Examining the Green Party Taiwan (GPT) since its establishment through the aftermath of the most recent national elections in January 2020, this book focuses on Taiwan’s most important movement party over the last two and a half decades. Despite its limited electoral impact, its leaders have played a critical role in a range of social movements, including anti-nuclear and LGBT rights campaigns. Plotting the party’s evolution in electoral politics as well as its engagement with the global green movement, this volume analyses key patterns of party change in electoral campaign appeals, organisation and its human face. The second half of the volume concentrates on explaining both the party’s electoral impact and why the party has adjusted ideologically and organisationally over time. Based on a wide range of material collected, including focus groups, interviews and political communication data, the research relies heavily on analysis of campaign material and the voices of party activists and also considers other Green Parties, such as the splinter Trees Party and GPT-Social Democratic Alliance. Applying a wide range of theoretical frameworks to plot and explain small party development, this book will appeal both to students and scholars of Taiwan’s politics and civil society but also to readers with an interest in small parties and particularly environmental parties and movements.

Written by an experienced teacher and scholar, this new and revised second edition of Government and Politics in Taiwan introduces students to the big questions concerning change and continuity in Taiwanese politics and governance. Taking a critical approach, Dafydd Fell provides students with the essential background to the history and development of the political system, as well as an explanation of the key structures, processes and institutions that have shaped Taiwan over the last few decades. Using key features such as suggestions for further reading and end-of-chapter study questions, this textbook covers: • the transition to democracy and party politics; • cross-Strait relations and foreign policy; • electoral politics and voting; • social movements; • national identity; • gender politics. Having been fully updated to take to take stock of the 2012 and 2016 General Elections, the Sunflower Movement and new developments in cross-Strait relations, this is an essential text for any course on Taiwanese politics, Chinese politics and East Asian politics.

This book shows that Taiwan, unlike other countries, avoided serious economic disruption and social conflict, and arrived at its goal of multi-party competition with little blood shed. Nonetheless, this survey reveals that for those who imagine democracy to be the panacea for every social, economic and political ill, Taiwan's continuing struggles against corruption, isolation and division offer a cautionary lesson. This book is an ideal, one-stop resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of political science, particuarly those interested in the international politics of China, and the Asia-Pacific.

In 1991 Taiwan held its first fully democratic election. This first single volume of party politics in Taiwan analyzes the evolution of party competition in the country, looking at how Taiwan’s parties have adjusted to their new multi-party election environment. It features key chapters on: the development of party politics in Taiwan the impact of party change on social welfare, corruption and national identity party politics in the DPP era. Including interviews with high-ranking Taiwanese politicians and material on the 2004 Presidential election, this important work brings the literature up-to-date. It provides a valuable resource for scholars of Chinese and Taiwanese politics and a welcome addition to the field of regime transition and democratization.

This book examines the relationship between cross-border economic ties and international relations in the context of China–Taiwan relations. It focuses on Taiwan’s domestic politics as an intervening variable in analyzing the relationship between China–Taiwan economic ties and their political relations.

In January 2016, Taiwan’s former authoritarian ruler, the KMT, the Nationalist Party of China, lost control of both the presidency and the legislature. Having led the democratization process in Taiwan during the 1980s, it maintained a winning coalition among big business, the public sector, green-collar workers and local factions. Until now. A New Era in Democratic Taiwan identifies past, present and future trajectories in party politics and state-society relations in Taiwan. Providing a comprehensive examination of public opinion data, it sheds light on significant changes in the composition of political attitudes among the electorate. Through theoretical and empirical analyses, this book also demonstrates the emergence of a ‘new’ Taiwanese identity during the transition to democracy and shows how a diffusion of interests in society has led to an opening for niche political organizations. The result, it argues, is a long-term challenge to the ruling parties. As the first book to evaluate Taiwan’s domestic and international circumstances after Tsai’s election in 2016, this book will be useful for students and scholars of Taiwan Studies and cross-Strait relations, as well as Asian politics more generally.

In the spring of 2014, the Sunflower Movement’s three-week occupation of the Legislative Yuan brought Taiwan back to international media attention. It was the culmination of a series of social movements that had been growing in strength since 2008 and have become even more salient since the spring of 2014. Social movements in Taiwan have emerged as a powerful new actor that needs to be understood alongside those players that have dominated the literature such as political parties, local factions, Taishang, China and the United States. This book offers readers an introduction to the development of these social movements in Taiwan by examining a number of important movement case studies that focus on the post 2008 period. The return of the Kuomintang (KMT) to power radically changed the political environment for Taiwan’s civil society and so the book considers how social activists responded to this new political opportunity structure. The case chapters are based on extensive fieldwork and are written by authors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and methodological approaches; in some cases authors combine being both academics and activists themselves. Together, the chapters focus on a number of core issues, providing the book with four key aims. Firstly, it investigates the roots of the movements and considers how to best explain their emergence. Secondly, it examines the development trajectories of these movements. Thirdly, it looks at the best way to explain their impact and development patterns, and finally it assesses their overall impact, questioning whether they can be regarded as successes or failures. Covering a unique range of social movement cases, the book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in Taiwanese society and politics, as well as social movements and civil society.