An Asian Barometer Workshop
Organized by Program for East Asia Democratic Studies, IAS-NTU
Co-Sponsored by the Asian Democracy Research Network and
Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, Stanford University
Taipei, Taiwan, August 10-12, 2014
This workshop seeks to examine the functioning of democracy in divided societies by bringing together leading scholars from Asia and the United States. In particular, the workshop will focus on the politics of polarization: how it erodes or cripples young democracies in Asia and how we might mitigate its damaging effects. The on-going political crisis in Thailand and Taiwan timely reminds us how fragile young democracies can become when the push comes to shove. Most East Asian young and emerging democracies suffer from politics of polarization to some extent, including Mongolia, South Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia. In a broader context, this problem has become epidemic as riot police trying to ward off angry demonstrators in Ukraine and Turkey. While the focus is on East Asia, our colleagues from the United States will help us to cast the regional experiences in comparative perspective. Some of our paper contributors will use data from the Asian Barometer Survey (ABS Wave III) as this cross-national data base provides rich source for individual-country investigation and for region-wide comparative analysis. Other contributors might employ historical, institutional, cultural or structural approaches to tackle the issue. We encourage innovative ways to combine survey data with macro-level factors, such as institutional design, culture, ethnicity, religion and class structure. We hope to evoke synthesis about the impact social division on the functioning of democracy and identify the institutional designs and compensating measures to moderate the tension. All country studies are encouraged to address some institutional arrangements, electoral institution or government structure, and other socioeconomic measures which could moderate or exacerbate the conflicts.
Organized by:
Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica;
ROC Council of Indigenous Peoples;
Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines;
And co-sponsored by:
Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS, University of London;
European Association of Taiwan Studies
This year marks the 15 years since we had the First International Conference on Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples in 1999. Taiwanese indigenous peoples have encountered dramatic socio-cultural and environmental changes in recent years, including the rectification of indigenous people’s names that have created new tribes for indigenous peoples, the passage of indigenous people’s basic rights in the legislation, the increase of natural calamities that threaten their living environments, and so on and so forth. All these developments require new research and discussions. The Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, and Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, with funding support from the Council of Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples of the Executive Yuan, will cooperate again to hold the Second International Conference on Taiwanese Indigenous Peoples from September 15 through 17, 2014, at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica.