Democracy in Contemporary Taiwan
Introduction
Chia-Yin
Chang (Professor, Department of Law, Shih Hsin University)
Special Issue Article
1. Taiwan’s
Death Penalty in the Local-Global Dynamics
Chia-Wen
Lee (Professor, Department of Law, National Cheng Kung University)
2. Parrhēsia
and Democracy, Michel Foucault’s Last Lesson
Yuan-Horng
Chu (Professor, Graduate Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies,
National Chiao-Tung University)
3. Differential
Governance and Democratic Participation: An Analysis of Trade Adjustment Assistance
Employment Policies in Response to Trade Liberalization in Taiwan
Chien-Hung
Lee (Associate Professor, Department of Labor Relations, Chinese Culture
University)
4. From
National Identity to Social Class: Democratic Progressive Party’s Shifting Discourse
about Cross-Strait Trade Issues
Dee Wu (B.S.
Degree, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University)
5. A
Forum on Taiwan’s Democracy: Does Taiwan’s Democracy face a Crisis?
Chien-Feng
Wei et. al.
Research Article
6. Practices
of Citizen Journalism from the Perspective of Communication Empowerment: A Case
Study on PeoPo and Citizen Reporters
in Taiwan
Chu-Jie
Chen (Associate Research Professor, School of Communication and Design, Sun
Yat-sen University)
Research Note
7. How
Communities were Studied? Three Approaches to Community Studies in Taiwan in
the 1960s and the 1970s
Jia-Shin
Tsai (Ph.D Student, Institute of Sociology, National Tsing Hua University)
Special Issue Article
Taiwan’s Death Penalty in the Local-Global Dynamics
Chia-Wen
Lee (Professor, Department of Law, National Cheng Kung University)
People generally believe that the death penalty in Taiwan has been supported
by traditional retributive culture, and the public support is the main reason
why this penal institution cannot be abolished. This paper intends to rebut
this conventional wisdom. It shows that in the past sixty to seventy years,
this penal institution been much more affected by politics. In addition to
public opinions, the death penalty in Taiwan has been shaped by the interplay
of regime types, international politics, pattern of transitional politics and
incumbent's inclinations. While it is true that politics has played a dominant
role, actions of human rights activists still managed to redefine what politics
is, and thus helped the local abolitionist movement to achieve an impressive
progress within a short period of time. But the intensive cooperation between
global and local anti-death penalty activists since the beginning has also made
the anti-death penalty movement western and alien to the Taiwanese society,
which unfortunately resulted in vehement backlashes in recent years. This paper
urges both supporters and opponents of the death penalty to re-evaluate this
peculiar penal institution from its historical realities.
Keywords:
Death Penalty, Anti-Death Penalty Movement, Public Opinions, International
Politics, Political Transition
Parrhēsia and Democracy, Michel Foucault’s Last Lesson
Yuan-Horng
Chu (Professor, Graduate Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies,
National Chiao-Tung University)
This article explores the problematics of Parrhēsia, an issue that Michel Foucault concerned with in the last
three years of his life. In January 1982, Foucault brought up this ancient
issue in his lecture at the College de France, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, proceeded to investigate its
entanglement with “rhetoric”, and its antagonism with the sweet-talk of the
flatterer (κόλακες). In the Spring 1983 and the Spring 1984 lectures at the
College de France, as well as in the Fall 1983 lecture at the UC Berkeley,
Foucault devotes himself to the predicaments of parrhēsia in political situations, i.e., speaking truth truthfully
in political circumstances that begets danger and thus demands courage. From
reading these texts closely, this paper wishes to dispel the inference that,
since Foucault rarely talked about “democracy” in any contemporary contexts, he
was not interested in “democratic politics” at all. Contrary to such
speculation, this article argues that Foucault has a deep understanding and
concern about the plight and paradox of contemporary democratic lives. This is
the reason why he immersed himself in the 4th Century BCE Athenian democratic
crisis, and linked it to the Prussia Enlightenment in the last decades of the
18th Century, when Kant’s “What Is Enlightenment?” rediscovered the ancient
issue of parrhēsia and redefined it with a modern context. Lastly, this article
draws on Foucault’s last lesson to review the contemporary democratic politics
in Taiwan, its current plight and paradox.
Keywords:
Michel Foucault, Parrhēsia, Rhetoric, Kόλακες, Democracy
Differential Governance and Democratic Participation:
An Analysis of Trade Adjustment Assistance Employment Policies in Response to Trade
Liberalization in Taiwan
Chien-Hung
Lee (Associate Professor, Department of Labor Relations, Chinese Culture
University)
This article explore the policies formation model of trade
adjustment assistance employment policies in response to trade liberalization,
article also analyze the problems of democratic participation mechanism for workers’
group and employers’ group in policies formation process in Taiwan. The main
finding is that Ministry of Economy constructed the “classification
identification framework of industry adjustment assistance measures” were
designed in accordance with the “differential governance principle”, in the
meantime, Ministry of Economy also constructed the administrative examine
mechanism that invite employers’ group participate but exclude workers’ group.
Ministry of Labor implemented the trade adjustment assistance employment
policies according to the administrative examine classification identification
outcomes by Ministry of Economy. As a result, Ministry of Labor implemented an
imbalanced participation model between workers group and employers group, it is
just the partial representative democracy which derived institutional problems
of “identification criteria ignore unemployment” and “worker’s apply barriers for
employment assistance”, resulting in the low employment performance. In the
future, the government should formulate a new special law for assistant
affected workers and enterprises hat includes two democratic mechanisms in the
new special law. Firstly, the balanced participation policies formation model
between workers’ group and employers group, secondly, the worker’s and workers
group’s application mechanism for employment assistance measures in response to
trade liberalization.
Keywords:
Trade Adjustment Assistance, Employment Policies, Democratic Participation,
Differential Governance
From National Identity to Social Class: Democratic
Progressive Party’s Shifting Discourse about Cross-Strait Trade Issues
Dee Wu (B.S.
Degree, Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University)
Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen raised the
potential social class problem generated by the Economic Cooperation Framework
Agreement (ECFA) in 2010. Compared to the contested “one-China market” issue
raised during the 2008 election, the shifting discourse about cross-Strait
trade issues conforms to the recent changes in Taiwanese political cleavage.
This research aims to trace the development of DPP’s class conflict discourse
about ECFA. Past literatures examine the class politics of cross-Strait trade
issues primarily through trade politics theory, thus focusing on the two
parties’ policy positions and their relation with the supporters’ class
alignments. Yet, this viewpoint does not conform to cross-Strait trade policy
history: DPP’s “proactive liberalization” policy is not in line with the
interest of its own class alignment. Due to this misinterpretation, this research
utilizes documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews under a historical
sociology framework to answer the research question: How did history,
structures, and agents jointly formulate DPP’s discourse shift from national
identity to social class in the cross-Strait trade issues.
Keywords:
Historical Sociology, Political Cleavage, Democratic Progressive Party,
Cross-Strait Trade Policy, Trade Politics
A Forum on Taiwan’s Democracy: Does Taiwan’s Democracy
face a Crisis?
Chien-Feng
Wei et. al.
Research Article
Practices of Citizen Journalism from the Perspective
of Communication Empowerment: A Case Study on PeoPo and Citizen Reporters in Taiwan
Chu-Jie
Chen (Associate Research Professor, School of Communication and Design, Sun
Yat-sen University)
Previous studies on citizen journalism rarely investigated the associations
among citizen media, citizen reporters, and citizen journalism practices, as well
as their online-offline interactions. This paper develops a three-level analytic
framework of communication empowerment to examine local practices of citizen
journalism in Taiwan, as represented by the PeoPo
citizen journalism platform. Qualitative data collection and analysis reveal
that citizen media has not reconfigured the media ecology. Yet, as change
agent, citizen media has contributed to emancipating, cultivating, and
aggregating individual citizen reporters’ democratic communication through
mediating their cognition of media access and participatory media production.
At the community level, citizen reporters are able to manifest their agency as cultural
producers and political subjects both in normal and crisis situations. At the
societal level, the online and offline collaborations between citizen media and
social movement organizations give rise to more visibility and continuity of
social movement issues in an alternative public sphere. The influences of
emotional resonance among citizen journalism practitioners at different levels
are also discussed.
Keywords:
Communication Empowerment, Citizen Journalism, Citizen Media, Citizen Reporter
Research Note
How Communities were Studied? Three Approaches to
Community Studies in Taiwan in the 1960s and the 1970s
Jia-Shin
Tsai (Ph.D Student, Institute of Sociology, National Tsing Hua University)
In this article, I trace three research approaches to community
studies in Taiwan in the 1960s and the 1970s, and they are sociological approach,
anthropological approach, and interdisciplinary approach. I examine what academic
tradition and methodology were sourced, and what issues were conducted in each
approach. The first, sociological approach to community studies, drew on the
discipline of human ecology and the tradition of social survey; its main issues
included social base map, ecological structure, and community development.
Secondly, anthropological approach, drew on functionalism, the Yenching School
and the tradition of Han Chinese society studies; its main issues included a
holistic community, family, lineage, religion, ancestor worship, and religious
sphere. Finally, the interdisciplinary approach to community studies, drew on
the discipline of behavioral science and functionalism; its main issues
included the community power structure, social attitude. Overall, the article
provides a picture of the first two-decade history of community studies in
Taiwan since 1960 largely building on methodology of human ecology and
functionalism, the tradition of social survey, Yenching School and Han Chinese
society studies, and also various issues.
Keywords:
Community Studies, Community, Anthropology, Sociology
Social Network