Taiwan's Digital Democracy

Dr Florian Schneider, Leiden University Institute for Area Studies.

Moderated by Dr Bryce Wakefield, AIIA National Executive Director.

Democracy is in crisis. New reactionary movements, increased polarisation, and strategic digital misinformation campaigns have deeply challenged pluralist, democratic politics. As liberal democracies around the globe slowly come to terms with this reality, one society in East Asia has radically updated its participatory politics for the 21st century: Taiwan. The polity that de-facto governs the island, the Republic of China (ROC), has a protracted history of consolidating its young democracy. What is more, the ROC faces aggressive rhetoric by authoritarian leaders in the neighbouring People’s Republic of China, who view Taiwan as a renegade province. In this context, creating a functioning, participatory democracy is not merely a moral obligation to politicians and civil society actors in Taiwan. It as an existential necessity. Over the past years, and especially since large-scale political protests swept the island in 2014, various actors have made it their goal to improve democracy in Taiwan and immunize it against digitally accelerated risks. These actors use innovative digital and analogue strategies, including open government initiatives, bottom-up citizen consultation, digital deliberation environments, online petition systems, and much more. In this talk, based on fieldwork and interviews, Florian Schneider asks: what can such practices tell us about the future of democratic politics in the information age?

Florian Schneider is Senior University Lecturer in the Politics of Modern China at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies. He is managing editor of Asiascape: Digital Asia, director of the Leiden Asia Centre, and the author of three books: Staging China: the Politics of Mass Spectacle (Leiden University Press, 2019), China’s Digital Nationalism (Oxford University Press, 2018), and Visual Political Communication in Popular Chinese Television Series (Brill, 2013, recipient of the 2014 EastAsiaNet book prize). In 2017, he was awarded the Leiden University teaching prize for his innovative work as an educator. His research interests include questions of governance, political communication, and digital media in China, as well as international relations in the East-Asian region. He earned his PhD from Sheffield University.

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