From China Elections & Governance:
… Democracy in Taiwan is under severe strain. The island’s young democracy has been struggling with overwhelming governing challenges: inconclusive and disputed electoral outcomes, endless partisan gridlock and bickering, recurring clashes over national identity, rampant corruption at the highest echelon, slower growth and foggy economic outlooks. The nasty political warfare among political parties has eroded the contending political elites’ commitment to due process and shaken their faith in the openness and fairness of the political game. At the more fundamental level, the popular confidence in the superiority of democratic form of government has been eroded by some visible deterioration in the overall quality of democratic governance. [Full Text]
Yun-han Chu is distinguished research fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica, professor of political science at National Taiwan University, and president of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.
