Stanford University

Taiwan's Democratic Development: Reflections on the Ma Ying-jeou Era

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Ma Ying-jeou KMT

The eight-year presidency of Ma Ying-jeou (2008-2016) in Taiwan left a complex legacy of political achievements, confrontations, and disappointments that defies easy characterization. It began with President Ma and the Kuomintang’s (KMT) commanding electoral victories in the 2008 elections, and ended with the KMT’s overwhelming loss to the resurgent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its leader Tsai Ing-wen in 2016.

It featured rapid conclusions to a broad set of agreements on cross-Strait cooperation with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). But worries about closer ties with the PRC also triggered a popular backlash against growing mainland Chinese influence in Taiwan’s economy and culminated in a student-led occupation of the Legislative Yuan.

It coincided with contradictory trends in public opinion, including both the consolidation of a separate Taiwanese identity and support for the status quo in cross-Strait relations, as well as the increasing salience of divisions over social and environmental issues such as same-sex marriage and green energy at the same time as rising concerns about economic inequality.

It also marked a return to unified government after the acrimonious partisan fights of the Chen Shui-bian years, but long-standing intra-KMT divisions and the decentralized organization of the legislature continued to frustrate the administration, especially in President Ma’s second term.        

Finally, the Ma era produced no consensus about how to move beyond Taiwan’s developmental state legacies. Plans for domestic economic liberalization and greater integration into the global economy were only partially carried out, and the Ma administration ignored or struggled to address rising inequality, stagnant wages, increasing economic dependence on the PRC market, and a skewed tax system favoring investors and corporations over salaried workers.

 

Conference Agenda

The 11th Annual Conference on Taiwan Democracy will bring together scholars from Taiwan, the US, and Europe to consider these political achievements, confrontations, and disappointments in depth, and to assess the strengths and weaknesses of Taiwan’s democracy at the end of the Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency. Conference participants will discuss trends in public opinion, party politics and elections, cross-Strait relations, governance and media, and the performance of political institutions. The conference papers will be revised and included in an edited volume covering democratic practice during the Ma Ying-jeou era in Taiwan.

The conference is free and open to the public. Those interested in attending are requested to RSVP at the link above. This event is organized by the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

 

Thursday, March 9

9:15-10:45. Panel I. Public Opinion and Elections

  • Min-hua Huang, "Why Young Voters Abandoned the KMT"
  • Ching-hsin Yu, "Trends in National Identity, Partisanship, and Attitudes toward Cross-Strait Relations"
  • Yun-han Chu, discussant

11:00-12:45. Panel II. Party Politics

  • Austin Wang, "Tsai Ing-wen and the DPP: The Path Out of the Political Wilderness"
  • Nathan Batto, "The KMT as a Presidentialized Party: Party Leaders and Shifts in China Discourse"
  • Kharis Templeman, "The Disruption that Wasn't: How 2016 Changed the Taiwanese Party System"
  • Ching-hsin Yu, discussant

12:45-1:45. Lunch

1:45-3:30. Panel III. Economics, Security, and Cross-Strait Relations

  • Szu-yin Ho, "Ma Ying-jeou's Cross-Strait Policy: Ambitions, Constraints, Results" 
  • Lang Kao, "Cross-Strait Agreements and Taiwan's Executive-Legislative Relationship, 2008-2016"
  • Dean Chen, "In the Shadow of Great Power Rivalry: The KMT Administration's Relations with America, China, and Japan, 2008-2016"
  • Larry Diamond, discussant

 

 

Friday, March 10

9:15-10:45. Panel IV. Governance, Media, and Civil Society

  • Eric Yu, "The Changing Media Environment and Public Opinion"
  • Yun-han Chu and Yu-tzung Chang, "The Challenge of Governability in Taiwan"
  • Kharis Templeman, discussant

11:00-12:30. Panel V. Political Institutions

  • Shih-hao Huang, w/ Shing-yuan Sheng, "Decentralized Legislative Organization and Its Consequences for Policy-making in the Ma Ying-jeou Era"
  • Christian Goebel, "Special Prosecutors, Courts, and Other Accountability Institutions under Ma YIng-jeou"
  • TJ Pempel, discussant

12:30-1:30. Lunch

 

 

 

Oksenberg Room, 3rd Floor, Encina Hall Central

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Conferences

Taiwan's Foreign Policy in a New Era

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Abstract

Dr. Tien will reflect on security and economic trends in the Asia-Pacific region, and speak about Taiwan's foreign policy strategy in light of these trends. 

Bio

Dr. Hung-mao Tien received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since September 2016, he has been the the chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation, the semi-official body in Taiwan responsible for direct exchanges and dialogue with the People's Republic of China. He is also the president and board chairman of the Institute for National Policy Research in Taipei, as well as an advisor to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and board member of several foundations and business corporations in Taiwan. He previously served as Minister of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan), Representative (ambassador) to the United Kingdom, and presidential advisor to former President Lee Teng-hui.  He has also served in an advisory capacity to Harvard University’s Asia Center, The Asia Society in New York, and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Tien has taught in universities in both the US and Taiwan as professor of political science.  His numerous publications in English (author, editor and co-editor) include: Government and Politics in Kuomintang China 1927-37 (Stanford University Press); The Great Transition: Social and Political Change in the Republic of China (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press); and Democratization in Taiwan, Implications for China (St. Anthony’s Series, Oxford University), Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies, Themes and Perspectives (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press), China Under Jiang Zemin (Rienner), and The Security Environment in the Asia-Pacific (M.E. Sharpe).

Philippines Conference Room

3rd Floor, Encina Hall

Hung-mao Tien President Institute for National Policy Research
Lectures

US-PRC-Taiwan Relations under the Trump Administration

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Co-sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and the China Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)

 

Abstract

As President Trump assumes office, it is timely to consider the state of US-People's Republic of China (PRC)-Taiwan relations and how they might evolve in the coming years. Uncertainty regarding US-PRC-Taiwan relations is running high—it is far greater than eight years ago when Barack Obama assumed office. Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen shortly after winning the election and his subsequent suggestion that Taiwan could be used as a bargaining chip to extract trade concessions from China have alarmed Beijing and created anxiety in Taipei. In Washington, Trump’s actions and statements have fueled policy debates about whether to abandon the “one China” policy which has been a mainstay of US policy for 37 years.  How the Trump administration will adjust relations with Beijing and Taipei is unknown. In the months ahead, a new dynamic may be created in the US-PRC-Taiwan triangular relationship in which the source of instability is neither China nor Taiwan, but rather is the United States. 

 

Biography

Bonnie S. Glaser is a senior adviser for Asia and the director of the China Power Project at CSIS, where she works on issues related to Chinese foreign and security policy. She is concomitantly a non-resident fellow with the Lowy Institute in Sydney, a senior associate with CSIS Pacific Forum and a consultant for the U.S. government on East Asia. From 2008 – mid-2015 Ms. Glaser was a Senior Adviser with the Freeman Chair in China Studies, and from 2003 to 2008, she was a senior associate in the CSIS International Security Program. Prior to joining CSIS, she served as a consultant for various U.S. government offices, including the Departments of Defense and State.

Ms. Glaser has written extensively on various aspects of Chinese foreign policy, including Sino-U.S. relations, U.S.-China military ties, cross-Strait relations, China’s relations with Japan and Korea, and Chinese perspectives on missile defense and multilateral security in Asia. Her writings have been published in the Washington Quarterly, China Quarterly, Asian Survey, International Security, Problems of Communism, Contemporary Southeast Asia, American Foreign Policy Interests, Far Eastern Economic Review, Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, New York Times, and International Herald Tribune, as well as various edited volumes on Asian security. Ms. Glaser is a regular contributor to the Pacific Forum quarterly Web journal Comparative Connections. She is currently a board member of the U.S. Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, and a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute of International Strategic Studies. She served as a member of the Defense Department’s Defense Policy Board China Panel in 1997. Ms. Glaser received her B.A. in political science from Boston University and her M.A. with concentrations in international economics and Chinese studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

 

Philippines Conference Room

Encina Hall, 3rd Floor

Bonnie Glaser Director of the China Power Project and Senior Advisor for Asia Center for Strategic and International Studies
Lectures

Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Interests in Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Economic Policy

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This talk will be based on Professor Lin's new book, Taiwan's China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Interests in Taiwan's Cross-Strait Economic Policy, Stanford University Press (2016). 

 

Abstract

China and Taiwan share one of the world's most complex international relationships. Although their similar cultures and complementary economies promoted an explosion of commercial ties since the late 1980s, they have not led to a stable political relationship, let alone progress toward the unification that both governments once claimed to seek. In addition, Taiwan’s economic policy toward China has alternated between liberalization and restriction. Most recently, Taiwan's Sunflower Movement succeeded in obstructing deeper economic ties with China. Why has Taiwan's policy toward China been so controversial and inconsistent?

Author Syaru Shirley Lin explains the divergence between the development of economic and political relations across the Taiwan Strait and the oscillation of Taiwan’s cross-Strait economic policy through the interplay of national identity and economic interests. She shows how the debate over Taiwanese national identity has been intimately linked to Taiwan’s economic policy during a turbulent time in cross-Strait relations. Using primary sources, opinion surveys, and interviews with Taiwanese opinion leaders, she paints a vivid picture of one of the most unsettled and dangerous relationships in the contemporary world.

As Taiwan grapples with the growing importance of the Chinese economy, it also experiences the uneven socio-economic consequences of globalization. This has produced a reconsideration of the desired degree of further integration with China, especially among the younger generations. Taiwan’s China Dilemma illustrates the growing backlash against economic liberalization and regional economic integration around the world.

 

Biography

Shirley Lin

Syaru Shirley Lin teaches political science at the University of Virginia and is a member of the founding faculty of the master’s program in global political economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her book, Taiwan’s China Dilemma: Contested Identities and Multiple Interests in Taiwan's Cross-Strait Economic Policy, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. She graduated from Harvard College and earned her masters and Ph.D. from the University of Hong Kong. Before starting her academic career, Prof. Lin was a partner at Goldman Sachs, where she was responsible for direct investment in Asia and spearheaded the firm’s investments in many technology start-ups such as Alibaba and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. Previously, she specialized in the privatization of state-owned enterprises in Singapore and China. Prof. Lin’s present board service includes Goldman Sachs Asia Bank, Langham Hospitality Investments and Mercuries Life Insurance. She also advises Crestview Partners and the Focused Ultrasound Foundation and is a member of the Hong Kong Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation.

 

This event is sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. It is free and open to the public, and lunch will be served. Please RSVP by October 17.

CISAC Central Conference Room, Encina Hall, 2nd Floor

Syaru Shirley Lin Professor of Political Economy Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Virginia
Lectures

Do Weberian Bureaucracies Lead to Markets or Vice Versa? A Coevolutionary Approach to Development

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Abstract

Are Weberian bureaucracies a precondition for capitalist markets or is it the other way around? According to the developmental school, state bureaucracies organized along Weberian precepts is necessary for successful state-led growth. Yet some level of economic wealth also appears to be necessary for achieving such desirable institutions. Departing from conventional linear approaches to development, this essay develops and applies a coevolutionary approach that traces the mutual adaptation of bureaucracies and markets among local states in China. My analysis demonstrates that the particular features of bureaucracy that promote growth vary over the course of development, even among locales within a single country. More surprisingly, I find that the bureaucratic forms that initially sparked growth actually defied Weberian norms of technocratic specialization and impersonality. In other words, in rethinking the relationship between markets and institutions, we must distinguish between market-building and market- preserving institutions. Conventionally good institutions like Weberian bureaucracies are necessary to preserve markets after they have already emerged; however, it is the adaptive refashioning of preexisting “weak” institutions that build markets in the first place. 

 

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From Wild Lily to Sunflower: New Politics in Taiwan

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Abstract:

The Wild Lily movement was a student demonstration in 1990 calling for democracy through direct election. 24 years later, the Sunflower movement was driven by a coalition of students and civic groups that were discontent with the Taiwanese government's handling of China relations. We discuss the general trajectory of student movements and the subsequent rise of numerous 'Third Force' parties that represent a new way for civic engagement in politics. 

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Fan Yun (范雲), PhD, is associate professor of sociology at the National Taiwan University. She is a politician, sociology scholar, feminist theorist, and former chairperson of the Social Democratic Party in Taiwan. After graduating from NTU with a B.A. and M.A. in Sociology, she received her PhD in Sociology from Yale University. She was president of the student association at NTU, assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica, commander for the Wild Lily student movement, and chairperson for the Awakening Foundation for women's rights. Her research interests include social movement, collective action, gender politics, identity politics, civil society and democracy. She has participated in social movement since the Wild Lily student movement in 1990, and was participant and witness to the trajectory of Taiwan’s transition into modern civil society and democracy.

Bechtel Conference Room

Encina Hall, 1st Floor

616 Serra St., Stanford, CA

Fan Yun Associate Professor of Sociology Keynote Speaker National Taiwan University
Lectures

Conference Report: The Politics of Polarization in Taiwan [Oct. 2014]

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Over the past year and more, Taiwan’s political elite has been deadlocked over the question of deepening economic relations with the People’s Republic of China. This controversial issue has led to a standoff between the executive and legislative branches, sparked a frenzy of social activism and a student occupation of the legislature, and contributed to President Ma Ying-jeou’s deep unpopularity.

On October 17-18, 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 included 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.

The conference report summarizes the key debates and findings of the conference.

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Reflections on Taiwan's Democracy During the Ma Ying-jeou Era

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In January 2016, voters in Taiwan went to the polls to select a new president and legislature, bringing to a close President Ma Ying-jeou’s second and final term in office. This roundtable, held at the annual conference of the Association of Asian Studies in Seattle, Washington, brings together four specialists on Taiwanese politics to reflect on the legacy of the last eight years of rule by the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party), and to consider the challenges facing the new DPP administration of Tsai Ing-wen, which takes office in May 2016. 


The roundtable panel will consider questions about five key developments under President Ma. First, on cross-Strait relations: what has been the political impact of the wide array of agreements that Taipei signed with the PRC, and is this period of enhanced cooperation likely to be sustained by his successor? Second, on the economy: Taiwan’s economy has become increasingly integrated with that of mainland China. What are the long-term political consequences of this trend? Does the next administration have any feasible alternatives to continued dependence on the PRC market? Third, on social changes: wealth inequality has risen significantly under President Ma. Why, and with what consequences for Taiwan’s social compact? Fourth, on social movements: social activism has surged during the Ma era, most notably during the student protests that came to be called the Sunflower Movement. What are the root causes of this increase in social movement activity, and what are likely to be the lasting consequences for Taiwan’s democracy? And finally, on democratic governance: the Ma administration to a surprising degree struggled to pass reforms and to respond effectively to social demands despite holding a large KMT majority in the legislature. Is this worrisome? Does it indicate a general decline in the Taiwanese political system’s ability to govern, or is it something more specific to the Ma administration?  

In considering these questions, the panelists will contribute to the debate about both the state of Taiwan’s democracy and Ma Ying-jeou’s legacy as president.

This special event at the Association for Asian Studies annual conference is sponsored by the Taiwan Democracy Project at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. 

 

Washington State Convention Center, Seattle, WA

Larry Diamond Senior Fellow Chair Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Yun Fan Associate Professor of Sociology Panelist National Taiwan University
Szu-Yin Ho Professor of International Relations Panelist Tamkang University
Shelley Rigger Professor of Political Science Panelist Davidson College
Yun-han Chu Professor of Political Science Panelist National Taiwan University
Panel Discussions
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