Taiwan’s Maturing Democracy
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On May 14, the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (CNAPS) at Brookings and the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University hosted a seminar analyzing progress and challenges in the consolidation of Taiwan’s democratization and reforms. While the presidential and legislative elections held on January 14 were interpreted by many as proof that Taiwan’s democratic system—including its government and society—has matured since the first transition of political power in 2000, both big-picture and day-to-day challenges to effective democratic governance remain.
The seminar featured leading practitioners and political scientists from Taiwan and the United States. Panelists examined reforms that have been enacted in Taiwan over the past decade, and analyzed their impact on the functions of government agencies, political parties, and other non-governmental organizations. They also discussed how reform and consolidation are affecting policy and public perception of the system.
Participants
9:00 AM — Panel 1: Government
David Brown, Adjunct Professor, Paul H, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Nigel N.T. Li, Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Law, Soochow University
Adjunct Professor, Graduate Institute of Political Science, National Taiwan University
Da-Chi Liao, Professor of Political Science, National Sun Yat-sen University
Jiunn-rong Yeh, Professor, College of Law, National Taiwan University
11:00 AM — Panel 2: Politics and Society
John Fuh-sheng Hsieh, Professor of Political Science, University of South Carolina
Shelley Rigger, Brown Professor of East Asian Politics Chair, Department of Political Science, Davidson College
Erich Che-wei Shih, News Anchor and Senior Producer, CTi Television
Eric Chen-hua Yu, Assistant Professor of Political Science, National Chengchi University
12:45 PM — Lunch
1:45 PM — Panel 3: Implications of Democratic Consolidation
Richard C. Bush III, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies
Larry Diamond, Professor of Political Science; Director, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford University
Alan Romberg, Distinguished Fellow and Director, East Asia Program, The Stimson Center
Ho Szu-yin, Professor, Department of Political Science, National Chengchi University
Audio recordings of the event are available online at the Brookings website here:
Falk Auditorium,
The Brookings Institution,
1775 Massachusetts Ave.,NW
Washington, DC
Larry Diamond
CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
0
ldiamond@stanford.edu
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
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
What Really Happened: Lessons Learned from the Egyptian Revolution
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Abstract:
Ahmed Salah, Egyptian activist and 2011 Draper Hills Summer fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law will tell the true story of how the Egyptian Revolution started, with all the challenges and obstacles and how they were overcome. Debunking the more mainstream popular version of the story, Salah will provide an overview of what has been happening ever since, and examine the current and future possibilities for the revolution in Egypt.
Speaker Bio:
Ahmed Salah was co-founder, strategist and foreign affairs representative of the April 6 Youth Movement until the end of 2012, co-devised and implemented the plan that led to the first day of the Egyptian Revolution on January 25, 2011. Salah is one of the co-founders of the Egyptian Movement for Change, Kifaya (Enough!) and was one of its leaders until mid 2008, he also co-founded and lead the first anti-Mubarak youth movement called Youth For Change in 2005 till 2006, and leads the Coalition of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Ahmed Salah
Egyptian activist and 2011 Draper Hills Summer Fellow
Speaker
CDDRL
Seminars
