Taiwan

Over 50 countries will go to the polls in 2024, including Russia, India, El Salvador, South Africa, the United States, and Taiwan. The elections will have huge implications worldwide, ranging from human rights to international relations to the status of democracies. Taiwanese Pre-Election Campaigning Taiwan’s elections are scheduled for Saturday, January 13, and the … [Read more...] about Taiwan Goes to the Polls

Even those arguing that Taiwan has not undergone a true democratic transformation admit that rapid and substantial progress has been achieved. The electoral process is now open to a wide variety of parties, including communists, and the social status and civil rights of almost all former dissidents have been restored. As the 1998 Taipei mayoral elections were first to … [Read more...] about Cold War Taiwan: Democracy or Soft Authoritarianism?

At the national level, elections in 1991 and 1992 featured full-scale electoral and party competition for the first time. In 1991, in Taiwan's first multiparty popular election, voters elected 325 representatives of a new 405 seat National Assembly. Members previously serving life terms were forced to give up their seats. In 1992, in the first full election of the … [Read more...] about Democratic Elections Come to Taiwan

From 1979 to the present, citizen groups have emerged in Taiwan. They actively promote their particular interests and concerns. One of their objectives has been to obtain some measure of autonomy from the KMT authoritarian state. In 2016 they reached a major milestone when Tsai Ing-wen, the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) candidate for President received 56.1% of the … [Read more...] about History of Taiwan: Cold War Activism

During the years when the Americans had a strong presence and influence in Taipei, democracy was in scarce supply. As previously discussed, a quasi-Leninist party and its supporting military deeply penetrated the city's political environment, controlling all political activity and prohibiting competitive elections for the top city official. Beginning with Taipei's … [Read more...] about Democratization in Cold War Taipei