In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf.”
No, they are not writing about the current chaos in the Legislative Yuan. They are describing patterns of democratic backsliding in several case studies in Latin America and Europe. However, the similarities are uncanny. If these stories of how democracies die through democratic means seem ominous, they also contain lessons about how to build the necessary guardrails for the survival of democracy.
What could we learn from the challenges faced by other democracies? One key lesson is the importance of informing and engaging the public. Unlike a military coup, the erosion of democratic institutions is gradual and almost imperceptible. To people busy with jobs, parenting and other immediate tasks in daily life, political fights in parliament or between branches of government might seem distant and inconsequential. In a 2011 survey — roughly two years after then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez eliminated term limits for the presidency — 51 percent of Venezuelans still rated their country as very democratic, at 8 out 10 or higher. In Taiwan, this political apathy is further exacerbated by the fatigue brought on by the extreme polarization the nation has endured.
There is, therefore, an urgent need to make clear to the public how the controversial bills rushed through by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators are relevant to their everyday lives. The administration of President William Lai (賴清德) would be well advised to take a much more active leadership role in these communicative efforts than it has thus far.
Explain how these bills threaten to harm our national security and bankrupt our healthcare system. Discuss how the budget cuts supported by opposition legislators would impact government services and public journalism. Post often and widely on social media. Use humor and popular cultural icons (former president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) “Iron Cat Lady,” the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s “spokesdog” Zongchai (總柴), and former premier Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) “we only have one butt” come to mind). I would particularly emphasize reaching out to citizens who self-identify as “apolitical” or “non-partisan,” with the goal of increasing public understanding about how these laws matter, as well as building a broad consensus about defending our ways of life.
It is equally important for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government to refrain from “fighting like they do.” Indeed, the newsfeed in my social media is filled with lamentations from frustrated DPP supporters, calling on the party to take a page from the KMT-TPP playbook: “When the other side fights dirty, we cannot worry about following the rules.”
I understand — and at times even share — the sentiment, but this is the wrong path, as it would further erode the unwritten yet fundamental democratic norms of mutual tolerance and institutional forbearance.
In concrete terms, while DPP officials should absolutely do more to explain why these bills are antidemocratic or difficult to implement, they should avoid name-calling or slandering their opponents. Similarly, Lai and Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) certainly have the right and perhaps even the duty to challenge these bills in the Constitutional Court and, if necessary, refuse to countersign or promulgate antidemocratic or obstructive laws. However, they would be crossing a line if they were to become involved in the mass recall movement targeting KMT legislators.
This perspective might not sit well with some pan-green supporters, many of whom feel we must save our democracy by whatever means necessary, and that talk about democratic norms is lofty and unpragmatic. However, history has taught us that political radicalism often backfires, and whataboutism only alienates moderate voters — both of which would undermine the DPP government’s efforts to communicate with the public about the current crisis, which are too important.
Instead, recall petitions could and should be initiated by civil society groups who find certain legislators to be failing in their duties. Several groups have taken such actions, including the Central Taiwan Association of University Professors. On Sunday, the Liberty Times (Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported that a group of long-term KMT members, who self-identified as “the authentic blue army,” have joined the recall petition against a KMT legislator representing a district in Taichung.
Such grassroots efforts at building coalitions across ethnic and ideological divisions are encouraging, but they should be further cultivated, and their base further broadened. Such cross-sectional efforts in civil society represent citizens’ voices rather than specific parties’ agendas, which might be our only chance to stymie spirals of retaliatory actions.
The time is indeed dire. We should be alarmed, but we need not despair. There is still hope if we take timely and thoughtful actions.
Lo Ming-cheng is a professor of sociology at the University of California-Davis, whose research addresses civil society, political cultures and medical sociology.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
With the manipulations of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), it is no surprise that this year’s budget plan would make government operations difficult. The KMT and the TPP passing malicious legislation in the past year has caused public ire to accumulate, with the pressure about to erupt like a volcano. Civic groups have successively backed recall petition drives and public consensus has reached a fever-pitch, with no let up during the long Lunar New Year holiday. The ire has even breached the mindsets of former staunch KMT and TPP supporters. Most Taiwanese have vowed to use
As an American living in Taiwan, I have to confess how impressed I have been over the years by the Chinese Communist Party’s wholehearted embrace of high-speed rail and electric vehicles, and this at a time when my own democratic country has chosen a leader openly committed to doing everything in his power to put obstacles in the way of sustainable energy across the board — and democracy to boot. It really does make me wonder: “Are those of us right who hold that democracy is the right way to go?” Has Taiwan made the wrong choice? Many in China obviously
About 6.1 million couples tied the knot last year, down from 7.28 million in 2023 — a drop of more than 20 percent, data from the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs showed. That is more serious than the precipitous drop of 12.2 percent in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the saying goes, a single leaf reveals an entire autumn. The decline in marriages reveals problems in China’s economic development, painting a dismal picture of the nation’s future. A giant question mark hangs over economic data that Beijing releases due to a lack of clarity, freedom of the press