On October 17-18, 2014 the Taiwan Democracy Project at CDDRL, with the generous support of the Taipei Economic and Culture Office, hosted its annual conference at Stanford University to examine the politics of polarization in Taiwan.
This conference brought together specialists from Taiwan, the U.S., and elsewhere in Asia to examine the sources and implications of this political polarization in comparative perspective. It will include a special case study of the Trade in Services Agreement with China that triggered this past year’s protests, as well as a more general overview of the politics of trade liberalization in Taiwan, prospects for Taiwan’s integration into the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other regional trade agreements, and a consideration of the implications for Taiwan’s long-term democratic future.
Eric Chen-hua Yu (俞振華) is an Assistant Research Fellow in the Election Study Center and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at National Chengchi University, positions he has held since 2009. From 2006-2009, he was a research associate and program manager of the Taiwan Democracy Project at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). His research interests include public opinion, electoral politics, quantitative methods, and American politics. He has participated in a number of research teams to conduct major academic survey projects such as Taiwan Election and Democratization Studies (TEDS), International Social Survey Program (ISSP), and World Value Survey (WVS) in Taiwan. Dr. Yu’s research has appeared in several academic journals, including Japanese Journal of Political Science, Japanese Journal of Electoral Studies, Taiwanese Political Science Review, and Journal of Electoral Studies. Dr. Yu received an M.S. (2000) in Public Policy Analysis from the University of Rochester, and a Ph.D. in political science (2006) from Columbia University.