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This article considers the adoption of Western neoliberalism in Taiwan's higher education (HE) governance as a hybridisation process in which the influences of political democratisation, social liberalisation and Chinese cultural traditions intersect with contemporary Western norms and values. The paper draws on data from interviews with senior university administrators and education ministry officials to delineate the resistance to the competitive ethos embedded in neoliberalism and the retention of state presence and intervention in university governance, highlighting Taiwan's historical, socio-political and cultural contexts. This account exemplifies how various historical, socio-political and cultural factors influence Taiwan's HE governance and how Western norms and values are absorbed, questioned and resisted during the hybridisation process.

This paper explores the theoretical framework of teaching deliberative democratic leadership by examining teacher deliberative competency from theories of deliberative democracy. The research described the theoretical framework of deliberative democratic leadership as a heuristic in the practice of teaching deliberative democratic leadership. Through exploratory factor analysis, Teacher Deliberative Competency Scale (TDCS) reduced to 7-factor structure: ethic, inclusion, well-informed, publicity, deliberation, reciprocity and consensus. Results suggest that TDCS provides instructions for teaching deliberative democratic leadership.

This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for "good governance" as the formation of a homogenization-heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to change state capacity, while heterogenization refers to the local adaptation of these global transformations. The paper attempts to take educational decentralization as an example of policy initiatives to assess and analyse the significance of the two opposite poses in four East Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs) (Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan). The paper's position is that it may be useful to see these four NIEs as making up two clusters. It sees political democratic transitions in Korea and Taiwan as important local factors affecting the developments of educational decentralization in the two societies, while reforms in Hong Kong and Singapore seem to be more consequences of managerial and market values. However, the NIEs face the question of how to maintain sufficient "stateness" in the decentralization process. To conclude, the paper considers that achieving the balance of "stateness" is the key to success in state-building.

While Western and established democracies are wary of teaching students about national identities and aspire to broaden the framework of history education, the Republic of China (Taiwan) is still struggling to construct a Taiwanese identity to safeguard its freedom from the Chinese historical narrative. As the divide between Taiwan and China grew, what would be Taiwan's preservice teachers' historical consciousness and purpose of teaching history? Thirty-three preservice history teachers from Teacher Education institutions in different areas of Taiwan were interviewed in order to determine the historical consciousness of their national identity and teaching orientation. The results showed that most preservice teachers have a Taiwanese-oriented historical consciousness, while fewer of them have a mixed or Chinese orientation. Their preferred goals, thinking skills, and contents varied according to their specific historical consciousness. However, pedagogically, most of them believed that they should remain neutral on the issue of national identity. This paper argues that preservice teachers' historical consciousness matters and teacher educators must help to clarify and develop their 'narrative competence' and be aware of how it orients their teaching of history; history education should be based on developing a sound democratic society, in which memories, thinking skills, and future visions come together.

This article aims to investigate how the discourse on national identity is approached in the new Taiwanese citizenship curriculum. The differing opinions on Taiwan's relationship with China and the constant threat from this rising superpower have deterred the explicit promotion of either a Taiwanese or Chinese identity. The new curriculum follows a strategy of "intentional ambiguity", where neither identity is mentioned. In this "polysemous" form, the curriculum has been criticized for staying silent on the question of cultivating a national identity. However, the curriculum developers interviewed for this paper suggested that parents and pupils who examine the new curriculum can find support for whichever national identity they favor since it is designed in such an inclusive manner. They can then simultaneously reflect on the multiple, divergent or competing meanings behind the "polysemous texts" and this "hermeneutic" process of reasoning can then facilitate the choice of national identity with maximum acceptance.

After nearly half a century of authoritarianism characterized by Chinese nationalism and Mandarin promotion, democratization in 1990s Taiwan was accompanied by a Taiwanization movement featuring calls for the revitalization of local languages and the promotion of linguistic equality. To that end, the government began planning for local language education, and, starting in 2001, children have had to attend one weekly hour of mandatory local language education. This curriculum, which is often referred to as "mother tongue education" in Taiwan, has been criticized as being of little value for language acquisition and transmission. Squeezed between Mandarin - the language of instruction, public affairs and increasingly language of home--and English--the international language--the so-called Taiwanese mother tongues are increasingly being learned, taught and used as second languages. Based on a review of secondary sources, public document analysis and interviews with Taiwanese public officials and language revivalists, this paper offers an overview of local language education policy and planning in Taiwan, with a special focus on the respective influences of democratization, human rights promotion and identity politics.

The People's Republic of China (PRC), the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Republic of Singapore represent different types of political regimes and provide a fascinating contrast concerning their performance with regard to the global conflict between liberal democracies and autocracies. This paper examines briefly their common historical backgrounds and provides a detailed analysis of common 'Asian' cultural features and popular support for democracy on the micro-level. It then systematically assesses their performance concerning liberal democracy and quality, governance scores, and socio-economic development. Finally, the reactions to the Covid-19 pandemic are documented showing again specific regime characteristics. We use most recent V-Dem, World Bank, United Nations Development Programme, World Values Surveys and similar data. The conclusions point to possible international consequences and the crucial position of Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass formal education is a feature of modern societies all too often taken for granted or overlooked in mainstream sociological analysis. In this respect, the field of Taiwan studies is no exception. This introductory essay sets the three papers of this topical section in historical and comparative perspective, particularly in relation to East Asia. The papers show how education policy in contemporary Taiwan has evolved in a context of vibrant democracy, economic transition, demographic squeeze, and, looming over all, the threat from the Chinese mainland. Our focus falls especially on higher education and language instruction, and their involvement in debates over economic prosperity, security, identity, and Taiwan's place in the world. A central theme of this introductory essay is the way in which educational debate in Taiwan is conditioned by awareness of insecurity—at individual, familial and societal levels. The intensely competitive, human capital-oriented approach to education that predominates there is bound up in complex ways with the insecurities of life on this island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do Taiwanese officials view democracy and culture and how do they plan to utilise these two soft power resources as part of advancing the island's international position? Based primarily on interviews conducted with state officials in Taiwan, this paper analyses Taiwan's soft power repositioning in the regional and global soft power competition and examines its advantages and disadvantages. It discusses the institutional and geopolitical constraints Taiwan faces when trying to implement its soft power policy and addresses the internal disagreements over utilising its cultural and democratic achievements. It concludes that despite the utility of soft power in pursuing its foreign policy agenda, Taiwan faces a few major institutional and conceptual obstacles, keeping Taiwanese diplomacy in a transitional period from old thinking about culture and diplomacy while hesitantly evaluating its soft power resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Taiwan is one of the leading democratic countries in Asia. The authorities in Taipei, under the leadership of President Tsai Ing-wen and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party have actively conveyed this message to the international community through their foreign policy since 2016. The objective of this paper is to examine the concept of “democracy diplomacy” in Taiwan, analyzing both scholarly discourse and observing Taiwan’s foreign policy. This strategic approach greatly bolsters Taiwan’s position among other nations that uphold democratic values, especially in the face of rivalries between major powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan has progressed toward one of Asia's most advanced democracies. This paper looks at the historical and socio-political circumstances and traces the global and domestic factors behind the transformation. Assuming that advanced levels of democratic governance can only be obtained through mediated social control over the state and the economy, the study explores whether democratic values and norms have become internalized and identifies the current caveats of further democratic development. More specifically, the paper argues that although Taiwan's democratization has been caused by external sovereignty-related factors, the discourse on national identity has repoliticzed the public political realm after decades of authoritarianism and led to the habitualization of democratic values and norms. The paper concludes with an assessment of the prospects for comprehensive and inclusive public participation in the shaping of Taiwan's political conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent cultural studies scholarship, native terms have been used to understand the affective state of a society. Accordingly, this paper focuses on the term "spicy Taiwanese sister," regarding its derogatory gender implications in the context of Taiwan's popular culture. Then, it discloses the strategic appropriation of the gendered term in the presidential campaign from 2019 to 2020. This analysis reveals why the affective campaigning led to a triumph of Taiwan's democracy. The affect and effect of this presidential campaign could not have been fulfilled without the China factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political scientists have long been aware of the problem of unequal participation in democratic politics, the phenomenon we can call "political divide." The emergence of information and communication technologies over recent years has sparked a discussion on whether this long-standing political divide can now be resolved by "e-democracy." This study aims to answer two questions: (i) Can e-democracy, specifically e-petitions, attract traditional nonparticipants to participate in public affairs? (ii) In the context of promoting e-petitions, can "digital divide" alleviate the problem of "political divide?" The data used in this study were collected from a national poll on citizen experience of and willingness to participate in the petitioning for referendum. The results indicate that those who recall participating in paper petitions tended to be older, less educated, and with stronger party identification. Also, our results reveal that these people who can be effectively mobilized by traditional social networks are mostly, in fact, the "digital have-nots." Furthermore, regarding the potential participants in e-petitions, we find that those "digital haves," who had not been mobilized in previous paper-based petition sessions, were more likely to participate in e-petitions if they are implemented in the future. The results demonstrate the existence of a possible negative correlation between the political and the digital divide. This suggests that e-democracy might be potentially beneficial to alleviate the long worried negative effects of the political divide in democratic polity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern governments strive to enhance their emergency management capacity and establish multiple policy tools that can help reduce damage caused by natural and human hazards. Among these institutional mechanisms, the constitution in Taiwan entrusts presidents with the authority to act immediately in response to an emergency based on the principle of necessity. The objective of this paper is to gain insight into the following questions: (1) How does the Taiwanese government respond to a pandemic and to what extent does this situation affect the Taiwanese governmental emergency response powers? (2) Do the Taiwanese governmental interventions contradict democratic values and civil liberties? By analyzing the boundaries and limitations of the presidential emergency power, demonstrating practical examples of the different views of Taiwanese presidents regarding their use of the emergency power to address catastrophic disasters, and exploring preemptive actions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors argue two points: (1) Taiwan's administrative response to COVID-19 reveals a tendency toward having authority vastly centralized at the legislative level through blank-check authorization, and this represents the presumptive allocation of power embodied in the Republic of China Constitution, which has gradually expanded. (2) The vague and unfettered legal authorization by the CDC and the COVID-19 Special Act may diminish the substantial rule of law in the long run. This article demonstrates, by applying the assessment from a variety of key principles of constitutionalism, Taiwan exhibited how it has integrated institutional memories and past lessons. However, there continues to be in Taiwan an overdependent reliance on statutory authorization with the inherent risk of a slippery slope in exploiting legal authorization, coupled with administrative blind spots, that can generate disproportionate public measures. This leverage, we argue, supersedes the president's discretionary emergency power, enabling emergency legislation without proper oversight, prevailing over ordinary constitutional order, and possibly producing a corrosive effect on civil liberties and the rule of law in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy has been a consistent public diplomacy tool for the Taiwanese government to establish ideological connection with and obtain international acceptance by democratic nations. But as a catchword of contemporary political discourse, what exactly does it mean? The present paper assesses the meaning and usage of the signifier "democracy" in the op-eds of the Taiwanese English-language press. To examine whether electoral period and poll results condition attention and use of the term "democracy," the selected periods of investigation (Dec 2007-June 2008; October 2015-April 2016) include two key moments in recent Taiwan history when national elections democratically resulted in a power transfer. Two ideologically divergent newspapers, the China Post and the Taipei Times, are selected as units of analysis for a corpuslinguistic study, exploring the collocational profile of the term "democracy." Additionally, a content analysis maps thematic hierarchies and constitutive components of the "democracy" to understand the notion's conceptualization. This is complemented with a discourse analysis probing into argumentation patterns and framing processes. Findings show that the assessments of the overall democratic functioning largely depend on the political context of the electoral times. But they also reveal a partisan nature of the newspapers in the way their op-eds steer voter behavior before the polling day and engage in damage control, when their preferred party loses the election, while all the same lauding the electoral democratic process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan is a liminal site of modernity in Asia. It is a modern exemplar as a liberal democracy with a developed economy, but is mostly unrecognized as a nation-state in the international system. In its liminality, however, it traces contours of modern power and their epistemological expression. This paper presents an account of Taiwan as an object of knowledge and representation in instances of scholarship and policy, Taiwanese politics, urban development and art, arguing that the narratives through which Taiwan is understood embed a lived experience as Taiwanese under forms of epistemological domination. The paper then explores Taiwanese responses of co-option and resistance in alternative sites of knowledge, and it concludes that the critical unexamined force in Taiwan’s experience of modernity is violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore how Taiwan broke the spell of Chinese nationalism and "Asian values" by recognizing the significance of universal values, and how this experience helped Taiwanese civil society in the materialization of democratic consolidation. This transformation process not only testifies to Taiwan's self-identity as an open society with democratic values, but also Taiwan's resolution to be an active partner in the democratic world and to cooperate in global networks of shared democratic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of how rising atavistic nationalism will affect democracies worldwide is an essential one of our time. In this paper, I focus instead on conducting a comparative historical analysis of atavistic nationalism in two unrecognized states: North Cyprus and Taiwan. I argue that the democratic crisis of our times is, in its essence, economic and has been precipitated by the failure of democracies to build domestic capacities to support democratic values. Furthermore, I posit that engaging populaces at the local political level will prove essential to preserving democracies around the world. I conclude by underlining that atavistic nationalism is indeed a significant threat to regional and global peace and requires further co-operation on trade and governance, and should be engaged at the local level. Lastly, I suggest that co-creating local cultures that will act to soften atavistic nationalism, which feeds off the perception of threats and fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognized that Taiwanese democrat Wan-chu Lee, a so-called half-mainlander who spent a good part of his career in China, was in general in favor of democracy in his coping with the national issue. However, this paper argues that his understanding of the Chinese nation is primarily a cultural nation and he gave this cultural identity an authentic reading that is not to be transcended by his promotion of democracy. Despite that the prospect for democracy was aborted by the actual development in China, his identification with cultural China never faded away. This paper traces the evolution of his cultural identity and how he was able to stay with it throughout his career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan's thousands of statues of former dictator Chiang Kai-shek have encountered varying fates since Taiwan's democratisation in 1987. Citizens have iconoclastically pulled down or beheaded numerous Chiang statues. Many have been removed from public view to the rural grounds outside his temporary mausoleum. Those that remain standing are regularly defaced with paint and slogans highlighting Chiang's crimes. A more carnivalesque denigration of Chiang is university students secretly redecorating several campuses' statues on significant historical dates, particularly 2/28, when the dictatorship bloodily suppressed a 1947 uprising. These costumes metaphorically critique Chiang, portraying him as a blood-sucking mosquito or ghoulish Halloween pumpkin. Graduating students at Taipei's elite high school playfully transform its centrally-placed Chiang statue into an Oscar statue, an astronaut, and film characters. These redecorations parody the commemorative statue genre, implying such objects' triviality and interchangeability. The paper explores these critical, humourous actions as forms of e'gao, a predominantly-online mode of hilariously parodying pop culture, crossing over to address difficult built heritage. A different set of responses to Chiang's statues also reflect Taiwan's democratic pluralism. Not everyone wants to see them removed or defaced. A social media community is dedicated to cleaning their neighbourhoods' Chiang statues after 2/28. A 10-metre-high statue of Chiang, with its massive Memorial Hall and honour guard, remains among Taipei's leading tourist attractions. Taiwan's Ministry of Culture has given this statue temporary heritage protection, and is exploring ways to recontextualise its meaning. Democracies respect such heterodoxy toward the past; they allow different actors to respond differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central issue in Taiwan's politics revolves around the island's relationship with China. The three major parties—the Kuomintang, Democratic Progressive Party, and Taiwan People's Party—take different positions on this, and their supporters align with these respective positions. However, there is a scarcity of research on the foreign policy inclinations of individuals who do not align with any political party. We find empirically that self-reported independents in Taiwan exhibit a preference for bandwagoning, driven by concerns for tangible material benefits; cultural similarity, economic interests, and the power dynamics between the US and China also play substantial roles here. These findings shed light on the unique role and dynamics of independents in Taiwan's political landscape. Our theoretical innovation lies in showing that in a democracy, different factors come into play in the formation of the foreign policy preferences of different groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parties instrumentally shape or realign electoral support in competitive elections to underpin a vigorous party system. Assessing whether parties are strategic versus ignorant, then, is essential to the viability of the parties and particularly relevant in emergent democracies to eliminate unfounded biases against ignorant parties. The dramatic, lopsided results of Taiwan's 2008 legislative elections following electoral reform are particular useful in this regard: they suggest that the Kuomintang's Pan Blue coalition was strategic while the Democratic Progressive Party's Pan Green coalition failed to be strategic. We contradict this, using simulated electoral results and a strategic interaction model. This paper makes three contributions: first, it adds to a limited literature that considers parties influence, particularly parties’ strategic actions. Party-centric explanations are rare so that when results are highly disproportionate, the question of whether party choices are strategic versus ignorant adds an important dimension to clarifying how the party realigns electoral support or influences political development. Second, through multiple methodologies – simulated electoral results, a game-theory strategic interaction model, and reports on-the-ground in Taiwan – the results show that parties’ expectation of the other camp's strategy informed party choices, i.e., parties were strategic. Third, in revealing how parties were strategic, the paper reveals the basis of continued vitality of parties in Taiwan and other emergent democracies to broaden treatments in assessing party viability. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper extends understanding of the relationship between media use and attitudes toward democratic values. We employ the two-step estimation approach to examine the relationship between media use and attitudes toward democratic values as well as consequential association with political participation. The empirical results show that media use to obtain news information is positively related to attitudes toward democratic values. The findings also note that attitudes toward democratic values are positively associated with engagement in politics. The results support the argument that media use is significant for shaping citizens’ attitudes toward democratic values by providing information about public affairs and expanding citizens’ understanding about democratic politics. As such, media use facilitates democratic socialization and leads to more involvement in political behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This paper examining the process of Taiwan's democratization introduces a special mode of democratization which involves cooperative interactions between reformists in the state and oppositionists in society. Focusing on the years 1990 to 1992, a key period of Taiwan's democratization during which key authoritarianism-supporting institutions were destroyed, the paper demonstrates that a tacit coalition of the reformists in the state and the oppositionists in society began to loom in Taiwan in July 1988 and was solidified in June 1990, and, from June 1990 to December 1992, this coalition successfully forced the conservatives in the state to accept its demand that key authoritarianism-supporting institutions had to be destroyed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of World War II, the Kuomintang (KMT) (Guomindang) government has erased all traces of Japanese rule from public space, deeming them "poisonous" to the people in Taiwan. This frenzy, often termed "de-Japanization" or qu Ribenhua in Chinese, included the destruction and alteration of Japanese structures. Yet, with democratization in the 1990s, the Japanese past has been revisited, and many Japanese structures have been reconstructed and preserved. This paper examines the social phenomenon of preserving Japanese heritage in present- day Taiwan. It mainly investigates religious/ spiritual architecture, such as Shinto shrines and martial arts halls (Butokuden), war monuments and Japanese statues and busts. A close investigation of these monuments finds that many of them are not restored and preserved in their original form but in a deformed/ transformed one. This finding leads the paper to conclude that the phenomenon is a postcolonial endeavour, rather than being "pro-colonial", and that the preservation of Japanese heritage contributes to the construction and consolidation of a Taiwancentric historiography in which Taiwan is imagined as multicultural and hybrid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between gender and democratic diversity in Taiwan. Utilizing two island-wide surveys, noticeable gender difference in levels of support for democratic diversity under Taiwan's long term authoritarian government were found with a majority of women rejecting the ideas of democratic diversity. Nonetheless, women's democratic orientation in the early 2000s was clearly transformed into positive support for democracy after over a decade's democratization. In addition, regression models were developed to test determinants of women's democratic orientation, including traditionalism, socioeconomic positions, social capital, and demographic factors. The analysis finds that modern cultural values, education and income have significantly explained the variations in women's democratic diversity support. This study therefore rejects claims of the dominant effect of familism on Taiwanese women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with delineating the emergence and transformation of the discourses of 'popular democracy', and the formulation and debate over 'civil society'. This is followed by an account of the subsequent incorporation of social movements and the appropriation of the notion of 'civil society' by the Democratic Progressive Party, as well as the discontent expressed by the social movements sector. The paper then turns to the 'popular democracy vs. civil society' debate and examines various layers of problems concerning political theorization and democratic practice. In so doing, the paper aims to advance our understanding of the ways in which the democratic vision was once proposed, the logic of the political actions employed therein, the extent to which the space of possibility was opened up and closed off, and finally the complex problems that already emerged then and are continually faced by the subsequent practice of so-called 'democratization' and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, there has been a remarkable transformation of the demography and political economy of East and Southeast Asia, thus raising pensions as an important policy issue. In addressing the pension needs of those outside formal sector employment, Taiwan was the regional forerunner regarding social pension provision. However, the immense political popularity of these schemes waned and from the mid-2000s onwards the government began to substitute them with a contributory system for the socially disadvantaged. This paper analyses the political dynamics of social pensions in Taiwan, from expansion of coverage through to gradual dismantlement. The politics surrounding these benefits has received scant attention in international scholarship, with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank Institute, in particular, having focused most of their attention on policy design issues. The contention here is that a specific configuration of political factors featured prominently in Taiwan, thus providing an explanation for the evolution of its pension policy. Also, these political dimensions can shed light on how this type of pension could evolve in other East and Southeast Asian countries, which is pertinent given that many have increasingly ageing populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the effects of electoral rules for reserved seats in parliaments on representatives' ability and motivation to represent minorities. While most previous studies treat reserved seats as a uniform mechanism, the author argues that we can distinguish varieties along two attributes: electorate and candidacy. Limiting electorate means that only minority members can vote for reserved seat candidates, which motivates representatives to defend minority interests with the objective of optimizing re-election chances. Limiting candidacy to minority members obliges being a group member to all candidates for reserved seats, which improves minority members' acceptance of the political system they live in. Evidence from the case of indigenous people in New Zealand, Venezuela and Taiwan supports the fruitfulness of electoral rules for reserved seats as a factor explaining the quality of minority representation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]