Introduction

The fundamental purpose of this volume is to provide a study of democratization in Taiwan. We approach the subject with the perspective that Taiwan faces many of the same challenges as most newly democratized nations, such as the legacy of an authoritarian government, a traditional culture, ethnic division, and non-majoritarian political institutions. At the same time, Taiwan faces a unique foreign policy problem from the People’s Republic of China that overshadows many of the other challenges. In fact, the foreign policy challenge inserts itself into many of these other challenges as the dominant issue in Taiwan’s politics. In this book, we examine these two sets of challenges to offer a means of evaluating democratic development in Taiwan, as well as offering areas of study for scholars of other democratizing nations to consider.