This year marks a quiet but profound milestone: Taiwan’s post-martial law era has now outlasted its years under martial law. In four decades, the island has transformed into a vibrant democracy admired worldwide. Yet today, its gravest threat is not the return of dictatorship, but something subtler and more insidious — the deliberate manufacturing of ungovernability.
In the past, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ruled with coercion and fear. That system is gone. The KMT today, now the largest opposition party, has discovered a different means of control: making governance itself impossible.
Through coordinated obstruction and sweeping legislative maneuvers, it is turning the mechanisms of democracy against their own functioning.
To be clear, democratic oversight and healthy opposition are essential. Holding those in power accountable is part of governance.
However, when oversight becomes systematic obstruction, aimed at paralyzing rather than improving, it endangers the very democracy it claims to defend.
Since early last year, the KMT-Taiwan People’s Party voting bloc in the Legislative Yuan has repeatedly used its numerical advantage to paralyze the state. Examples include blocking judicial nominations to the Constitutional Court, amending quorum rules, slashing and freezing central government budgets, shifting funds to local governments, and reviving proposals to roll back hard-won pension reforms.
These actions serve to discredit the ruling Democratic Progressive Party by ensuring it cannot govern, then claim that governance itself has failed. Ungovernability destroys democracy by dispersing power until no one can act. Under authoritarianism, someone still governs, albeit unjustly. Under ungovernability, no one can.
The problem is not so much that citizens are denied their fair share; rather, that all shares are destroyed. When the Constitutional Court cannot rule, when the executive branch is stripped of operating funds, when long-term commitments like pensions or defense are gutted, what remains is not “checks and balances” but institutional ruin.
Whom does this serve? The answer varies. Some might say Beijing; others point to ambitious politicians. One thing we can be sure of is that it does not serve the people of Taiwan.
However, many have yet to grasp this danger. Taiwanese still tend to think of democracy as a contest between parties, or as contention between government and opposition, where criticism and alternation of power are the highest virtues.
Yet democracy also requires the ability to govern: to make policy decisions, implement budgets and maintain the rule of law. When this capacity collapses, democracy’s substance erodes even if its formalities persist.
The crisis for democracy in Taiwan thus differs from the global rise of illiberal populism. US President Donald Trump’s “make America great again,” Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “revitalization of China” and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperial nostalgia promise to restore a lost national glory. Taiwan’s ungovernability, by contrast, is not about nostalgia, but sabotage — a politics of demolition carried out in the name of oversight.
Can the crisis be averted? It will be the challenge of our generation, but we can begin by reframing the fault lines. The real divide today is not between pro-China and pro-independence, nor simply blue versus green, but between policies that make Taiwan governable and those that make it ungovernable. This reframing will be difficult, but not impossible.
We caught a glimpse of this subtle shift in the mass recall movement. The citizen groups that initiated the recall campaigns emphasized their nonpartisan stand and targeted several problematic bills. The KMT, in turn, reframed the recall bids as a partisan struggle. In the end, the familiar “blue versus green” rhetoric prevailed, yet seven constituencies reached the 25 percent threshold in favor of recalls, despite not meeting other criteria, indicating an awakening to the danger of laws that lead to ungovernability.
The Constitutional Court controversy is another front. Some justices have warned that the new supermajority rule threatens judicial independence, even though some fear that striking it down would deepen partisan warfare. The fight will look political, but we must respectfully urge the justices to continue. When other branches falter — and they are faltering — constitutional review is democracy’s last stabilizer.
Meanwhile, ordinary citizens can play a crucial role in gradually reshaping Taiwan’s cultural climate. When torrential floods hit Hualien County’s Guangfu Township (光復) last month, thousands of volunteers, nicknamed “shovel superheroes,” arrived with nothing but shovels and goodwill. They cleared mud, distributed food and provided medical assistance.
These acts of solidarity and care are more than individual kindness; they create experiences that counter the despairing narrative of corruption, paralysis and decline promoted by some politicians. As communities witness and share these stories of hope and resilience, they might come to value constructive engagement and good governance over the temporary satisfaction of venting frustration.
Ungovernability, not authoritarianism, might be Taiwan’s defining democratic test. It will be passed — or failed — by how much we recognize that good governance, not merely passionate protests, is the truest expression of freedom.
Lo Ming-cheng is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis whose research addresses civil society, political cultures and medical sociology.
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