Kharis Templeman
中文姓名:祁凱立
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December 8 Event: Dynamics of Democracy in the Ma Ying-jeou Era

12/7/2020

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The Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region will host a virtual event tomorrow (register at the link), Tuesday, December 8 at 4pm, the Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan: The Ma Ying-jeou Era.This event will cover some of the findings from a recent new book that I have co-edited with Yun-han Chu and Larry Diamond. We're fortunate to have three of the contributors to the book able to join us for the discussion. They are: 

Szu-yin Ho, Professor of Strategic and International Affairs at Tamkang University, Danshui, Taiwan, and the former  deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council during the Ma Ying-jeou presidency. He'll be speaking about the legacies of President Ma's cross-Strait policies. 

Austin Horng-en Wang, Assistant Professor of Political Science at UNLV. He'll provide some remarks about the emergence of Tsai Ing-wen as the unquestioned leader of the DPP during the Ma era. 

Shih-hao Huang, Post-Doctoral Fellow in political science at National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. He'll present data that show the challenges the Ma administration had getting priority legislation approved by the Taiwan's Legislative Yuan, despite enjoying a large KMT majority there for both his terms. He will also compare legislative success rates under Ma to the Tsai Ing-wen era, and reflect a bit on what the differences can tell us about executive-legislative relations in Taiwan. 

For more on the book, and a link to the first chapter, see this previous blog post. 

This will be the last event of the calendar year for PTIP. Keep an eye out for announcements about our 2021 activities, coming soon. 

Finally, on a personal note, this event is my first as the Program Manger of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific. After being out of that role for over a year, as of November 1 I've stepped back in to take over the day-to-day management of the current incarnation of the Taiwan program at its new home at the Hoover Institution. Many thanks to Glenn Tiffert for his great stewardship of PTIP over the past year while juggling many other responsibilities--including, not coincidentally, the China Global Sharp Power project.    
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China's Military Incursions Around Taiwan Aren't a Sign of Imminent Attack

10/21/2020

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PictureTaiwan Ministry of National Defense figure illustrating PLA incursions into Taiwan's southwestern ADIZ on September 9-10, 2020.
China's recent military bravado in the Taiwan Strait represents the end state of a failed strategy

The drums of war are growing louder in the Taiwan Strait. In the last month, at least 50 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft have entered Taiwan’s airspace. The volume of threatening language directed at Taiwan from sources in China, both official and unofficial, has reached a crescendo, and the headlines in the news grow more alarmingeach month. In the United States, mainstream foreign policy voices are now openly debating whether the U.S. should abandon strategic ambiguity and openly commit to defend Taiwan in the case of an attack — an idea advocated not so long ago by only a radical fringe.

​But these dire headlines are misleading: Beijing is not gearing up for an attack on Taiwan. It still has neither the capacity to launch a successful full-scale invasion, nor the motive to risk a conflict with the United States. In reality, the increasingly bellicose language coming from China is a sign of weakness, not strength, and a cover for the failure of its own Taiwan policy. Having thrown away most of its non-military leverage in a fruitless effort to compel Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to endorse its one China principle, Beijing has now been reduced to counter-productive saber-rattling to express its discontent at U.S. arms sales and high-level diplomatic visits, while Taiwan races to strengthen its own defenses and reorient its economy away from overdependence on mainland China. In short, Xi Jinping’s approach to the “Taiwan issue” has turned into a strategic fiasco — one that may take years for Beijing to recover from...


The rest of this commentary appears at The Diplomat.
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Taiwan Studies at APSA 2020: The Virtual Conference Line-Up

9/7/2020

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Welcome to the Golden State!
The American Political Science Association (APSA) annual conference was supposed to be in held in San Francisco this year, until COVID-19 hit. So, like everything else, it's moved online. That's probably just as well, because over the last month the Bay Area has turned into a post-apocalyptic hellscape of raging fires, record heat, and choking smoke. We've even broken some of the all-time temperature records that were set the last time APSA was in San Francisco, in 2017. Yay. At this rate it might be wise to put San Francisco (or anywhere in California, really) on the same repeat-offender list as New Orleans and never hold APSA here again. (Seattle has never looked better.) 

Anyway. It turns out we'll still have a strong lineup of Taiwan-related programming in the virtual conference. The Conference Group on Taiwan Studies (CGOTS) is sponsoring seven panels on Taiwan politics, spread out over four days (Thursday-Sunday, September 10-13, 2020). Details are at the CGOTS website, and reposted below. Note that you have to be registered for the conference to join the virtual sessions, but that they're otherwise open to all participants. If you'd like to see the latest Taiwan politics research, come check us out online.         

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Panel 1: Politics of Immigration and Progressive Issues in Taiwan         
Thu, Sep.10, 8:00 to 9:30am (MDT) [7:00-8:30am (PDT); 9:00-10:30am (CDT); 10:00-11:30am (EDT)]
Thu, Sep.10, 10:00-11:30pm (Taipei, GMT+8)

Chair: Shelley Rigger, Davidson College
Discussants: Wei-Ting Yen, Franklin and Marshall College
  1. The growing role of human rights issues in Taiwan’s presidential elections, Shu-An Tsai, SUNY Buffalo
  2. Toward a Greener Island: Court Decisions of Environmental Lawsuits in Taiwan, Chung-li Wu, Academia Sinica; Alex Min-Wei Lin, National Chengchi University
 
Panel 2: New Perspectives on the Elections and Voting: The Case of Taiwan 
Thu, Sep.10, 10:00 to 11:30am (MDT) [9:00-10:30am (PDT); 11:00am-12:30pm (CDT); 12:00-1:30pm (EDT)]
Fri, Sep.11, 12:00-1:30am (Taipei, GMT+8)

Chair: Christopher Achen, Princeton University
Discussants: Lu-Chung Dennis Weng, Sam Houston State University
  1. Dynastic Politics: Evidence from Local Elections in Taiwan, Nathan F. Batto, Academia Sinica; Benjamin L. Read, University of California, Santa Cruz
  2. Do Pro-Beijing Media Affect Voting? An Experiment from Taiwan's General Election, Jay Chieh Kao, University of Texas at Austin
 
Panel 3: Emerging Issues and Puzzles in Taiwanese Politics        
Fri, Sep.11, 8:00 to 9:30am (MDT) [7:00-8:30am (PDT); 9:00-10:30am (CDT); 10:00-11:30am (EDT)]
Fri, Sep.11, 10:00-11:30pm (Taipei, GMT+8)

Chair: Pei-te Lien, University of California, Santa Barbara
Discussants: Ching-Hsing Wang, National Cheng Kung University
  1. Social Inequality and Participation of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Yi-Tzu Lin, University of South Carolina; Charles Chong-Han Wu, National Chengchi University
  2. Revisiting the Interplay Between Corruption Perception and Trust with Structural Equation Modeling: Unpacking the Mechanism​, Chilik Yu, Overseas Chinese University; Ting-An-Xu Liu, O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs Indiana University Bloomington
 
Panel 4: Public Policy and Legislative Studies in Taiwan
Fri, Sep.11, 10:00 to 11:30am (MDT) [9:00-10:30am (PDT); 11:00am-12:30pm (CDT); 12:00-1:30pm (EDT)]
Sat, Sep.12, 12:00-1:30am (Taipei, GMT+8)

Chair: Karl Ho, University of Texas, Dallas
Discussants: Fang-Yu Chen, Michigan State University; Nick Lin, Academia Sinica
  1. Policy Diffusion of Financial Regulatory Sandbox : The Experience of Taiwan, Ping-Kuei Chen, National Chengchi University; *Cheng-Yun Tsang, National Chengchi University
  2. Public Policy Preferences Revealed in Referendum Voting: The Case of Taiwan, Chi Huang, National Chengchi University
 
Panel 5: Polarization and National Identity: The 2020 General Elections in Taiwan
Sat, Sep.12, 8:00 to 9:30am (MDT) [7:00-8:30am (PDT); 9:00-10:30am (CDT); 10:00-11:30am (EDT)]
Sat, Sep.12, 10:00-11:30pm (Taipei, GMT+8)

Chair: Yao-Yuan Yeh, University of St. Thomas
Discussants: Austin Horng-En Wang, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Kharis Templeman, Stanford University
  1. Dehumanization and Polarization in the 2020 Taiwanese Presidential Election, Jung Chen, University of California, Merced; Chih-Cheng Meng, National Cheng Kung University
  2. Partisan Polarization and Fragmentation: Evidence from the 2020 Taiwan Elections, Caleb M. Clark, Auburn University; Karl Ho, University of Texas, Dallas; *Alexander C. Tan, University of Canterbury
  3. Is Defending Taiwan’s Democracy Spatial? Revisit Valence Voting in Taiwan, Lu-Chung Dennis Weng, Sam Houston State University
 
Panel 6: Social Media and its Political Impact in the Contemporary Taiwan
Sat, Sep.12, 10:00 to 11:30am (MDT) [9:00-10:30am (PDT); 11:00am-12:30pm (CDT); 12:00-1:30pm (EDT)]
Sun, Sep.13, 12:00-1:30am (Taipei, GMT+8)

Chair: Chung-li Wu, Academia Sinica
Discussants:  Yi-Chun Chien, National Chengchi University
  1. Political Returns to Facebook Ad Spending: Evidence from Taiwan, Jason Kuo, National Taiwan University
  2. A Comparative Analysis of Social Media Impacts on Hong Kong and Taiwan elections, Karl Ho, University of Texas, Dallas; Stan Hok-Wui Wong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Harold D. Clarke, University of Texas at Dallas
  3. Media Literacy and the Political Convergence across Social Media Sites, *Austin Horng-En Wang, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Howard Liu, Penn State University; *Yao-Yuan Yeh, University of St. Thomas; *Kuan-Sheng Wu, Purdue University; *Fang-Yu Chen, Michigan State University
 
Conference Group on Taiwan Studies Business Meeting
Sat, September 12, 7 to 8pm (MDT) [6-7pm (PDT); 8am-9pm (CDT); 9-10pm (EDT)]
Sun, September 13, 9-10am (Taipei, GMT+8)

Please contact Yao-Yuan Yeh at yehy@stthom.edu if you would like to acquire the meeting link.
 
Panel 7: Changes and Trends in Cross-Strait Relations between Taiwan and China 
Sun, Sep. 13, 8:00 to 9:30am (MDT) [7:00-8:30am (PDT); 9:00-10:30am (CDT); 10:00-11:30am (EDT)]
Sun, Sep.13, 10:00-11:30pm (Taipei, GMT+8)

Chair: Hans Stockton, University of St. Thomas
Discussants: Jason Kuo, National Taiwan University; Charles Chong-Han Wu, National Chengchi University
  1. Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump: How They Spoke about the Taiwan Strait, Dean Chen, Ramapo College of New Jersey; Yao-Yuan Yeh, University of St. Thomas
  2. Under Siege: Hong Kong’s Protests, Taiwan's Reactions, and China's Challenges, Wei-chin Lee, Wake Forest University
  3. COVID-19 and the Anatomy of Rally Effect: the Case of Taiwan, T.Y. Wang, Illinois State University
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Taiwan Politics during the Ma Ying-jeou Years

8/23/2020

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PictureIt exists! In paperback!
It's alive! This book volume on Taiwan politics during the Ma Ying-jeou years (2008-2016), which I've edited with Chu Yun-han and Larry Diamond, just arrived in the mail from Lynne Rienner Publishers this weekend.

This is our attempt at a deep dive into various aspects of Ma-era politics, including party politics and elections, political institutions and governance challenges, trends in public opinion and democratic values, civil society and social movements, and cross-Strait and US-Taiwan-PRC relations. This look at the Ma years parallels somewhat our earlier book on the Chen Shui-bian era.

We were fortunate to be able to assemble a great group of contributors for this book--about half based in Taiwan and half abroad--who offer a variety of perspectives on the politics of the Ma years. The scholarship here draws on years of conferences, papers, and conversations that started even before President Ma left office, including with some of the key participants in and outside of the Ma administration. (Chapter 15, for instance, is by Szu-yin Ho, who served for two years as deputy Secretary-General of Ma's National Security Council.) This sort of cross-national collaboration is less common than it should be (in part because it's logistically hard to pull off!), but I am convinced the final product is much stronger for it.  

Among the many great contributions here, let me especially highlight three that provide original, provocative answers to important questions about the Ma era:
  • In Chapter 3, Austin Wang explains how Tsai Ing-wen emerged from obscurity as unrivaled leader of the DPP during its years in opposition, despite having never previously held elected office;
  • In Chapter 4, Nathan Batto shows how President Ma's recurrent troubles with the legislature had more to do with deep divides within the ruling KMT than they did with the obstructionist tactics of the opposition DPP and with Ma's party rival, Speaker Wang Jin-pyng;
  • In Chapter 7, Isaac Shih-hao Huang and Shing-yuan Sheng demonstrate that having a majority in the Legislative Yuan does not mean a party has complete control over the Legislative Yuan, and that the legislature's decentralized law-making process makes it challenging for the executive branch to get high-priority legislation approved, whether or not the president's party holds a majority. 

For more thoughts on those issues and a broader overview of the book, check out the introductory chapter, which is available ungated from the publisher's website. 


Table of Contents:
  1. The Dynamics of Democracy During the Ma Ying-jeou Years, by Kharis Templeman, Yun-han Chu, and Larry Diamond
  2. The 2012 Elections, by Shelley Rigger
  3. The DPP in Opposition, by Austin Horng-en Wang
  4. The KMT in Power, by Nathan F. Batto
  5. The Party System Before and After the 2016 Elections, by Kharis Templeman
  6. The Challenges of Governance, by Yun-han Chu and Yu-tzung Chang
  7. Legislative Politics, by Isaac Shih-hao Huang and Shing-yuan Sheng
  8. Watchdog Institutions, by Christian Göbel
  9. Managing the Economy, by Pei-shan Lee
  10. Assessing Support for Democracy, by Yu-tzung Chang and Yun-han Chu 
  11. Trends in Public Opinion, by Ching-hsin Yu
  12. The Impact of Social Movements, by Dafydd Fell
  13. Who are the Protestors? Why Are They Protesting? by Min-hua Huang and Mark Weatherall
  14. Social Media and Cyber-Mobilization, by Eric Yu and Jia-hsin Yu
  15. Cross-Strait Relations, by Szu-yin Ho
  16. In the Shadow of Great-Power Rivalry, by Dean P. Chen

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How Taiwan Stands Up to China

7/15/2020

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I have a piece out in the latest issue of the Journal of Democracy on Chinese efforts to influence Taiwan politics, and why they failed in the January 2020 elections. After the DPP lost badly in the 2018 local elections, there was a lot of speculation (see, e.g. here, here, here, here, and here) that Beijing would be emboldened by these results and expand its efforts to sway the 2020 campaign and turn President Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP out of office, or failing that, would find ways to delegitimize the results and destabilize Taiwan's democracy. In the end, that didn't happen: Tsai recovered from a politically shaky first term to win an even larger share of the vote than in 2016, the DPP held onto its legislative majority, and Tsai's main opponent, Han Kuo-yu of the KMT, openly conceded defeat on election night.

In the article, I lay out several reasons why these fears did not come to pass in 2020, and why Taiwan's democracy has repeatedly proven resilient to PRC pressure campaigns. 
  1. The CCP is still pretty bad at influencing public opinion: Beijing's covert influence operations have been surprisingly clumsy, badly disguised, and at odds with the long-term goals of Taiwan policy under Xi Jinping.
  2. Partisanship can be a good thing: The high salience of the China factor and Taiwan's partisan divides make it hard to execute the kind of United Front-led, covert and coercive activities that the CCP favors for most of its influence operations elsewhere in the world.
  3. State capacity lives: The Taiwanese state is still quite capable of responding effectively to the threat of foreign interference in elections when it takes them seriously, and the 2018 elections provided a belated wake-up call to this danger.
  4. A free society helps: Taiwanese civil society, including parts of the media and NGOs, as well as private social media companies, managed to mitigate the impact of disinformation. Facebook, for instance, took down over a hundred Han Kuo-yu fan pages the month before the election for "inauthentic activity."  
  5. Low-tech elections are an important backstop for democracy: Taiwan's election management system is very low-tech, but it is also transparent, accurate, efficient, fast, and fair. (For more details, see here.) Nobody disputed the election results, shocking as they were to some of Han Kuo-yu's core supporters who had believed the polls were fake and that Tsai would lose. The high trust in the voting and counting process had a lot to do with that.   

The full article is available via Project Muse, and access is free through August 15, 2020.
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Can Tsai Ing-wen Avoid the Second Term Curse?

6/23/2020

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If Tsai Ing-wen is superstitious, she should be worried: second term presidents in Taiwan appear to be cursed. Much like President Tsai, her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou started his second term on a confident and triumphant note. But over the next four years, he faced a relentless series of political crises, including an intraparty power struggle with Legislative Yuan Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, massive protests against the death of a military conscript and construction of a nuclear power plant, and of course the Sunflower Movement occupation of the legislature, which effectively halted cross-Strait rapprochement with Beijing. President Ma’s approval ratings bottomed out at record lows, and he stepped down in 2016 on the heels of a sweeping electoral defeat of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT), ultimately having accomplished little in his last years in office.

Somehow, Chen Shui-bian’s second term was even worse. The controversy around his re-election victory in 2004 robbed him of whatever political momentum he might have enjoyed, and he spent most of his remaining tenure fending off vicious partisan attacks, anti-corruption accusations in the press, massive street rallies by his opponents, and impeachment attempts in the legislature. In his attempt to keep core pro-independence supporters on his side, President Chen pursued a brash symbolic agenda that deliberately provoked the pan-Blue opposition, infuriated Beijing, alienated even potential allies in Washington, and left him politically isolated. In the 2008 elections, his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) paid a steep electoral price, and after his term was finally over, Chen ended up in handcuffs: the corruption accusations turned out to be true, and he was sentenced to a long prison term.

The rest of this piece continues at Taiwan Insight.
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Is Taiwan's Party System Headed for a Crackup?

9/23/2019

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PictureIs this the future of party politics in Taiwan?
No. At least, that's my prediction in this piece on Taiwan's party politics in the run-up to 2020 over at Taiwan Insight. Here's an excerpt:

"Taiwan’s party system is unusual among young democracies for its stability. In 1992, the Kuomintang (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) finished first and second in elections for the Legislative Yuan. In 2016, they finished second and first, and in the six elections in between, neither party ever finished outside the top two."

"The KMT and DPP are also well-institutionalised. They have centralised party organizations that integrate local branches into a hierarchical national structure. Both have many loyal supporters who make up a significant share of the electorate. Both have staked out distinct positions on the ‘China question’—the most fundamental divide in Taiwanese politics. And, despite going through major reversals of fortune at different times, each remains today the primary threat to unseat the other in almost every election. For better or worse, Taiwan has effectively been a KMT-DPP duopoly for the entire democratic era."


Piece continues here. 


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Taiwan Studies at APSA 2019: Join Us in Washington, DC!

8/23/2019

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The Conference Group on Taiwan Studies is a Related Group of the American Political Science Association. For this year's annual conference in Washington, DC, CGOTS is sponsoring a full day of five  (yes, five!) special panels on Taiwanese politics, all on Friday, August 30, from 8:00am-5:30pm. We're very fortunate to have a terrific line-up of panels this year, enough for a full mini-conference of presentations on Taiwanese politics.

In addition, we encourage all CGOTS members to attend the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies Business Meeting, Friday, August 30, from 6:30-7:30pm. All panels and the Business Meeting will take place in the same location, the Washington Hilton, Fairchild East Room, and are open to all conference attendees. 

The full line-up of panels and presentations is listed below. 

 The 2019 CGOTS Schedule at APSA

8:00 AM – 9:30 AM, Friday, August 30. 2019 (Washington Hilton, Fairchild East) 
Panel Title: Reunderstanding Cross-Strait Relations: The Status Quo? The One-China Policy? 
Chair: Robert Sutter, George Washington University 
Discussants: Scott Kastner, the University of Maryland and Kuen-Da Lin, Georgia Institute of Technology 
  • "A Neo U.S. One-China Policy? Content Analyzing Obama’s and Trump’s Positions," Dean Chen, Ramapo College of New Jersey; Yao-Yuan Yeh, University of St. Thomas 
  • "The Polarization of Cross-Strait Relations since 2016: the Status Quo at Stake," S. Philip Hsu, National Taiwan University 
  • "The One China Policy and the International Status of Taiwan," Mikulas Fabry, Georgia Institute of Technology 
  • "Nationalism, Alliances, and Geopolitics: US-China-Taiwan Ties under Trump and Xi," Vincent Wei-cheng Wang, Adelphi University 

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, Friday, August 30. 2019 (Washington Hilton, Fairchild East) 
Panel Title: New Theories and New Evidence: Studies of Turnout and Election in Taiwan 
Chair: Hans Stockton, University of St. Thomas 
Discussants: Timothy S. Rich, Western Kentucky University and Nick Lin, Academia Sinica 
  • "Declining Voter Turnout in Taiwan: A Generational Effect?," T.Y. Wang, Illinois State University Christopher H. Achen, Princeton University 
  • "Reverse Coattails Effects and Electoral Fortune in Taiwan’s Local Elections," Kuan-chen Lee, Academia Sinica Karl Ho, University of Texas, Dallas 
  • "Critical Citizens or Electoral Losers? A Panel Study of 2018 Taiwan’s Election," Hsin-hao Huang, National Taiwan Normal University 
  • "The Impact of Polling Primaries on Electoral Performance," Eric Chen-hua Yu, National Chengchi University 

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM, Friday, August 30. 2019 (Washington Hilton, Fairchild East) 
Panel Title: Public Opinion Research in Taiwan: Old Topics and New Angles 
Chair: Da-Chi Liao, National Sun Yat-sen University 
Discussants: Lu-Chung Dennis Weng, Sam Houston State University and Ching-Hsing Wang, National Cheng Kung University 
  • "Democratic Deficit in Taiwan? A Longitudinal Study of Corruption Perception," Chilik Yu, Shih Hsin University 
  • "Presidential Popularity in Taiwan: from Ma Ying-jou to Tsai Ing-wen," T.Y. Wang, Illinois State University; Su-Feng Cheng, National Chengchi University 
  • " 'Return' of Chinese Identity? Exploring Some Recent Developments," Shiau-chi Shen, Soochow University 
  • "Public Support for the Use of Force in Weak States," Kuan-Sheng Wu, Purdue University; Yao-Yuan Yeh, University of St. Thomas Fang-Yu Chen, Michigan State University; Austin Horng-En Wang, Duke University 

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM, Friday, August 30. 2019 (Washington Hilton, Fairchild East) 
Panel Title: Legislative Politics and Emerging Social Issues in Taiwan 
Chair: David An, Catholic University of America/Global Taiwan Institute 
Discussants: Wei-ting Yen, Franklin and Marshall College and Fang-Yu Chen, Michigan State University
  • "Election Cycle and Roll Call Requests: Identifying the Target Audience," Weihao Huang, Academia Sinica Greg Chih-Hsin Sheen, London School of Economics and Political Science 
  • "Electoral Rules, Party Discipline, and Parliamentary Questions in Taiwan," Nick Lin, Academia Sinica; Jinhyeok Jang, National Sun Yat-sen University 
  • "Unpacking LGBT Acceptance in Taiwan: What Explains Taiwan’s Public Support?" Timothy S. Rich, Western Kentucky; University Isabel Eliassen, Western Kentucky University 
  • "Court as Political Evasion: The Case of Interpretation No. 748 in Taiwan," Yu-Hsien Sung, University of South Carolina; Chin-shou Wang, National Cheng Kung University 

4:00 PM – 5:30 PM, Friday, August 30. 2019 (Washington Hilton, Fairchild East) 
Panel Title: Social Media, Big Data Analysis, and Electoral Politics in Taiwan 
Chair: Christopher H. Achen, Princeton University 
Discussants: Eric Chen-hua Yu, National Chengchi University and T.Y. Wang, Illinois State University 
  • "How Connective Populism Was Made Online--A Case Study of the Han Tide in 2018," Da-Chi Liao, National Sun Yat-sen University; Frank Liu, National Sun Yat-Sen University 
  • "Social Media and Voter Turnout: Evidence from Taiwan," Chia-hung Tsai, National Chengchi University; Ching-Hsing Wang, National Cheng Kung University 
  • "The Effect of Social Media on Vote Choice: The Case of Taiwan," Lu-Chung Dennis Weng, Sam Houston State University; Chi Huang, National Chengchi University 
  • "The Interaction between Politician and Netizens in Facebook: A Big Data Approach," Yu-Wei Hu, Chinese culture University; Jung Chun Chang, SOAS, University of London 

6:30 PM – 7:30 PM, Friday, August 30. 2019 (Washington Hilton, Fairchild East) 

Conference Group on Taiwan Studies (CGOTS) Business Meeting 
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Taiwan Studies at APSA 2018: Join Us in Boston!

8/23/2018

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​Cross-posted from the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies website

The Conference Group on Taiwan Studies is a Related Group of the American Political Science Association. For this year's annual conference in Boston, CGOTS is sponsoring three special panels on Taiwanese politics.
 In addition, we encourage all APSA attendees to drop by the Conference Group on Taiwan Studies reception, Thursday, August 30, from 7:30-9:00pm in Marriott Salon K. Free (!!!) drinks and hors d'oeuvres will be served.   

All CGOTS members are also invited to attend our annual business meeting, to be held right before the reception from 6:30-7:30, next door in Marriott Salon J. We'll go over budget and membership numbers and nominate the new CGOTS leadership team. 

Please also check out the three official CGOTS panels, as well as other Taiwan-related presentations at the conference; details and a schedule can be found at the CGOTS website. 
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Political Reform in Taiwan under Tsai Ing-wen: A Disappointing Record So Far

6/10/2018

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PictureCampaign flag for Tsai Ing-wen and DPP legislative candidate Wu Chi-ming, January 2016.
This piece originally appeared at Taiwan Insight on May 29, 2018.

​Before the 2016 election brought them to power, Tsai Ing-wen and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) 
pledged to pursue political reforms that would address fundamental, long-standing weaknesses in Taiwan’s democratic system.

Three of these became particularly apparent during the Ma Ying-jeou era: an unbalanced executive-legislative relationship that concentrated extraordinary power in the president’s hands, a disproportional electoral system that worked to the Kuomintang’s (KMT) advantage, and a deep, popular distrust of many of Taiwan’s “accountability institutions”—especially judges and prosecutors, the constitutional court, and the Control Yuan.

Two years on, these weaknesses are still apparent. The ruling DPP’s record on political reform has so far been disappointing: despite some positive changes, it is mostly a series of unfulfilled pledges, missed opportunities, and unintended consequences.

First, on executive-legislative relations: Taiwan’s current constitutional structure allows for what former premier and Ma loyalist Jiang Yi-huah has termed a “super-presidency.” Under Ma Ying-jeou, power migrated from the Executive Yuan to the Presidential Office, from multi-party coalitions to a single-party KMT majority, and from intra-party pluralism to presidential dominance of the ruling party, exacerbating a massive resource asymmetry between the executive and legislative branches of government.

Nowhere was this imbalance more apparent during the Ma era than in the conduct of cross-Strait relations. The legislature had no effective way to exercise oversight over what was, arguably, the most consequential negotiations with the People’s Republic of China that a Taiwanese leader had ever entered into. Moreover, of the 28 agreements signed and submitted to the legislature for record or review, only four were submitted for review, meaning they had to face an up-or-down vote of the full Legislative Yuan before they took effect. In other words, most of these agreements were considered under rules even more favourable to the executive branch than ordinary legislation—a remarkable concession to the executive branch, considering the sensitivities involved.

Given this history, one might expect the DPP to prioritize passage of a Cross-Strait monitoring mechanism law that requires, at minimum, an affirmative vote of the legislature for any agreements to take effect. But no: now that the DPP is in power, and Tsai Ing-wen rather than Ma Ying-jeou is responsible for cross-Strait relations, talk of such a law within DPP circles has faded away. So, too, have other DPP proposals to strengthen the legislature’s hand, such as providing legislators access to more resources and larger, professional staffs, establishing a legal basis for oversight of the National Security Council and Presidential Office, and selecting a truly neutral, non-partisan legislator as the Speaker. Instead, the Legislative Yuan today is at as much of a disadvantage in its collective relations with the DPP-controlled executive as it ever was during the Ma Ying-jeou administration. (President Tsai even has the additional benefit of having a close party ally, Su Jia-chyuan, serving as Speaker; President Ma had to deal with his long-time KMT rival, Wang Jin-pyng, in that position.)

What of the second problem area, the electoral system? Here the chief complaint is about disproportionality: party vote shares do not correspond very closely to their seat shares in the Legislative Yuan. In 2008, for instance, the DPP won only 24% of the seats with 37% of the district vote, while the KMT won 72% of the seats with 51% of the vote. As the chief loser under the new system, the DPP became a fierce critic of it (though they had voted for the previous change), and Tsai Ing-wen herself pledged the party would support switching to a German-style mixed-member compensatory system, and perhaps increase the number of seats—reforms that together would ensure much greater proportionality and better representation of small parties in the legislature.

So what has happened on this front, now that the DPP is in a position to do something about it?
Again, not much. The DPP has entertained no serious proposals to change the electoral system, because it, not the KMT, is now the chief beneficiary of the disproportionality! To make matters worse, the ruling party has made two counterproductive concessions to the “direct democracy” reform agenda pushed by the New Power Party (NPP) and Taiwanese independence activists. First, the ruling party supported a change to the elections and recalls act, lowering thresholds for the number of signatures needed to initiate a recall against a public official and for a recall to be valid. Second, they approved an amendment to the referendum act, again lowering the threshold for signatures to qualify a referendum for a vote, and turnout for a vote to be valid.

Unfortunately, referendums are a dubious way to resolve complex or emotionally-charged policy issues in a representative democracy, and they have already had unintended consequences that some of their chief proponents have found unpleasant: the first legislator to face a recall vote under the new law was none other than its biggest proponent, NPP chairman Huang Kuo-chang, and one of the first referendum proposals to pass the first qualification hurdle aims to prevent the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The prospects for reform of accountability institutions are more promising. A committee appointed by Tsai Ing-wen continues to debate how to improve independence and professional capacity of judges, and whether to implement “citizen judges” or an Anglo-American style jury system to increase public participation and trust in the judicial process. And there is a good chance that some version of these reforms will eventually be adopted.

Nevertheless, here, too, Tsai and the DPP have opted for a cautious, gradualist approach to reforms. It is revealing what is not even on the table: there is no public discussion of changing the selection process or the terms of the Council of Grand Justices, Taiwan’s constitutional court, to ensure they cannot all be appointed by the same president, nor has there been any attempt to reconfigure or abolish the Control Yuan; instead, the DPP appears content simply to fill these bodies with Tsai appointees, and leave it at that. The DPP also voted to abolish the Special Investigative Division whose leader got into trouble for sharing confidential information with President Ma, but it has done nothing to address the more fundamental problem of how to guarantee prosecutorial independence from political pressure, especially from the president.

Instead, what the ruling DPP has prioritized is promoting aspects of “transitional justice”: disgorgement of illegitimate KMT party assets (pan-blue supporters might describe this, less charitably, as “getting the KMT”), an official apology to Taiwan’s indigenous minorities, and the establishment of a Transitional Justice Promotion Committee to engage in additional truth-telling about the authoritarian past. All of these initiatives are important steps forward for Taiwan, and if executed well, could strengthen the legitimacy and democratic bona fides of the political system.

But in the long run, none will obviate the need for further changes in executive-legislative relations, electoral representation, and accountability institutions. If President Tsai wants to leave a positive democratic legacy, she should turn her attention, and that of her party, toward these issues over the next two years.

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    About Me

    I am a political scientist by training, with interests in democratization, parties and elections, and the politics of new and developing democracies. My regional expertise is in East Asia, with special focus on Taiwan.

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