elections," John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, University of South Carolina
• "Prospect of the TPP under the Scope of Taiwan's Party Realignment," Rou-lan Chen, National Sun Yat-sen University
• "Reconciliation without Convergence?: Theorizing Taiwan-China Relations," Vincent Wei-cheng Wang, Ithaca College
• "When Frictions Do Not Cause Rift: Explaining Ambiguity in Alliance Management," Ping-kuei Chen, University of Maryland

Discussants: Dennis Hickey, Missouri State University; Hans Stockton, University of St. Thomas

CGOTS will also hold its reception Saturday evening from 6:30-8pm in Marriott Rm 411, and its business meeting right after, from 8-9pm, in Marriott Rm 410.